Avatars Expand the Opportunities of Modern Economy

Introduction

Modern society has entered a new phase of its development related to the digital era. Most countries are only at the beginning of their journey and only a few of the world’s leaders are confidently navigating the “waves of digitalization”. The humanity lives in an era of change, when politics, economics, culture, social and public relations are changing dramatically. All these processes lead to a change in the individual’s way of life. There is no unambiguous answer what the world will be like in the future. However, today we can already talk about the formation of a new paradigm associated with the increasing role of the virtual world.

The problems of digital economy development are of crucial importance, since the introduction of digital technologies in the reproduction process ensures increase in efficiency and reduction of production costs. This fact stimulates the development of digital platforms and mechanisms that allow accelerating the process of interaction between different subjects and reducing the transaction costs of harmonizing economic interests at the micro- and macro-levels, which will eventually lead to economic growth. The use of various technologies makes it possible to solve this problem. Currently, information and communication technologies include a large number of tools and theoretical groundwork that not only justify the optimal use of a particular architecture of software development, but also provide a great number of users with access to information, high-quality services for planning, analysis and, most importantly, access to the market (i.e. customers, manufacturers, service organizations, etc.).

This chapter attempts to explore the possibilities of developing digital economy based on Triple H Avatar, the software platform for HHH University, Sydney, Australia. The platform, developed at the University, has been able to provide continuous methodological support and advice on all subjects of educational activity (V. Mkrttchian, 2015). The project was completed in 2018 and went beyond the educational process. As a result, a model based on avatars was created, which provided a common platform for solving problems in various areas of the digital economic system. For the first time, this project allowed to scale modelling for a large number of economic avatars and provide graphic user interfaces that can be used at the user level (S. Panasenko, L. Belyanina, I. Potapova, S. Veretekhina, L. Rozhkova, V. Mkrttchian, & S. Vasin, 2019). All these facts allow us to speak about the universality of the platform and the possibility of its application in various areas. This study attempts to address the following issues:

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  The use of the avatar platform in various spheres of economy and its expediency;

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  The possibilities of harmonization of economic interests on the basis of avatars at micro- and macro-levels;

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  The application of avatar-based digital technologies and confidentiality of information.

It can be noted that the lack of understanding and answers to the above questions does not allow us to identify the bottleneck of digital economy and distinguish trends in modern economic development.

Despite the fact that digital economy is a fairly new phenomenon, there is a fairly large reservoir of scientific papers in the scientific community that consider its essential characteristics (A. Strømmen-Bakhtiar, 2019) and its main components (S. Mutula, 2010). The development of digital technologies in commerce (M. Scheepers & D. Kerr, 2018; G. Granata, A. Moretta Tartaglione, & T. Tsiakis, 2019) and the financial sector (A. Rafay, 2019) can be regarded among the fastest growing and most studied issues.