Reflective Paper #2

Sammi Hintze Dr. Hawthorne October 20, 2012 Core 1 Reflective Paper #2 â€Å"I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe† (47). Its crazy to think that to the characters in Feed think our life is so complex, when really we have more technology than we need. People survived life without cellphones, computers, and even electricity, and now our world is becoming ultra-dependent on these things.After reading the book Feed, various arguments can be made about whether today’s society will turn into the world Feed predicts, and be technology dependent. Is our world going to turn into the society that is depicted in Feed? Life is being controlled by technology, and hardly anybody can go a day without technology, and wanti ng to be a part of it with new technology products coming out like Project Glass. It is hard to not believe that our world is going to turn completely technology dependent, like the one in Feed.In the past, you had to send a letter in the mail you travel to see them to communicate with someone; if you wanted to talk to someone, you would have to put the effort into it and take the time to write them and wait for a response back. Then with technology advancing, the telephone was made and you could call someone to talk to them instead of writing a letter and waiting for the person to respond. Technology kept advancing, and now in today’s society, we hardly talk on the phone; we text instead, which is quick, easy, and effortless. This is what technology has done to human beings as a whole.It has brought wonderful advancements, yet at the same time, technology has been a curse and changed the way we view each other. No one really communicates with each other now; only through tex ting do we talk. This is lowering our communication skills with people and making us more and more dependent on technology, and most people do not realize that. It’s scary to wonder what is going to happen in the future. In Feed, the characters will be sitting right next to each other, and instead of talking to each other, they will talk to each other through the chat that goes through their Feed.This is deteriorating people’s communication and personal skills. I am scared that this is what our society is slowly becoming; we already have some of the characteristics and portray some of actions that the characters do in the book. Our society is so dependent on technology that most people don’t even use libraries anymore. When people need to do research for their papers, the first line of thought is to search Google. If we don’t find what we want on Google, we try another online search engine. Our last resort is to look at a library for a book or use an ency clopedia.Having the Internet in the palm of our hands is causing more and more people to become lazy and not as smart and advanced as they could become. Now even to read books we are using technology. In today’s society, more people are reading books online rather than going to the library to rent them or even purchasing them. Is the future ahead of us going to be all-online? This is a scary thought that runs through my head all the time. I don’t want to be dependent on all technology. That is only going to hurt us, and we will never learn new things.Technology has given us a great number of benefits, but there is a cost. By giving technology the opportunity to run the show, we've lost sight of how to perform these tasks on our own. When a computer system goes down, society is halted until that system is up and running again. Technology is here to stay, but it will only control us as much as we allow it. Currently, it seems we are content to allow it to run the show, a nd as a result, we've become very much dependent on technology to the point where, yes, we are controlled.We do have the power to live upon our own free manual and gadget-free will, but we choose not to. Google has come out with a new product called Project Glass. This directly correlates to what the Feed is. Project Glass is a research and development program developed in the form of glasses that show a display in front of you. Project Glass displays information in a smartphone-like format. Project Glass is also like the hands-free life and could interact with the Internet with natural language, voice commands. Since technology has advanced so much, these Glasses would be like wearing a computer.People are not going to benefit at all from these glasses; it is only going to make people more dependent on technology and less dependent on their brains and learning. To summarize, when all is said and done, technology rules the roost in today’s society. Technology has brought us w onderful innovations and helped us enormously, but as each year passes into another, more and more we, as human beings, rely on technology. Society today is controlled by technology to such an extent that we would find it virtually impossible to live without it.

Ideology vs. united church of Canada’s advertisement Essay

Ideology is a ‘Representation’ of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence — Louis Althusser, 1970 Many companies use advertisement as their way of attracting customers. They tend to create ideological perspective within their advertisements to show their stand on the society’s standards. Most of the time, advertisements are made for women. If men and babies’ needs were advertised, women are still part of it. It shows that in the ideology of the society, women are the determiner or the decision-maker of what should be use as a necessity or luxury. This is what advertisement for, it radicalize the essence of what is important and necessary. Advertising is significant because, in consumer capitalism, individuals depend on it for meanings — a source of social information embedded in commodities that mediate interpersonal relations and personal identity. Advertising should therefore be conceived as an important institution in the consumer society because it produces â€Å"patterned systems of meaning† which play a key role in individual socialization and social reproduction. However, in the context of ideology and advertisement as a whole, advertisements are made because we want to prove something or we want to impose a law on a certain aspect of the society. Through this, we could be able to spread our ideas and perspectives towards different issues and arguments that exist in the society today. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze a certain advertisement in connection to the Ideological State Apparatus of Louis Althusser to determine its meaning and rationalization. The chosen advertisement is a child advertisement. The advertisement showed a picture of a baby with a medical wristband stating â€Å"WARNING: some re-assembly of priorities and beliefs may be required. † This advertisement suggests that parenthood is not an easy thing. As parents, people tend to view life more seriously. Once a baby is born, everything will change not according to plan but according to responsibility. Wandercafe. ca stated in the advertisement that â€Å"parenthood changes everything – including how you view the world. † Most often, this scenario happens if the baby is a wanted child because if it is not, parents tend to disregard their responsibility towards their children especially the fathers. Nevertheless, being a parent is a gift from God as we all know. In the perspective of the society and our culture, we view parenthood as a form of required responsibility. Once a child is born, we need to settle our priorities as based on the needs of the child and would not focus on our necessities and luxuries. In poor families, even if the parents could not eat, as long as their child has its milk, problem would not exist. This situation shows that parents can do everything and anything just to make their child safe and healthy. This is what the advertisement is trying to impose – parenthood is an obligation that should be taken into consideration because it requires re-assemble of priorities and beliefs. In the perspective of ideology and advertisement, this advertisement can be said as part of the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). According to Louis Althusser (1970), an Ideological State Apparatus is a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institution. Because the advertisement came from the people of the United Church of Canada, it can be said as a religious Ideological State Apparatus. He also stated that the distinction of ISAs from (Repressive) State Apparatus is that the Repressive State Apparatus functions ‘by violence’, whereas the ideology State Apparatus function ‘by ideology’. This is the fact that the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while functioning secondarily by ideology. (There is no such thing as a purely repressive apparatus.)†¦ In the same way, but inversely, it is essential to say that for their part the Ideological State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression, even if ultimately, but only ultimately, this is very attenuated and concealed, even symbolic. (Althusser 1970) Advertisement has different impact to society and its institutions such as education, culture, and religion. In the chosen advertisement, these three factors exist as they give contribution to the perspective and ideology of the ad. It was seen through different aspects and reasons. In the institution of education, this advertisement educate people especially parents to become aware with their responsibilities and obligations towards their child or children because it was the most important thing that should be taken into account. When it comes to culture, it shows the stand of the society when it comes to parenthood because this is part of the culture – parents should abide by the rule of the law that they should love their children for they have conceived them. In the religious institution or the church, this advertisement shows what is right in opposition to evil. Church stated that parents should do their obligations not by their choice but by the rule of the church because it was the teaching of God. In the pre-capitalist historical period which I have examined extremely broadly, it is absolutely clear that there was one dominant Ideological State Apparatus, the Church, which concentrated within it not only religious functions, but also educational ones, and a large proportion of the functions of communications and ‘culture’. It is no accident that all ideological struggle, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, starting with the first shocks of the Reformation, was concentrated in an anti-clerical and anti-religious struggle; rather this is a function precisely of the dominant position of the religious Ideological State Apparatus. (Althusser 1970) In the chosen advertisement, Church is dominant and ‘repressive’ in some angle because it tried to impose a law or a rule. It was shown in the medical wristband of the baby. Using the word â€Å"warning† is an implication of notice that there must be an action to consider. The ideology of the advertisement is actually true when it comes to responsibilities of the parents but the Church overpowers the parents on what they should do and act. Though it was just a simple warning, capitalism can be seen based on its attack and point of justification. As a whole, the advertisement means more than what it wanted to say. The ideology of the church can be said as a form of repression or simply a justification of what is true as based on the standard of the society. Advertisement has different meanings based on the perceiver. It was the audience’s obligation to perceive the advertisement on their own context and ideology. Ideology is innate for all of us. It should not be taken for granted because it is an armor of our thinking, rights, and stand towards the rules and laws of the society. Culture, education, and church are underlying institutions that we need to consider in analyzing a certain advertisement because these factors are the most important aspects of humanity whether we oppose or consider their specificities from the past, present, and future civilization. Works Cited Althousser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. La Pensee, 1970. 27 November 2007 http://www. marxists. org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology. htm Wandercafe. ca. baby. 27 November 2007 Harms, John and Kellner, Douglas. â€Å"Toward A Critical Theory of Advertising. † Illumination. (n. d. ) 27 November 2007 .

Motive and Murder Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Motive and Murder - Research Paper Example The physical evidence collected from the crime scene led the police to suspect O. J. Simpson who was ex-husband of Nicole Brown. They have divorced two years back. There were also incidents of domestic violence, which Nicole Brown informed to her family, and also to the police. Nicole’s Brown also blamed O. J. Simpson for killing Brown (Hunt, 1999). As far as Ronald Goldman was concerned, he just came for returning sunglasses of Nicole Brown’s mother, Juditha Brown who left them on a restaurant table. Ronald Goldman was a waiter at the restaurant, Mezzaluna Trattoria in Los Angeles (Linder, 2000). The case is still unsolved because O. J. Simpson, against whom all the evidence are obtained, has attained the services of influential defense team who have proved all the evidences as framed against Simpson. The investigative team relied on some proofs that they collected from the crime scene in order to convict O. J. Simpson for murdering his ex-wife and the waiter. Mueller (1996) informed that the investigators depended on three sorts of proofs. The first proof to analyze Simpson, being an important suspect, was his motivation for committing the murder. As per Simpson’s statement, he never wanted them to get divorced as he said, â€Å"I loved her, I didnt want us to separate† (Vannatter, 1994) but, he also realized that their relationship had been ‘a problem relationship’ (Vannatter, 1994). However, he was not happy for his separation. They broke their relationship for the second time. Afterwards, they got divorced. They also thought about some reconciliation and had tried it to work out for them, but they failed (Mueller, 1996). Simpson in his statement informed about his relationship, â€Å"we both knew it wasnt working† (Vannatter, 1994). Mueller ( 1996) also informed that Nicole Brown returned his ‘birthday gift’ and when they were at the dance recital for their daughter, Sydney, Brown excluded him from the family circle and also from the

Web Services Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Web Services - Essay Example Service Oriented Architecture is an overly used and widely contextualized term that means different things to different people. Rotem (2007) examines the definitional edifice of SOA, and analyzes the term to derive its broader intended import. The Service Orientation component of the term SOA, addresses the enterprise, or the business perspective. In this context, SOA helps in analyzing business to identify core areas, and their allied processes. Services are intended to support the core business areas, and expose their capabilities through message interfaces. A set of services are choreographed to realize business processes. The Architecture component of SOA, defines the technical perspective. SOA is seen as an architectural style that is loosely coupled, interoperable, and built using components, or software agents called, services. Services have well-defined interfaces based on protocols (usually, web-services though not limited to it), as well as, quality of service (policies) that support the service consumers. Marks and Bell (2006) defined SOA as: â€Å"a conceptual business architecture where business functionality, or application logic, is made available to SOA users, or consumers, as shared, reusable services on an IT network. â€Å"Services† in an SOA are modules of business or application functionality with exposed interfaces, and are invoked by messages.† Businesses in a globalized marketplace are acutely competitive. The enterprises are always seeking ways to reduce time to market, improve business alignment for growth, and increase knowledge sharing amongst their constituents. Aberdeen (2007) notes, â€Å"Organizations that are focusing on SOA infrastructure are outperforming those that are deploying only Web services. They are realizing lower application lifecycle costs, better throughput for projects, and higher levels of user

Case Study of a specific Advertising Campaign Essay

Case Study of a specific Advertising Campaign - Essay Example Following this, the company launched its ‘Happy to Help’ campaign, featuring the popular Hutch mascot (a Pug) and offering excellent customer service to its subscribers. This too was an effort in vain as people still connected the pug to the old brand, counteracting the company’s efforts to establish their presence in the country. This left Vodafone in a difficult situation where they needed to bring out their own mascot which would win over the hearts of the people while simultaneously communicating their USPs to their target audience. As explained by Harit Nagpal, the then Chief Marketing Officer of Vodafone India in an interview to afaqs (2009), Vodafone was acquiring customers at a very fast pace, but a large number of them were unaware of the value added services offered by their telecom service provider. Some of these services, like phone backup, had been available for over two years without being used much. Thus, the marketing team at the organisation felt a need to showcase their array of products and services, build an emotional bond with their customers and still be positioned as a market leader. It was this need that led to the creation of India’s most loved brand mascot in a decade. Conceptualizing the Campaign When in trouble, you turn to your best friend. If Vodafone India had a best friend, it was their multi award-winning ad agency Ogilvy and Mather, which was tasked with coming up with a new mascot and ad campaign to accomplish these goals. According to an interview with Rajiv Rao, Executive Creative Director, South Asia, Ogilvy India, the only brief given to the agency about the desired mascot was that the character had to be ‘simple to a stupefying level’ (afaqs 2009). After much experimentation, the agency came up with characters with humungous ellipsoid heads (with dots for eyes and the mouth) and disproportionately thin bodies clad in white. These ‘Zoozoos’ were simple living characters who spoke a language of their own (quite akin to the tongue of gibberish) and expressed emotions in a manner similar to the emoticons one came across on chat engines and forums. The idea behind using these characters was to portray slightly comical and endearing scenes featuring these Zoozoos where each scene or advertisement was used to portray one value added service to the customer. Each film was shot against a grey background, showing these characters interacting with each other with the product story weaved in. The Beginning of the Campaign Once they were done creating a mascot for an extremely ambitious purpose and shooting advertisements with extremely high expectations, the agency had the unenviable task of deciding when, where and how to launch this campaign. The company’s investment in the previous year’s ‘Indian Premier League’ cricket tournament had failed to make much of an impact on the target audience despite the series shattering the countr y’s television rating records for the past half decade. Therefore, it came as a surprise to most that the agency recommended investing an entire quarter’s advertising budget into the 47 day tournament and that the client complied (4Ps Business and Marketing, 2007). While the company took a huge risk choosing to invest in a venture that had already failed them in the recent past, they incorporated one significant change in their advertising strategy. The idea now was to

Competition and competitiveness derive from different theoretical Essay

Competition and competitiveness derive from different theoretical frameworks and UK policy has failed to distinguish adequately between the two. Explain and discuss - Essay Example The competitiveness policy encourages on benchmarking whereby an entrepreneur visits another competitive entrepreneur and finds out on what he/she does in order to attain his/her success (Bristow 2010). In competition, every business is always straining to win the other by getting most of the customers on its side and not by merging and obtaining monopoly to exploit on the market. This is because if an entrepreneur exhibits monopoly power, he or she may exploit the market when there is no government interference. Marxian views competition as the act of competing for land, capital and workers alongside competing with other business and firms for profit making (Tan 2014). This means that a business unit must compete for the workers and it should provide reasonable pay for workers. Through this, they can be able to attract workers from other business units and this makes them have adequate labor. They should give their workers allowances and other benefits to encourage and motivate them. The business unit should not overwork the workers but instead they should give them a reasonable pay. Secondly, the business unit should also effectively compete for land as a factor of production. This simply means that the business unit should have enough money to buy adequate land since often businesses have to expand their premises. For a business to be successful then it should have adequate land to carry out its business activities and land is a competitive factor; hence they should strain to get the best available land according to the land use. Marketing business units should also strain to get land near their market while mineral based business units should strain to get land within their mineral extraction place and the market. Capital is the money needed to start and run a business. The business units should find the best financial institution where they can get access to loans and other financial support to run their businesses. Finally,

The Competition & Consumer Act of 2010 Replaces Trade Practices Act of Essay

The Competition & Consumer Act of 2010 Replaces Trade Practices Act of 1974 - Implications and Significance - Essay Example The Trade Practices Act of 1974 has always been an integral component of Constitution of Australia as a guarantor of purchaser. Background & Evolution: The need for the formation of a business law was felt during the British rule in Australia in the first half of the 19th century however, at that time all the companies were governed by â€Å"English Company Act of 1862†. In the first half of the 20th century Federal Parliament of Australia formed "foreign corporations, and trading or financial corporation’s formed within the limits of the Commonwealth" and the Small Business activities were left within the domain of the state and the particular territories in a geographical location. In the year 1961-62 for the first time in the history of Australian Business Law State Legislation and Commonwealth Legislation formed â€Å"A Uniform Companies Act†. The year 1965 Trade Practices Act crafted a â€Å"Commissioner of Trade Practices and a Trade Practices Tribunalâ₠¬  to scan trade accords and performances. However, this act was ephemeral and finally the High Court in Australia had to annul the aforesaid act due to â€Å"Constitutional Difficulties† and replaced the same with Restrictive Practices Act in 1971. The Trade Practices Act of 1974 was endorsed to deal with issues relating to Consumer protection was exclusively in charge of looking after the interests of the consumers at all levels however, the Legislation regarding fair trading and other issues external to Trading Corporation remained within the realm of respective states and territories. Thus, The Trade Practices Act 1974 became the decisive Legal entity governing the trade policies to ensure the welfare of the consumers. Finally the Trade Practices Act 1974 was replaced by â€Å"Competition and Consumer Act of 2010.†(History of Business Law, 2010) The Trade Practices Act 1974 Hence the primary task of the Trade Practices Act was to ensure healthy competition without compromising the interests of the consumers. Fair Trading was the benchmark to analyze the role of big companies concerning the protection of consumers. From patrons, merchants, contractor and traders they all fall within the ambit of the Act. In short it included every facets of market place. Regulation of trade through Price monitoring is one of the key ingredients for accomplishing the consumer protection. Other means for safeguarding the interests of the consumers could be ensuring product security, labeling of products and finally restricting â€Å"unjust marketplace practices†. The Competition & Consumer Act of 2010 January 2010 marked the New Year with a new set of laws and legislations that was passed for safeguarding and protecting the rights of the Consumers as well as business groups. If one has to carefully analyze and understand the special benefit of this new law that has replaced the former Trade Practices Act, one can draw two main benefits which are evident. Special Significance of the Act: First it accommodates and accepts the nationwide agreed sets of protections on a consumer known as Australian Consumer Law (ACL). According to this new Act there would be a single uniform Consumer Law all over the country. Hence it would relieve the burden on the business enterprise to abide by the various inter–states rulings. The consumer on the other hand would feel less discriminated against as there would be a uniform law safeguarding and

Economic Policies of America Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Economic Policies of America - Essay Example Economic Policies of America The condition that led to capital accumulation between the years 1940 and 1970 and the development of â€Å"welfare state† in the economies that were centralized within Western Europe, United States, and Japan is known as the ‘Golden Age’. During this era, the world economy came up with conditions that ensured very high investment rates, high growth output, and low inflation and ensured low unemployment (Robert, 2002). The United States Action is based on the Keynesian Revolution theory. Revolutionary theory was a basic change in the divided economic view to a framework that is more unified. The main idea was that a policy should be changed in a way that it would change the unemployment level through deficit spending scenarios such as tax cuts on the industries and public works and also changing the interest rates and the way that money was supplied. The main idea here was that the government could change the level of employment among its citizens. This theory holds that employment is not a function of supply, but demand (Keynes, 2006). Despite the many things that this theory did not cover, America as the super power country decided to come up with policies that were to ensure that there was increased demand for their products. The United States acted among others ensured that there was a common global market with the aim to increase the demand for their products (Keynes, 2006). The theory was adopted by several governments, including the United States of America.

Sysytems and Operations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Sysytems and Operations - Essay Example Sweden’s main focus is to have an increase in the information technology in order to have a stronger digital economy. Everyday life in Sweden is based completely on technology. Starting from waking up in the morning to sleeping at night every single activity by citizens involves technology. Transportation, medical, banking, educational sector all are concerned with having maximum technology so that best quality service can be provided to the citizens of the country. This is being done so that maximum number of people can be facilitated and the services provided would be equal for everyone. In this manner the quality of service being provided has also improved. This shows that the society has moved towards modernization along with innovation and good. The country has been changing and this can been shown in a manner that the three major sectors (individual, business and government) are benefitting from this shift to digital economy. The change can be seen in a example that at the grocery store in Sweden the shop keeper is selling medicine without prescription. All the customer need is their bank card and identity number in order to purchase the medicine. People in Sweden are working on everything through the touch screen from seeking advices of health experts to purchasing products everything is done through touch screens. The list of examples keep growing as Sweden is a digital economy and most of the things are now digital. The government is overwhelmed by the performance of this system as it has been providing services to people in medical sector that people are benefitting from it. This system is also helping them in banking, parking lots, paying bills, education facilities that there has been a boom in these sectors. Due to this the government is now having goals to export the medical system to different countries to gain from this system. By