Modern Application Development: Building a Full-Stack Search Web Application; Social and Ethical Analysis of Central Bank Digital Currencies

The online digital space is a advanced and intricate landscape that offers many opportunities for learning and development. Web applications have become an integral part of this ecosystem, providing exciting interfaces for online users. Many of these applications have vast amounts of content and data, making efficient search a necessary part of these applications. E-commerce and financial systems have also made the jump online. New payment systems are being developed to complement this trend. These two critical aspects of the online space are the focus of my Thesis Portfolio. As part of my technical report, I describe my path towards building and developing a search web application. Specifically, I implemented a search feature to filter through a database of around 30 million users. With the help of my internship team , I designed a clean user interface to easily create queries and search this database. The data that is returned also required a well-designed user interface to navigate between messages, data, and other important information. Additionally, once a particular message or piece of data was identified, action icons and buttons were included to carry out specific functions. This project required significant research and learning into developing Full-Stack applications to this scale. My STS research report focuses on introducation of new type of currency for the digital age: Central Bank Digital Currenices (CBDC). This currencies, backed by a central government or bank, aim to be an new form of digitally currency. It stands as an alternative to physical cash, official currency, and other decentralized digital assets. However, CBDCs come with significant social ramifications, particularly regarding how we think about, use and handle money. My paper aims to address the many ethical concerns that arise from this new techonologies features and proposed benefits. While my technical report and STS research paper focus on different subjects, the topics share some similiaries. Both web applications and CBDCs exist within the online world and aim to facilitate the exchange of data between peole and systems. In fact, many web applications could be built to help make CBDCs more accessible and user-friendly. For example, stores could set up shopping applications that take CBDCs as payments. Additionally, web applications may need to search through past transactions of CBDCs. These two topics may focus on different aspects in the online space; However, CBDCs and web applications can become intertwined to advance and expand our digital age.