“Liquid Life” – Mark Deuze

Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work Mark Deuze Bloomington Indiana – USA (Ph) 1-812-3231699 Email: [email  protected] edu URL: http://deuze. blogspot. com Dated: March 19, 2006 Working Paper Word count (excluding references): 7. 917 Author: Mark Deuze (Indiana University) Keywords: Social Theory, Liquid Modernity, Media Work Biographical information: Mark Deuze (1969) is associate professor at Indiana University’s Department of Telecommunications in Bloomington, the United States, and Professor of Journalism and New Media at Leiden University, The Netherlands.He received his PhD in the social sciences from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Publications of his work include five books, as well as articles in peer-reviewed journals such as New Media & Society, The Information Society, and First Monday, and he publishes an irregular weblog on new media and society at http://deuze. blogspot. com. Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work Abs tract Life today has become analogous with work – and it increasingly displays all the contemporary characteristics of work in what has been described as the ‘new capitalism’: permanent flux, constant change, and structural indeterminacy.Zygmunt Bauman thus argues how we are all living a ‘liquid’ life, which is â€Å"a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty. † In liquid life, the modern categories of production (work) and consumption (life) have converged, which trend is particularly visible in our almost constant and concurrent immersion in media. According to Henry Jenkins, these are the conditions of an emerging convergence culture.In this paper these trends will be explored in detail, coupling insights from contemporary social theory, new media studies and popular culture to show how our modern conceptions of media, culture and society have modernized, and how the emerging media ecosystem can be illuminated by sett ing it against the ways in which those at the forefront of these cultural and technological changes negotiate their professional identity: the mediaworkers. 1 Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work In today’s society, argues Zygmunt Bauman, â€Å"work is the normal state of all humans; not working is abnormal† (2005a: 5).Life has become analogous to work. Instead of developing a lifestyle, our everyday efforts and energy go into choosing a work-style: ‘a way of working and a way of being at work’, as one British professional coaching agency describes it. As work becomes a way of life, life increasingly displays all the characteristics of contemporary work, where we have to come to terms with the challenges and opportunities of contingent employment, precarious labour, and a structural sense of real or perceived job insecurity.Ulrich Beck (2000) points at the fundamentally ambivalent prospects of contemporary ‘work-styles’ at all leve ls of society as marked by uncertainty, paradox and risk. The conditions of work at the beginning of the 21st century are in a constant state of flux, brought about by all kinds of job destruction practices in the context of what Richard Sennett (1998) calls ‘workforce flexibility’.This culture of contemporary capitalism manifests itself most directly in the notable change of one’s career from a series of more or less predictable achievements within the context of a lifelong contract to a constant reshuffling of career bits and pieces in the ‘portfolio worklife’, as heralded by Charles Hand as early as 1989 (pp. 183ff). In the portfolio lifestyle, careers are a sequence of stepping stones through life, where workers as individuals and organizations as collectives do not commit to each other for much more than the short-term goal, the project at hand, the talent needed now.The modern categories of life and work at the beginning of ther 21st century ar e thus spilling over, into each other, making each of these key aspects of our human condition contingent on the characteristics of the other. Bauman shows how this increasing fluidity of the everyday, coupled with a prevalent sense of permanent flux, has created the conditions of contemporary ‘liquid’ life as â€Å"a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty† (2005b, p. 2).In this paper I will set the sketched developments and discussions on the centrality of work and the convergence of work and life in liquid modernity against a context of the pervasive and ubiquitous nature of media in our everyday lives. I will show how our almost constant and concurrent immersion in media can be seen as both a reflection as well as an amplification of the hybridization of life in culture of new capitalism. This perspective opens up different ways of looking at seemingly contradictory thus deeply unsettling trends in 2 today’s lived experiences at home, at work, and at play.At the heart of this argument stands a selective reading of contemporary social theories on the changing nature of work by Richard Sennett, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck, coupled with the approaches to new media by Lev Manovich and Pierre Levy, and popular culture by Henry Jenkins. By conceptually linking between the centrality of work in today’s risk society, with the omnipresence of new media and the pervasiveness of the genres, discourses and uses of popular culture, we may open up exciting ways of looking at both historical and contemporary phenomena on the intersection between media, culture and society.New Capitalism The constant uncertainty of everyday liquid life today, as sketched by Zygmunt Bauman, is accelerated and amplified at work following the prevailing management mantras of new capitalism, where stability and solidity as one-time hallmarks of a healthy company now have become signs of weakness (Sennett, 2005: 41). The relationshi ps of capital and labour, argues Manuel Castells, are increasingly individualized and organized around the network enterprise form of production, which integrates the work process globally through telecommunications, transportation and client-customer networks.Such worldwide integration introduces a fundamental aspect of unpredictability to the nature of work, as the success or failure of the local production process becomes almost completely contingent on the fluctuations in the global network – and vice versa, as â€Å"any individual capital is submitted to the movements of the global automaton† (Castells, 2000: 18).Here, adaptive behavior, permanent change, casualization of labor, and continual innovation are all expressed in the executive credo of ‘workforce flexibility’ which according to Bauman has turned from something to be avoided into a virtue to be learned and practised daily (2002: 24). This flexibility for many is synonymous with living in fea r of real or perceived job insecurity. Sennett signals how even affluent and highly educated young professionals fear â€Å"they are on the edge of losing control over their lives.This fear is built into their work histories† (Sennett, 1998: 19). Society today, argues Sennett, uses the feverish development of flexible organisations against the ‘evils’ of routine. Unlike Handy, he sees little promise in this re-interpretation of uncertainty as the corporate strategy of choice: â€Å"Revulsion against bureaucratic routine and pursuit of flexibility has produced new structures of power and control, rather than created the conditions which set us free† (ibid. 47). This 3 flexibility stretches out into both work time and non-work time, which distinction has blurred for many, if not most, people. Adapting to changing management practices, new technologies, and cultivating creativity and talent cannot be necessarily tied to a nine-to-five working weekday, especia lly considering the general lack of corporate investment in employee training.With the slow demise of lifelong full-time employment, continuous searching for jobs, preparing for potential future jobs, as well as managing multiple careers more or less simultaneously have become core elements of everyday lifestyle for many. This inevitably must lead to a more inclusive understanding of work as taking place in differing socio-economic settings and as interconnected with many other, often non-work, relationships (Parry et al, 2005).Work comes in many different shapes and sizes – paid and non-paid, voluntary and employed, professional and amateuristic – and we seem to be engulfed in it all of the time. Working increasingly includes (re-) schooling and training, unlearning ‘old’ skills while adapting to changing technologies and management demands, moving from project to project, and navigating one’s career through an at times bewildering sea of loose aff iliations, temporary arrangements, and informal networks.This perception and experience of working has come to define life and modern society. Additionally our understanding of contemporary work-styles by definition includes structural uncertainty and risk, thus framing every aspect of our lives within that particular context. Precarity The key to understanding this ‘brave new world’ of work is its precariousness, characterized by endemic uncertainty and permanent change (Beck, 2000: 22-3). The nature of work is changing rapidly in our runaway world – some even foresee an end of work in the nearby future (Rifkin, 2004).However real or perceived the insecurities experiences in our everyday work-styles are, its precarite bleeds into every understanding we have of ourselves and who we are. As colorfully described on the Britain-based website Precarity. Info: â€Å"WHAT IS PRECARITY? Precarity stretches beyond work. It includes housing, debt, general instability, th e inability to make plans. We can talk about the subjugation of life under capital, not just the subjugation of labour under capital. Precarity is an instrument of control; it is enforced by those with power 4 upon the powerless.We can't choose how we want to live. It engenders competition in social life. It forces us into a Darwinian â€Å"struggle for existence† on a social level. Precarity is the basic condition of individuals in capitalist society. It divides us, and limits opportunities to get together. People are disempowered and social relations break down. †1 If work and life are increasingly indiscernable in the play of the everyday, the key institutions linking their practices to modernity – work (or: occupations) and the family must also be seen as undergoing a fundamental shift.With the increasing precariousness of labor and the exponential entry of women into the workforce both ‘work’ and ‘family’ have not only changed; thes e core institutions of modern life have thus become integrated. Catherine Hakim (2003) signals a shift in preferences towards adaptive or work centered (instead of home centered) lifestyles that cannot be attributed to societies as a whole, but to particular groups within liquid modern societies – especially those who want to keep up with the demands of contemporary consumer culture.The family has become what Anthony Giddens (2003: 58-9) calls a ‘shell’ or, in the words of Beck, ‘zombie’ institution: people and policymakers alike still refer to the family as the primary unit in today’s society, even though in its traditional connotation of the nuclear family – two married parents and children at home – it has all but died. Instead, our families perhaps must be seen as transitory units similar to what Georges Benko describes as ‘non-places’ like shopping malls or airports.In such spaces existing for temporary convenie nce and the more or less anonymous exchange of goods, services and information, no one is really expected to stick around very long. The family as a traditionally celebrated safe haven from the uncertain world outside, seems hto have turned itself against the values of domestication and ‘settling in’ – it has become the place and space for structural coupling and uncoupling (Bauman, 2003).With a divorce rate of roughly 50% in most capitalist economies, a growing recognition of the normalcy of gay and lesbian lifestyles, the exponential increase among city dwellers of predominantly childless peoples like recent immigrants, aging babyboomers, and empty nesters, and with singles forming 40% or more of the total population of countries in North America and Western Europe it must be clear that the meaning of ‘family’ as an institution, like work, has fundamentally changed.In his assessment of the personal consequences of the changing nature of work in our past-paced capitalist economy, Richard Sennett (1998: 21) laments how no one becomes a 5 long-term witness to another person’s life anymore. Indeed, most of us, rich and poor, are constantly on the move – either as economically and politically desperate migratory sanspapiers or as highly-skilled cultural entrepreneurs in an globally networked marketplace, where knowledge and information have become the primary form of capital (Drucker, 1993).We are not just on the move from parttime job to flexible contract, nor just from one city to the next country; in the particular urban settings of flexible capitalism we also move from from ‘pink-slip party’ to yet another social networking event, from rented apartment to leased living space, from fling to affair, and from single-size servings to disposable everything.Our only shared condition increasingly seems to be the lived experience of being â€Å"permanently impermanent† in the context of constant chang e, which in turn disables us to bear witness to anything other but our own plights, to be solely solved deploying our individual skills and personal resources (Bauman, 2002: 18; Bauman, 2000: 72; Bauman, 2005b: 33). In the beginning of the 21st century we are seemingly becoming blind to each other, which social fragmentation is exacerbated by the undeniable primacy yet deeply unsettling nature of work in everyday life.Jonathan Gershuny (2000), after comparing time-use datasets from twenty different countries (including Australia, Finland, The Netherlands and the United States), summarizes the characteristics of modern industrial societies in terms of a continuos growth in the numbers of skilled workers as a proportion of all employment, and a growth of time allocated to the production and consumption of sophisticated products and services.Even though we tend to spend more time consuming products and services of the information age, and technologies increasingly augment and automate human labour, this does not mean we are spending less time working, as Jeremy Rifkin (2004) has argued. Quite the opposite: new forms of work organization in fact entail intensified demands on the work-time of both permanent and temporary employees (Smith, 1997). The trend towards flexible work started in the 1970s, and has accelerated in the late 1990s, coinciding with the rush of an increasingly information-based global economy to the World Wide Web.It is particularly in this sphere of information- and knowledge-based work where the culture of flexible capitalism has taken root as the dominant mode of labour organization – and where researchers have found both employers and employees in fact preferring a condition of so-called ‘boundaryless’ contingent employment (Marler et al, 2002). A boundaryless career reflects a career path that 6 goes beyond the boundaries of single employment settings, and involves a sequence of jobs between different companies and diffe rent segments of the labor market. As job security and promotional opportunities within larger organizations decline, individuals may view multiple employer experiences in a positive light because it supports skill development, increases marketability, shifts career control to the employee, and perhaps results in better matching career and family life-cycle demands. As such, boundarylessness represents a different conception of job security† (ibid. , 430).Whereas for most workers in traditional temporary and contingent settings their employment situation is far from ideal, many in the higher skilled knowledge-based areas of the labor market seem to prefer such precarious working conditions, associating this with greater individual autonomy, the acquisition of a wide variety of skills and experiences, and a reduced dependence on a single employer (Kalleberg, 2000). The portfolio work-style of the self-employed information or ‘cultural’ entrepreneur can thus be char acterized by living in a state of constant anxiety, while at the ame time seemingly enjoying a sense of control over one’s own career. Bauman warns against overtly optimistic readings of the relative freedom these prime beneficiaries of inevitably unequitable globalization claim to enjoy, as â€Å"it is in a horrid and lamentable insecurity that their targeted or collateral victims suspect the major obstacle lies to becoming free† (2005b: 38). Freedom and security, often seen as mutually exclusive, thus become ambigious in the context of how different people from different walks of life deal with, and give meaning to, the consequences of not having either.It is perhaps the perfect paradox of contemporary liquid life: all the trends in today’s work-life quite clearly suggest a rapid destabilization of social bonds corresponding with increasingly disempowering effects of a frickle and uncertain global high-tech information economy, yet those workers caught in the epicenter of this bewildering shift express a sense of mastery over their lives, interpreting their professional identity in this context in terms of indvidual-level control and empowering agency (du Gay, 1996; Storey et al, 2005).Conditions of real or perceived job insecurity thus do not necessarily mean the workers involved are suffering in silence – nor that the anxiety that comes with a boundaryless, largely contingent, and portfolio worklife necessarily must be seen as a blessing in disguise. The convergence of the time and effort we invest in both production (‘work’) and consumption (‘life’) as signaled by Gershuny does suggest that our most common solution to the increasingly anxious and sometimes exciting developments in society is an endless individual and professional mixing of the cultures of working and living, thus indefinitely 7 lurring the boundaries between them. Crucial to this understanding is the realization that not only are we sp ending more and more time producing – information, knowledge, products, ‘things’ – we are also increasingly engaging in acts of consumption. The rate of consumption in society has greatly accelerated over the last few decades. The values, ideals and practices of consumerism tend to be framed in an extremely negative light – focusing for example on the increasing infantilization, mainstreaming and materialism of contemporary consumer cultures.However, consumerism can also be embraced in terms of its transformative potential regarding elitist, top-down, and otherwise non-responsive social institutions such as the political system (cf. the emergence of the ‘citizen-consumer’), the economy (cf. the ‘conquest of cool’ and the marketing of resistance), and the media (Keum et al 2004; Thomas, 1997; Jenkins, 2006). Indeed, the consumptive trend has been particularly visible in the sphere of knowledge and information-related leisure services provided by the cultural industries.We spend more and more time and money on entertainment experiences – which vary from acquiring consumer electronics to attending multimedia shows, from collecting technological toys to participating in social media online, and from navigating between ‘high’ cultural (cf. theater, museums, opera) to ‘low’ cultural (cf. reality TV, videogames, tabloids) forms of expression.Indeed, our collective quest towards increasingly compelling and diversified leisure like media-centric experiences has turned us into cultural omnivores: attending a play one day, renting a couple of Hollywood blockbuster movies the next; reading the latest installment in the Harry Potter (or the Russian Tanya Grotter) book series this week, spending the following weekend building a Website containing links to all the relevant information about global meteorological and ecological trends online.It certainly seems people have a lot of spa re time on their hands if we add up all these activities. However, Gershuny found evidence of what he calls the ‘end of leisure’: â€Å"each year we have to work harder in our free time to consume all those things that we have been working harder to produce in our work time† (2000: 51). Status in society today thus comes with a price: time outside of work (whether at home, on the road or in the office) has become a scarce commodity, even though we seem to spend more of it all the time. Media in Everyday Life The paradox of more time spent simultaneously at production and consumption can be resolved if one takes into active consideration how both spheres of activity have converged in our increased reliance on media in all aspects of life, in turn facilitated by rapid advancements in information and communication technologies. Next to engaging in all kinds of leisure activities to compensate for strains or other drawbacks on occupational work, work and leisure can increasingly be seen as xtensions of each other – especially for professionals in the knowledge and information sectors of the economy (Blekesaune, 2005). One particular effect this spillover effect has had on our everyday lived reality is the ongoing retreat of people into what can be called ‘personal information spaces’ at home and at work (which for a significant number of people occupy the same space), within which we only talk to and with ourselves.These spaces can be seen as particular physical environments such as turning parts of the house or apartment into a ‘home theater’ and ‘home office’ filled with all kinds of consumer electronics used to consume and produce media content (such as a desktop computer with internet access and a printer, one or more game consoles, a television set, digital video recorder, DVD-player, and anywhere between two to seven loudspeakers).Other examples of such personal information spaces include the ensemble of mobile media technologies we carry around us everywhere we go – devices that seem to socially isolate us while at the same time connecting us to the rest of the wired world (using a cellphone, laptop, Personal Digital Assistant, digital camera, walkman, and other more intricate forms of wearable computing that truly put the ‘personal’ in Personal Computer).Yet these spaces can also be experienced as disembodied – as in our ongoing immersion in persistent online environments varying from virtual workspaces (for example through videoconferencing capabilities and company intranets) to massively multiplayer computer games (World of Warcraft, Everquest, Ultima Online), virtual worlds (Second Life, The Sims Online, Active Worlds), and social networking services (Friendster, Orkut, MySpace). The various ways in which the ever-growing numbers of people both young and old engage with each other through these and other media is sometimes taken as new for ms of community.Manuell Castells for example describes our intensifying interactions online as a new form of ‘hypersociability’, where the social consists of networked individualism â€Å"enhancing the capacity of individuals to rebuild structures of sociability from the bottom up† (2001: 131). 9 Sennett’s act of witnessing (or perceived lack thereof) seems to have moved online, where people move in and out of interactive networked environments, managing their multiple virtual selves (cf. avatars) in persistent gaming, chatting, instant messaging and otherwise connective, digital, and online environments.Market reseach suggests the worldwide number of internet users surpassed one billion in 2005, most of whom access the global computer network from the United States, China, and Japan, with other large user groups in India, Germany, Brazil, Russia, and Spain. 2 Internet user penetration is now in the 65% to 75% range for the leading countries. We use intern et overwhelmingly for interpersonal communication, whether it is in the context of play, love, or work. And yes, these distinct domains of everyday life dissolve in our interactions online. A prominent place for people to look for or advertise new jobs is Monster. om, a Website, which launched in 1994. The site, which has affiliates in 21 countries around the world, currently boasts a million+ resumes and has contracts with close to 150. 000 companies. A growing number of singles – quickly becoming the dominant species in liquid modern societies – seeks and sometimes finds love online. A popular online matchmaking service, Match. com, launched in 1995, currently has more than 15 million members in more than 240 territories on six continents, and operates more than 30 online dating sites in 17 local languages. 3 The free online classifieds community at Craigslist. org operates 90 sites in all 50 U.S. states, and 35 countries, reports three billion pageviews per month â €“ the vast majority of which go to job listings. 4 The most successful businesses on the internet – like eBay, Yahoo, Google, and Amazon – share one fundamental characteristic: the product these companies deliver is connectivity, bringing people together to trade, communicate, interact and exchange knowledge, information, goods, and services. However, not just businesses thrive on interaction and connectivity online. The most often used reference guide on the World Wide Web is Wikipedia, a multilingual free-content encyclopedia, which started in 2001.The encyclopedia is based on the so-called ‘wiki–concept, which means it is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by anyone with access to a web browser and an internet connection. Wikipedia contains close to four million articles appearing in over 200 language editions, and gets about one million visitors a day. 5 Weblogs are another excellent example of how witnessi ng has become an increasingly virtual, yet also deeply personal act. Jill Walker provides the following definition: 10 A weblog, or *blog, is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. Typically, weblogs are published by individuals and their style is personal and informal. Weblogs first appeared in the mid-1990s, becoming popular as simple and free publishing tools became available towards the turn of the century. Since anybody with a net connection can publish their own weblog, there is great variety in the quality, content, and ambition of weblogs, and a weblog may have anywhere from a handful to tens of thousands of daily readers. 6 At current estimates, the total number of weblogs worldwide comes close to the 30 million mark, with more than 50. 000 postings per hour, and over 70. 000 new weblogs created each day. 7 Indexing research by Susan Herring and colleagues shows how the vast maj ority (70%) of weblogs are highly personal vehicles for self-expression and empowerment, written almost exclusively by individuals (Herring et al, 2005). However, this kind of individualism in weblogs is in fact quite connective, as bloggers include comment and feedback options with their posts, put up their blogs for free syndication (cf.RSS-feeds), reference and link to other blogs when creating posts, and cut and paste all kinds of content – including moving and still images, text, and audiofiles – from all over the Web as well as their own original work onto their weblog. The area online where the convergence of connectivity, content, creativity, and commercialism reaches its pinnacle is in the realm of computer games. Worldwide, more than 5 million active subscribers participate in massively multiplayer online games. 8 In a massively multiplayer computer game players connect to game servers via internet and interact in real time with other users worldwide.A signif icant part of this gaming experience consist of ‘meta-gaming’: in-game communication between gamers, using all kinds of devices such as headsets, chat commands, and in-game player signals. The playing of multiplayer games both reproduces and challenges everyday rules of social interaction, as the game environment can be seen both as an extension of real-world experiences and as strictly virtual space (Wright et al, 2002). Yet, meta-gaming is not just about the game: it includes any type of social interaction such as talking, loving, and trading. Ted Castranova (2005) for example has shown how we buy, sell and exchange goods and ervices in online games to the extent that such synthetic economies of scale have come to resemble those in ‘real’, offline worlds – if only because of their sheer size. All of these activities must be seen in terms of their concurrence, as we simultaneously engage in them through for example the windowing of computer screens: pressing ‘alt-tab’ gets you from your job resume on Monster to a post on a weblog, from browsing the information in a 11 Wikipedia entry for a presentation to contributing a book review to Amazon, from a purchase on eBay to an exchange in World of Warcraft.It is important to note how through these interactive, interconnected and networked devices and environments our work- and lifestyles further converge, not only facilitating but rather accelerating the blurring of modern life’s traditional boundaries. Contemporary changes in the economy, politics, society and technology thus get expressed in our increasing concurrent immersion in all kinds of media, which immersion in turn amplifies the convergence of the different spheres of activity in everyday life, blurring the lines between work and non-work, work and leisure, as well as between production and consumption.New Media, Culture and Society At the heart of most if not all of today’s new media technologi es saturating our work-life environments is their networked character, which interconnectivity has woven itself into the fabric of everyday existence among the majority of the population in European, Australasian, and North-American countries.Although this certainly suggests many people do not have access to such technologies, in the world of knowledge and information work the dominant presence of internet and other networked media cannot be ignored. In whatever shape or form, media bring the world to our doorstep – and we bring our world into media. No one is ‘outside’ anymore, whether by choice or necessity.This also means that the precarity of contemporary life through media extends to each and everyone of us, and cannot be said to be beholden to any particular group, race, class or gender – even though life’s current precariousness means different things for different people in different settings. In this context it is both fascinating and indee d hopeful that what characterizes most of the ways we engage with worldwide-networked technologies is the extent to which we seem to be doing so through participatory cooperation.Whether it is the online collaboratively authored encycopedia Wikipedia credible enough to challenge the Brittanica, the open source software movement potent enough to ruffle the feathers of Microsoft, the citizen journalism of Ohmynews powerful enough to influence presidential elections in South Korea, the search engine based on treating links as user recommendations Google, or the free-for-all online classifieds listings of Craigslist succesful enough to eat away the profits of corporate newspapers in the United States: the bottom line of all of these practices is collaboration, a 12 lourishing ‘collective intelligence’ particular of cyberculture (Levy, 1997). When asked to explain the worldwide success of Craigslist, founder Craig Newmark hints at collaboration as the key value embedded in t he way we use, design and give meaning to networked information and communication technologies: â€Å"my experience has shown me that most people are essentially good and trustworthy, and want to help each other out.I have been reminded that the rule about treating others the way you want to be treated is a good one. †9 Similarly, the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, base much of their company’s success on letting individual employees and users co-develop new and existing applications like Google Scholar or Google Video, which are made available in so-called ‘beta’ versions first to sollicit suggestions. 0 Considering the commonly voiced concerns of an increasingly fragmented society and a general decline in traditional social capital as defined by people’s trust and in politics, institutions such as church and state, and to some extent others, it may be counter-intuitive to claim that a more engaged and participatory culture is emerg ing (Putnam, 2004).Considering the interactive, globally networked and increasingly participatory nature of new media, it is inspiring to consider a different kind of social cohesion – a form of community that is not necessarily based on what Sennett (1992) has perceived as a purified absence of difference, but rather on Castells’ earlier mentioned notion of hypersociability particular of the network society. Interestingly, none of this participatory or otherwise collective nature of contemporary media is new.Ever since the mid-20th century so-called ‘alternative’ media have more or less successfully emerged next to, and sometimes in symbiotic relationships with other forms of community media (Atton, 2001). One could think of pirate radio stations, small-scale print magazines, local newspapers and community television stations in the 1960s and 1970s, community-based Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and Usenet newsgroups on Internet in the 1980s, and as from th e 1990s a wide range of genres on the Web such as community portal sites, group weblogs, voluntary news services, and so on.The emerging new media ecosystem inspires and is inspired by networks of more or less collaborative end-users, creating what Eric von Hippel (2005) calls ‘user-innovation communities’, where people increasingly create and share their own products and services. Within the particular context of media organizations and cultural industries, much of this community-oriented and at times participatory content production takes place within the walls of commercial media conglomerates.Henry Jenkins’ (2006) work on the popular television and movie industries shows how media corporations at least in part must be seen 13 as co-conspirators in the emergence of a participatory media culture, from Star Wars’ George Lucas encouraging the production and distribution of fan movies to the producers of reality television show Survivor actively participati ng in so-called ‘spoiler’ discussion forums online.This increasingly participatory media enviroment translates itself in the widespread proliferation of networked computers and Internet connections in the home (and increasingly to handheld mobile devices). Recognition of this culture of participatory authorship has come from software developers where they have introduced the concept of ‘open’ design. An advanced form of this type of design is the Open Source Movement, based on the principle of shared and collaborative access to and control over software, and using (or rather: tweaking) it to improve the product for global use.The videogame industry has – since the early 1990s – long acknowledged the necessity of viral marketing and user control in product development by pre-releasing game source code, offering games versions as shareware, and tapping customer communities for input (Bo Jeppesen & Molin, 2003). Participation, not in the least en abled by the real-time connectedness of Internet and however voluntarist, incoherent, and perhaps solely fuelled by private interests can be seen as a principal component of digital culture (Deuze, 2006). Our media nvironment has thus become a key site of how we give meaning to the changing context of how we live, work, and play. Pierre Levy and Jeremy Rifkin are among those who signal an emerging relational or social economy as a direct result from the mechanization, automation, or augmentation of agriculture, industry, and services. Central to this technodeterminist understanding of the global economy would be what Levy calls ‘the production of the social bond’ through the ongoing development of sophisticated systems of networked intelligence.The centrality of using and making media in everyday life reveals our endless fascination with media – with any and all acts of mediation. In this context Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin (1996) signal a double logic of remed iation, embodied in the recombinant trends of media becoming immediate up to the point they disappear, while at the same becoming increasingly hypermediate, pervasive, and ubiquitous in all aspects of everyday life: â€Å"Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying technologies of mediation. It is through our uses of media the complexities of contemporary culture get articulated, as media have come to dominate every aspect of life. What is relevant to our concerns here is the interrelationship between work-time, leisure14 time, and media-time, making the world certainly a much bigger place than it used to be, while at the same time reducing our lifeworld as we retreat dutifully in our personal information spaces and interact with everyone yet ‘seeing’ no one.It is especially through media that for most of us the world has become glocalized, as Roland Robertson (1995) would have it, where global products, peoples and ideas are re-appropriated locally and vice versa. It must be clear that media have become central to our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. However, as David Croteau and William Hoynes argue, â€Å"in the twenty-first century, we navigate through a vast mass media environment unprecedented in human history.Yet our intimate familiarity with the media often allows us to take them for granted† (2003: 5). The enormous extent to which this is true can be exemplified by looking at how people from all walks of life talk about and give meaning to their media use. Contemporary media usage studies in wired countries like the United States, The Netherlands or Finland tend to reveal how people spend twice as much time with media than they think they do. In the United States for example, people spend on average twelve hours per day using media.Media have become such an integrated part of our lives that most of the time w e are not even aware we are using media. American researchers describe this kind of almost constant immersion with media technologies and content from multiple sources simultaneously available through shared or shifting attention as ‘concurrent media exposure’, rather than popular industryterms such as ‘media multitasking’ or ‘simultaneous media usage’, emphasizing how important it is to avoid implying that our engagement with media is necessarily deliberate or attentive (Papper et al, 2004).We get up in the morning to the sound of the radio-alarm, switch on the television for breakfast, make our first calls using the hand-free set on our way to work, spend most of the day at our desks in front of a computer screen with fax and phone at hand, surf the Web for the latest news, blogposts and shopping deals during lunch hours, watch our favorite sitcoms and sometimes news shows over dinner, and spend the remainder of the day chatting, emailing and instant messaging online.All of this only consists of the kind of media we choose to use, ignoring advertising and marketing messages, simultaneously reading a magazine or newspaper when zapping or zipping past television channels or commercials, reading billboards along the highway, browsing the headlines of a free daily newspaper while in transit, thoughtlessly scanning through radio stations or songs on our walkman, 15 downloading, upgrading, tweaking, installing and uninstalling software, and so on, and so forth.Liquid Life and Media Work Contemporary life thus involves a complex dance between work, play, media, and life in the context of a rapid-changing ‘glocal’ context, the boundaries between which spaces, places and spheres of activity and perception have blurred. In short, the lifeworld today can perhaps best be seen as an ongoing remix of sorts, in terms a new language of how we understand and represent the visible world, our knowledge, human history, and fel low human beings: the language of new media, meta-media, and information culture (Manovich, 2005).As Lev Manovich states, â€Å"today we are in the middle of a new media revolution – the shift of all culture to computer-mediated forms of production, distribution, and communication† (2001: 19). The key to understanding our increasing opportunity, propensity or even necessity to more or less collaboratively remix our ‘glocal’ lived reality is too see this kind of behavior as a way for us to make sense of the growing complexity and uncertainty of the world around us (and in ourselves).Paraphrasing Bauman it is, in other words, a coping mechanism for dealing with the absurdity of life in today’s liquid modernity. â€Å"’Liquid modern’ is a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines. Liquidity of life and that of society feed and reinvig orate each other. Liquid life, just like liquid modern society, cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long† (Bauman, 2005b: 1).A liquid modern society is one where uncertainty, flux, change, conflict, and revolution are the permanent conditions of everyday life. Bauman makes a compelling argument how this situation is neither modern or post-modern, but rather explains how the categories of existence established and enabled by early, first, or solid modernity are disintegrating, overlapping, and remixing. It is not as if we cannot draw meaningful distinctions between global and local, between work and non-work, between public and private, between conservative and progressive, or between work and life anymore.It is just that these and other key organizing characteristics and categories of modern life have lost their (presumed or perceived) intrinsic, commonly held or consensual meaning. 16 The way we do and understand things is increasingly transformed through and implicat ed by the way we engage the media in our lives. This in turn makes the media as a business, as in those companies that work to create the content of our media, of central importance to any kind of meaningful analysis of contemporary life.Defining the media as cultural industries, Desmond Hesmondhalgh for example shows their prominence for understanding the human condition and our lived reality â€Å"as those institutions (mainly profitmaking companies, but also state organisations and non-profit organisations) which are most directly involved in the production of social meaning† (2002: 11). If the media in the broadest possible sense are the sites of our struggle over meaning and symbolic exchange in society, it ecomes essential to understand the working lives of the people within the cultural industries – if only to understand which values, ideas, circumstances and social contexts define those primarily engaged in the production of of the resources and materials all o f use use to give meaning to our lives. It is in this context that Bauman discusses the typical charactertics of these professional ‘culture creators’, â€Å"who carry the main burden of the transgressive proclivity of culture and make it their conciously embraced vocation, practising critique and transgression as their own mode of being† (2005b: 54-5).Bauman implictly addresses the missing link between the particularities of the human condition in the beginning of the 21st century, our seemingly constant immersion in media, and the centrality of work as the defining principle of contemporary lived reality. The missing link is the changing nature of media work in today’s digital, global and deeply uncertain age, where media workers must be seen as the directors as well as reflectors of liquid modern life, in which life media have become ubiquitous, pervasive, personalized – as well as interactive, participatory, and networked.Media are both the harb ingers of change as well as the self-proclaimed guardians of social order as in the case of for example parliamentary journalists and tabloid reporters: documenting and thus contributing to the maintenance of the status quo while at the same time signaling the disruptive changes wreaking havoc on it from all sides. Indeed, the popular reality of the media gives rise to what Beck has described as the ongoing modernization of modernity, by emphasizing its core characteristics of risk, uncertainty, and paradox.And it is precisely this risk-taking, adventurous yet deeply self-contradictory nature that has come to define the nature of media work, where â€Å"senses of risk are constitutive and often pivotal to the whole economic and social basis of cultural entrepreneurship – risk being central to choices made not only in business but in the lifeworld more generally† (Banks et al, 2000: 453). Mediaworkers are 17 ot only interesting in terms of their contribution to the way we give meaning to our shared reality; who they are, what they do and how they give meaning to their work can also be seen as an indicator of how an increasingly significant part of the global economy organizes itself. Media industries are indeed one of the prime accelerators of a global economy, both in terms of its glocalization and its increased immersion in networked information and communication technologies.Media professionals – those employed in journalism, marketing communications, advertising, public relations, game design, television and the movie industry – embody in their work-styles all the themes of social change in liquid modern times as expressed in this essay, as Simon Cottle for exampe describes how â€Å"a growing army of media professionals, producers and others work in this expanding sector of the economy, many of them in freelance, temporary, subcontracted and underpaid (and sometimes unpaid) positions [†¦] They are also often at the forefro nt of processes of organisational change including new flexible work regimes, reflexive corporate cultures, and the introduction of digital technologies, multimedia production and multiskilled practices† (2003: 3). Indeed, Scott Lash and John Urry (1994) have signaled earlier how the cultural industries have always been post-Fordist avant la lettre, contributing to the culturalization of economic life through a structurating mix of commercially viable yet generic, and innovative, flexible and highly creative production processes.This unique blend of what Bryan Turner (2003: 138) describes as the dialectical process of linearity and liquidity in contemporary consumer cultures turns the media as an industry into the core culprit responsible for cookiecutter-style McDonaldization, as well as the main agent in affecting social, technological and economical change. Convergence Culture In today’s increasingly digital culture, mediawork can be seen as a stomping ground for the forces of increasingly differentiated production and innovation processes, and the complex interaction and integration between work, life, and play, all of which get expressed in, and are facilitated by, the rapid development of new information and communication technologies.Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000: 291) correspondingly argue how â€Å"the computer and communication revolution of production has transformed laboring practices in such a way that they all tend toward the model of information and communication technologies [†¦] the anthrolopology of cyberspace is really a recognition of the new human condition. † The new human condition, when seen 18 through the lens of those in the forefront of changes in the way work and life are implicated in our increasingly participatory media production and consumption, is convergent. This convergence is not just a technological process, where different types of media forms – audio, video, text – and channe ls – print, radio, television – are integrated into the computer.Following the work of Henry Jenkins (2004), media convergence must also be seen as having a cultural logic of its own, blurring the lines between production and consumption, between making media and using media, and between active or passive spectatorship of mediated culture: â€Å"Convergence is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottomup consumer-driven process. Media companies are learning how to accelerate the flow of media content across delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets and reinforce viewer commitments. Consumers are learning how to use these different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other users.They are fighting for the right to participate more fully in their culture, to control the flow of media in their lives and to talk back to mass market content. Sometimes, these two forces reinforc e each other, creating closer, more rewarding, relations between media producers and consumers† (Jenkins, 2004: 37). Pertinent to our concerns here is the ways in which mediaworkers are implicated by this convergence culture so typical of today’s media. If convergence is a cultural logic that at its core integrates all of us in the process of producing mediated experiences, how do the professionals involved give meaning to their productivity, creative autonomy, and professional identity?One way of looking at this focuses on the political economy of increasingly conglomerated, transnational media corporations, emphasizing their role in rationalizing and routinizing production for the (glocal) masses: â€Å"Conglomerates have invested heavily in developing synergistic relationships between their various media holdings, integrating their production processes into â€Å"convergence† systems that yield content for different outlets, â€Å"crosspromoting† progr ams in different media, and establishing lines of vertical and horizontal integration in production and distribution† (Klinenberg & Benzecry, 2005: 10). A second approach acknowledges the goals and ideals of contemporary ‘corporate management of global enterprises, but draws our attention more specifically to those people directly involved in the process: the mediaworkers. â€Å"Being environmentally conscious, showing a social conscience and being a good corporate citizen are viewed in modern management theory as benefiting the bottom line. But this management-speak hides the growing focus in the media professions—the cultural boundary spanners—on genuine links between modern 19 organizations and the different individuals and groups in society that deal with them† (Balnaves et al, 2004: 193).Discussion Considering the dominant trends towards cultural convergence of production and consumption both in the way people run their everyday work-lives, and in the way media professionals do their work, it becomes increasingly interesting to observe and understand which values, ideas and ideals get embedded in the globally emerging system of userproducer co-creation. Granted, â€Å"the media business is unusually fluid and superficial† (Sennett, 1998: 80). But as I have shown in this essay, so are life, work, and play. And all of those activities are expressed in the way we use, co-create, and give meaning to media in our everyday lives. The suggested superficiality and invisibility of the media perhaps belittles the valuable, hypersociable and deeply participatory nature of our interactions within and between them.Indeed, the continuous glocal ‘remix’ of liquid modernity’s working and living conditions can be connected to the way we understand the media. The nature of work within an increasingly liquid, collaborative and convergent culture gets meaning in the media industry through product differentiation, wo rkforce flexibilization, and cross-media integration. Yet it also gets expressed in the various ways in which people use and make media all over the world – through ‘prosuming’ (Toffler, 1980) or ‘produsing’ (Bruns, 2004) practices, open source-type applications, wiki-based user co-creation, and other examples of convergence culture. I accept the notion that for most of us, life in liquid modernity is fraught with risk, uncertaintly, anxiety and flux.However, I feel that our analyses should take the next step, and acknowledge how people give meaning to this new human condition: through cultural convergence, participation, and new forms of sociability. It is too simple to argue that the media industries, which are so instrumental in all of these contingencies, either reproduce passive spectators or facilitate active, albeit superficial, engagement. The ways we use and give meaning to media, both as professionals and amateurs, show signs of a more comp lex, or in the words of Jenkins, ‘kludgy’ culture emerging, one that is built on the core elements of the global risk society and thrives on Bauman’s liquid life.I call for further investigation of and among those who bear the brunt of this emergence: the mediaworkers. 20 References Chris Atton (2001), Alternative Media. London: Sage. Mark Banks, Any Lovatt, Justin O’Connor, Carlo Raffo (2000), Risk and trust in the cultural industries, Geoforum 31, p. 453. Zygmunt Bauman (2000), Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Zygmunt Bauman (2002), The 20th century: the end or a new beginning? Thesis Eleven 70, pp. 15-25. Zygmunt Bauman (2003), Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds. Cambridge: Polity Press. Zygmunt Bauman (2005a), Work, consumerism and the new poor, 2nd edition. London: Open University Press. Zygmunt Bauman (2005b), Liquid life. Cambridge: Polity Press.Ulrich Beck (2000), The brave new world of work. Cambridge: Polity Press. Morten Blekes aune (2005), Working conditions and time use, Acta Sociologica 48 (4), pp. 308-320. Lars Bo Jeppesen, Mans Molin (2003). Consumers as co-developers: learning and innovation outside the firm. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 15 (3), pp. 363-383. Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin (1996), Remediation, Configurations 4 (3), pp. 311-358. Manuel Castells (2000), Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society, British Journal of Sociology 51 (1), pp. 5-24. Manuel Castells (2001), The internet galaxy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ted Castranova (2005). Synthetic worlds.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. David Croteau & William Hoynes (2003), Media/Society. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. Mark Deuze (2006), Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture, The Information Society 22 (2), pp. 63-75. Peter Drucker (1993), Postcapitalist society. New York: Harper Collins. Paul du Gay (1996), Consumption and identity at work. London: Sage. Jonathan Gershuny (2000), Changing times. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anthony Giddens (2003), Runaway world: how globalization is reshaping our lives. New York: Routledge. 21 Catherine Hakim (2003), Models of the family in modern societies.Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing. Charles Handy (1989), The age of unreason. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Susan Herring, Lois Ann Scheidt, Elijah Wright and Sabrina Bonus (2005), Weblogs as a bridging genre, Information, Technology & People 18(2), pp. 142-171. Desmond Hesmondhalgh (2002), The cultural industries. London: Sage. Eric von Hippel (2005), Democratizing Innovations. Cambridge: MIT Press. Henry Jenkins (2004). The cultural logic of media convergence. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7(1), pp. 33–43. Henry Jenkins (2006), Convergence culture. where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.Arne Kalleberg (2000), Nonstandard employment relations: part-time, temporary and contract work, Annual Review of Sociology 26, pp. 341-365. Heejo Keum, Narayan Devanathan, Sameer Deshpande, Michelle Nelson, and Dhavan Shah (2004), The citizen-consumer: media effects at the intersection of consumer and civic culture, Political Communication 21, pp. 369-391. Scott Lash and John Urry (1994), Economies of Signs and Space. London: Sage. Pierre Levy (1997). Collective intelligence: mankind’s emerging world in cyberspace. Translated by Robert Bononno. Cambridge: Perseus Books. Lev Manovich (2005), Understanding meta-media, CTheory 10/26/2005. URL: http://www. ctheory. net/articles. spx? id=493. Lev Manovich (2001), The language of new media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Janet Marler, Melissa Woodard Barringer, and George Milkovich (2002), Boundaryless and traditional contingent employees: worlds apart, Journal of Organizational Behavior 23, pp. 425-453. Robert Papper, Michael Holmes, Mark Popovich (2004), Middletown Media Studies, The International Digital Media & Digital Arts Association Journal 1 (1), pp. 1-56. Jane Parry, Rebecca Taylor, Lynne Pettinger and Miriam Glucksmann (2005), Confronting the challenges of work today: new horizons and perspectives, The Sociological Review. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Robert Putnam (ed. 2004, Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 22 Jeremy Rifkin (2004), The end of work, 2nd edition. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. Roland Robertson (1995), Glocalization: Time-space and Homogeneity- heterogeneity, in: Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, Roland Robertson (eds. ), Global Modernities, London: Sage. Richard Sennett (1998), The corrosion of character. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Richard Sennett (1992), The uses of disorder: personal identity and city life, New York: W. W. Norton. Richard Sennett (2005), The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press.Vicki Smith (1997), New forms of work organization, Annual Review of Sociology 23, pp. 315-339. John Storey, Graeme Salaman, and Kerry Platman (2005), Living with enterprise in an enterprise eceonomy: freelance and contract workers in the media, Human Relations 58 (8), pp. 1033-1054. Frank Thomas (1997), The conquest of cool: business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Talmadge Wright, Paul Briedenbach and Eric Boria (2002), Creative Player actions in fps online video games: playing Counter-Strike, Game Studies 2 (2), URL: http://www. gamestudies. org/0202/wright. 23 Endnotes 1 2 URL: http://ourmayday. revolt. org/precarity. info/info. tm (date accessed: 2-12-6). See URL: http://www. c-i-a. com/pr0106. htm. 3 See URL: http://corp. match. com/index/newscenter_press_glance. asp. 4 See URL: http://www. craigslist. com/about/pr/factsheet. html. 5 See URL: http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Wikipedia. 6 See URL: http://huminf. uib. no/~jill/archives/blog_theorising/final_version_of_weblog_definitio n. html. 7 See URL: http://technorati. com/weblog/2006/02/83. html. 8 See URL: http://www. mmogchart. com. 9 Phone interview with Craig Newmark, 1 December 2005. 10 See for example the company profile at CBS ‘60 Minutes’ at URL: http://www. cbsnews. com/stories/2004/12/30/60minutes/main664063. shtml. 24

Positive reward Essay

It can also be maintained that Kistler had more urge of continuing his ‘virtual’ mischief since he was able to, for the most part, obtain sexual pleasure through the means of the internet which could have been an easy method for Kistler to achieve his aims. The pleasure he gets is a form of a ‘positive reward’ at least in the context of Kistler as opposed to the idea that the pleasure he gets is not actually any sort of ‘reward’ to others especially to the victims. By admitting that he knew that what he did was essentially wrong perhaps in the legal and moral senses, it leads one to the realization that Kistler may unconsciously place his personal actions as behaviors that override any existing proscriptions against them. Thus, by considering his pedophilic behavior as one that is ‘wrong’ yet fulfilling in sexual terms, Kistler eventually treats his behavior as one that is above what is being forbidden or disallowed by the larger society of which he is a part of. Further, his absence of knowing that he was causing harm—or at least as far as he reveals—holds a reasonable argument that pertains to the corresponding absence of an effort to deliberately put a stop to his behavior. That is, since Kistler was not well aware that he was causing harm to his ‘victims’, there was no apparent reason for him to adjust accordingly or to realign his behavior according to the normal conducts within the society, to legal and moral prescriptions, and to what is prohibited. Otherwise, had Kistler known the negative effects his behavior has been causing, there remains the probability that he may have discontinued his actions—or he may have not. What is more important is the idea that there are reasons behind Kistler’s behavior albeit having the knowledge that his behavior is one of the things the status quo of the society is against. Nevertheless, Kistler was sentenced to 24 years of federal imprisonment; a contemporary example to the ancient Roman law â€Å"ignorance of the law is no excuse† (Brudner, 1995, p. 224). Since the learning process contains the appropriation of punishments and rewards in the SLT, there remains the implied cause that Kistler initially engaged in his pedophilic behavior and continued to do so after he was able to obtain a ‘reward’ for soliciting sexually explicit images from teenage girls. Even further, his initial behavior of engaging into internet child pornography may have also sprung from a variety of reasons which, after engaging into the act, led Kistler to obtain a ‘rewarding’ experience largely in the form of sexual satisfaction. Although the far more original causes beyond the subsequent continuance of his actions are of interest as well, the primary concern of the SLT remains to the ‘direct conditioning’ of the behavior of the individual or of, specifically, Kistler. The concept of ‘direct conditioning’ can be illustrated in the case where the experience of traumatic situations in the dental surgery is linked with the occurrence of fear by means of the learning of a correlation of pain as well as distress with the dental situation (Milson, Tickle, Humphris, & Blinkhorn, 2003, p. 495). Conversely, the case of Kistler can be analyzed in terms of the concept of direct conditioning. That is, the ‘sexually rewarding’ experience of Kistler with regards to his ‘pornographic’ exploits can be seen as one that is associated with the occurrence of the feeling of ‘liking’ what he does through the learning of a correlation of ‘sexual satisfaction’ with online child pornography by pretending as a dying teenage boy and appealing to teenage girls to send sexually explicit images.

An Evaluation of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator

An Evaluation of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a psychological test that was originally designed in the early 1940s by a mother-daughter team of Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs. Myers and Briggs developed their test in response to the calamity of World War II, because they believed the war was caused by the countries involved failing to understand each other’s differences (Coe, 1992). The MBTI is designed to measure personality, and the basis for this test comes from the work of personality types as described by Carl Jung’s theory. All the information provided in this evaluation comes from form M of the MBTI. Purpose, Design and Format of the MBTI The purpose of the MBTI is to classify individuals on each of the four levels as identified in Jung’s theory, and then provide them with a description of their personality as a result of their test (Fleenor, 2001). On each of the four levels to identify a person there are two options on each level making a total of eight different possibilities that can be used to describe someone’s personality. Those levels are: Extraversion v. Introversion, Sensing v. Intuition, Thinking v. Feeling, and Judging v. Perceiving. As defined for the MBTI Extraverts enjoy communication with others and thrive off that contact; while Introverts tend to not find any pleasure in their relationships and prefer to be alone. Sensors use their five senses to gather information about a scenario and see the present for what it is; in contrast people scoring high in Intuition like to look toward the future and the possibilities that could exist. Finally, Judgers use the information available and come to a decision quickly; whereas Perceivers tend to be procrastinators and are always waiting for more facts before deciding (Coe, 1992). It is important to note that while the MBTI places test takers in a category of having one trait or the other that people do display characteristics of all eight, but tend to display one aspect on each level more prominently. The degree to which a person varies on a particular attributed is explained upon completion of the test. The questions on the MBTI are also designed in such a way that it is impossible to fall in the exact middle of a particular trait, everyone will vary slightly one direction or another (Fleenor, 2001). This test is designed for the general population ages 14 and older, and there is not a specific group who is not eligible to take the MBTI. This is considered a weakness by many and will be covered later. There are 93 multiple choice items on the MBTI, and the questions are written at a seventh grade reading level to ensure comprehension of the questions (Fleenor, 2001). Each question is designed so that one question is measuring just one type of personality level for simple and accurate scoring. In defining the norms for this test a group of 3009 people were administered the MBTI all were adults from the United States and were 18 years and older. Th e specific demographics of the normative sample are not given, but the sample was lopsided towards females and Caucasians (Fleenor, 2001).

Proposal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 2

Proposal - Essay Example As such, the SNS developers have to develop strategies that will attract more people. It is clear that people would prefer to work with SNSs that meet their current needs and those that have a personalized interaction. According to Romm-Livermore and Setzekorn (2009) one of the main factor that drives people into social network services is the connection the service creates with other people from all over the world. In addition to this, Caviglione et al. (2013) say that people are more attracted to a social network service if it is able to meet their needs and help them solve the needs. With this understanding, the following research work takes a closer look at some of the determinants of user acceptance of a social network services. As stated earlier, there are multiple SNS platforms out therefore but the main difference among them is the number of people who have signed up for the services. This aims to establish the main factors that drive people into particular SNS and not any other. The last decade has seen a dramatic take over by the Social Network Services and slowly, the industry has been dominated with more and more platform. However, there is a significance difference in terms of the number of user in each platform. By considering this, there are two categories; one group made up of the highest number and the second group of platforms that are almost unknown and have very few people. Matejic (2015) raises concern on the dominance of Facebook and twitter over the rest of the social media platforms. This raises the question as to what really drives people into these platforms. In addition to this, it is important to analyze the impacts of the Social Network Services to the society in general. In this, both the benefits and the negative impacts should be considered. According to SeÃŒ nac et al. (2013) there is

Health Care Public Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Health Care Public Policy - Essay Example In the United States (US), the concept of public policy encompasses the process of decision making and analysis of governmental decision. Health care on the other hand refers to the constant monitory, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, illness or other physical body problems and the preservation of the physical wellbeing of human beings (Proctor & Smith 89). Health care public policy therefore basically refers to a settled opinion by members of the public concerning the manner in which issues of public health are handled across a country or state. Introduction States, countries and jurisdictions have different policies regarding to public health. Actually the configuration of the health care machinery varies from country to country, state to state but according to the World Health Organization (WHO), a well functional health care system should rest on adequate financing mechanisms, adequately trained and paid staff, decision making and policy formulation based on reliable informati on, well maintained facilities and advanced technologies in delivering health care. According to Charles Frame, an expert in market research and customer satisfaction at the Emory School of Medicine, it makes sense to have very basic level of healthcare for everybody. Members of the public are very influential in the process of policy formulation and therefore it is important for them to hold thorough knowledge of what policies, precisely health care policy entails and their rights and responsibilities in its formulation. State of health care system in the United States United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the history of the world yet its health care system can be described as unsatisfactory. To start with, the spending in the health care sector is rather high representing around 17% of the country’s GDP. Despite the high spending, the outcomes of the health care sector are not any better as compared to other countries that spend lower per capita such as Switze rland and Netherland. The cost of health care has actually risen over the recent years as observed by Allan Hubbard, Chairman, E & A Industries. He noted that the cost of a family insurance 19 years ago was $3000 but has currently risen to $12000 (as at 2008). The major problem according to Professor Herzlinger (20) is not to achieve a universal coverage but rather to get the value for money spent on health care. She therefore suggested three common theories that can improve the quality of services. These are; Managed competition. She suggested that the insurance system should be made private and consumers given the right to shop for their insurance. This would create a competitive environment among the insurers and consequently, quality would be achieved. Single payer. In this theory, she suggested that the government, as the single payer would control all resources, would have massive scale and could squeeze inefficiency and waste out of the system. Finally, she suggested the theo ry of Consumer-driven health care. This is an approach where the consumers are given their money and the opportunity to seek insurance and health care services by themselves. Although effective policies may be formulated and implemented, one of the most effective approach in addressing the issue of health care is through prevention not cure. It has been noted that majority of the health problems among the citizens of United States are life style

Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research - Essay Example It may for example compromise doctrines of justice and beneficence in a research (Lo, 2012). Research with vulnerable and protected groups is another ethical dilemma. It arises from the doctrine of justice that established the need for protecting the participants. The rules however restrict a researcher’s freedom to explore a research problem from a systematic approach and therefore tempt the researcher to breach the rules. The use of self as a research subject is another ethical dilemma in qualitative research. This is because of associated self-interest in the research together with increased chances of biasness that arises from the subjective nature of a qualitative research, factors that undermine potential advantages of the approach to research such as a researcher’s rich experiences as a cheap and readily available source of data (Krishnaswamy, Sivakumar and Mathirajan, 2009). The scope of my study that involves exploration of human experiences is susceptible to e thical issues such as â€Å"autonomy, beneficence, and justice† (Academic Conference, 2010). Developing a research methodology and proposed methods for implementing a research is one of the fundamentals to a successful research. Ensuring an ethical research by providing for ethical considerations and implementing the considerations in a research process is however a challenge. This is because the ethical requirements restrict a researcher and scope of a research. I have therefore realized that the need to conduct a thorough research may force a qualitative researcher to compromise ethical

Modern Judaism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Modern Judaism - Essay Example A second covenant was made some 450 years later when Moses led the Jews from slavery out of Egypt back to Cannon. It was during this exodus upon Mount Sinai that God told Moses the ten commandments, now contained in the Torah or Old Testament, the first five books of the Bible Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy . It was here upon Mount Sinai that saw the beginnings of the structured religion, Judaism. The religion of Judaism is ethical; when the Israelites accepted the ten commandments they committed to follow a religious code of law. The Torah contains 613 commandments from God which teaches them how to act and think about life and death. The religion of Judaism believes that God will judge people by their actions alone this leads to a fundamental difference between Christianity and Judaism. Christians believe that all humans are born with original sin and that this sin cannot be absolved by oneself but that the sacrificial death of Jesus was atonement for all humans' sins. Jews on the other hand do not believe in original sin but believe that all have good and bad in them and that they have the choice of moral actions, Jewish principles are that humans themselves decide how to act and it is their actions that will be their salvation in the face of temptation, whereas in Christianity even the thought of temptation is classed as a sin. 1 Judaism is monotheistic; there is only one god, in Christianity the idea of trintarianism exists, God the Father, God the Son an God the Holy Spirit. Whilst all three represent the one God Almighty in Judaism God cannot be divided. Whilst both religions share the books contained in the old testament many Jews see that Jesus replaced Jewish law. The New testament containing the Gospels and scriptures of Jesus' disciples is not believed or is part of the Hebrew Bible. Whilst Jews do not deny the existence of Jesus they do deny that he was the messiah as they argue he did not fulfill what the prophets had said he would. The coming of the messiah or the Moshiach is a belief held by all Jews however the belief is that when he comes there will be peace created on earth, Jesus was not on this earth in times of peace and there has never complete global been peace since his death. Jewish faith proclaims that every generation has a person born who could potentially be the moshiach but only if the time is right will that person become the messiah however if they die before their mission is completed then he has still yet to come. 2 http://www.jewfaq.org/moshiach.htm Moshiach: The Messiah 2. History and Background the Worldview (2 pages) a. Describe the origin or beginning of this religion/cult. b. What are the major believes of this religion/cult and how do they contrast with the beliefs of Christianity c. Be sure to address the beliefs of your chosen worldview concerning Jesus Christ, their concept of salvation, and how salvation is attained. Instructions: RESEARCH PAPER At the end of the fifth week, you are required to turn in an academic research paper. REQUIREMENTS for the PAPER 1. Length - The Paper should be AT LEAST 5 -7 pages of text (to meet the minimum the 5th page MUST be a full page). If your paper does not meet the 5 page minimum

Reading Film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Reading Film - Essay Example The film is a superb blend of sexuality and racial prejudice. The film captivates one of the brilliant performances by Juliana Moore. With a vulnerable emotion and strength of mind, she portrays the emotion of a housewife whose spouse has a covert gay life. It’s amazingly true that a movie like ‘Far From Heaven’ has that stylish finish along with tremendous emotional compulsion. This is a rare blend indeed and the greatest achievement with this particular film is the immaculate compatibility between the crew and the stars that make every moment of the movie artificial As well as deeply felt. (Indiana University, n.d.) In a film like ‘Far From Heaven’, the ambience of the narrative and the projection of the theme are never obvious. Yet, the film slowly enchants its spectators and one doesn’t need to wait for long to experience complete entwinement with the film. The film is extremely sensitive and far from being a mere domestic melodrama of Whittaker family, the movie is a strong portrayal of myriad social consideration that transports the film to a realm of difference from the ordinary movies of the same genre. Picking up a particular scene from the movie with so many emotionally exuberance is very difficult. Yet, the scene which forms the most sensitive and most climactic scene of the entire film demands a detailed description. The scene to be noted is where Cathy Whittaker, played by Julianne Moore finds her man Frank, played by Dennis Quaid, in the arms of his gay partner. Undoubtedly, Moore reaches the league of the contemporary actresses after this brilliant performance. The language of camera transcends any narrative incorporated in this scene and the feeling and the expression of Moore is equally mind-blowing. The cinematography, score implementation of light editing and sets make it a complete visual. The visual effect used at the backdrop of the scene makes it so compatible with the

Literature Review; Data Collection Annotated Bibliography

Literature Review; Data Collection - Annotated Bibliography Example 2011). Growth hormone syndrome triggers a decrease in the levels of thyroid stimulation hormones responsible for stimulating metabolism causing hypothermia. High’s book offers honest advice on the nature of rehabilitating patients with brain injuries. The author develops a critical evaluation of the focal cortical dysfunction on patients with traumatic brain injuries. Taking a realistic approach to the brain healing process, the chapters in High’s book have discoveries on deficiencies brought about by the growth hormone to patients suffering from mild, severe and moderate traumatic brain injuries. In the progress, High looks into the effective measures and programs to rehabilitating traumatic brain injury in patients. The author offers a critical outlook on a number of consequences caused by both elevated and dropped levels of growth hormone to the healing process of patients with traumatic brain injuries. High offers sane advice for those struggling with rehabilitating traumatic brain injuries, but his main project seems to be offering the reader a reality check regarding rehabilitation for traumatic brain injury using gr owth hormone replacement. This text is indispensable because of its honest viewpoint and encouraging approach to patients rehabilitating brain injuries. The authors develop a theoretical analysis of the epidemiology and severity of traumatic brain injuries. The authors introduce the GCS (Glasgow Coma Scale) that is used to analyze effects of stimuli the post traumatic consciousness. The authors conduct neuropsychiatric, functional and structural imaging assessments, that unearth neuropsychiatric behaviors related to post-traumatic behaviors of brain injury. The book develops an analysis of mood, psychotic, personality and cognitive disorders arising from treatment of traumatic brain injury. Cifu and Buschbacher’s book develops a critical analysis into the neuropsychology, rehabilitation and

Social Work Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Social Work - Essay Example The latter is according to research in social work. According to (Coady and Lehmann, 2008), the emergence of the two theories is a result of outcomes that were not efficient concerning approaches in case work. These approaches were stuck according to the method known as psychodynamic. The center of focus from the relating methods is on short term and brief interventions. The link emerges from theory learning and forms a basis of ideas geared towards solving problems. The call made by the two approaches is to have workers in the social sphere to be part of service users in a joint activity. The intention will be to analyze troubles, what causes them and actions that will help address them. The person-centered theory is consequently necessary for the process of applying the above methodologies (Walsh, 2006). There is a need to have the service user to be central to the problem. Then it is vital to see the urgency of the case from their perspective. In regard to that, social workers are to be good listeners if they are to trace issues because interfere with service users. As a result, they can offer help with solutions that can help handle their problems. Task centered approach also has challenges just as other social work methods. (Rzepnicki, McCracken and Briggs, 2012) Looks at the service users and how ready they are to carry forth duties with social workers and how reasonable this is. To achieve more value, it is applicable to necessary assistance from the agency. Further, the two approaches are valuable in creating empowerment and innate approach to opposing oppressive techniques. Therefore, the inclusion of a new set of skills will improve the capabilities of the service users. That will allow them to handle the present situations and more so upcoming state of affairs that portray oppression and difficulty. There are many factors that influence the practices in social work that require the inclusion of

MKTG 315 Pre-test Essay Example for Free

MKTG 315 Pre-test Essay 1. President Obamas health care plan requires all U.S. citizens to purchase a minimum amount of health insurance or be fined 2. Suppose that from January 2011 to January 2012, the inflation rate was 6 percent 3. Fill out the table according the demographic information for each group 4. Which of the following approaches to innovation is Google Inc. using when it allows researchers to devote 20 percent of their time to pursuing their own ideas and projects? Can be D. 5. Examine the advertisement below to determine who the target market is for the product. Then, select as many descriptors that fit the qualities of that target market. 6. The local Pro Hardware store has recently run a number of ads featuring women doing household repairs and holds monthly workshops for women on basic home repair techniques. It has evidently not been lost on Pro Hardware that: B. Personal traits tend to vary in the U.S by region 7. Today, many infants are exposed from birth to technology such as Smartphones, laptops, netbooks, and tablets. In fact, Fisher-Price and LeapFrog do research into how infants and young toddlers interact with screens and touchscreens. 8. Research that attempts to expand the frontiers of knowledge but is not aimed at a specific, pragmatic problem is called: Basic research 9. Which of the following is an example of demographic information? C. Single, 18-25 year olds 10. When a coal mining company lobbies Congress for changes in environmental laws and regulations that result in the construction of more coal-burning power plants, the company has engaged in: Post Test 1. Match the product with the ethnic group it most likely targets. African American A new urban clothing line directed at young adults, Hispanic American Clean and fruity scented room freshener in a colorful container Asian American Brand new electronic device charger that also acts as a keyboard for the nearest charging device, Any ethnicity A package of flank steak, 2. Sharon is 60 years old and expects to continue working through her sixties. She lost a significant portion of her retirement savings during the recession. Sharon is a: Baby boomer 3.Randy is a sales rep at Speedy Printing. When Danyka expresses an interest in purchasing a new, high-speed copy machine for her office, Randy tells her that Speedy Printing requires all users of its copy machines to purchase all their paper and toner from the company as well. Fortunately, Danyka is well-versed in business legislation and informs Randy that his companys policy is in violation of the: Incorrect. Among other things, the Clayton Act prohibits tying contracts (which require the buyer of one product to also buy another item in the line). 4. Match the American value with the product that most addresses that value. Self-sufficiency A book on year round vegetable garden management., Upward mobility BMW offers an entry-level sedan for much less than its super-luxury models Work Ethic ., Debit card that rounds up to the nearest dollar and puts the rounded change into a savings account., Conformity . Walmart offers everyday low prices for everyone 5. Joseph has an idea for a startup that will offer a mobile device that will also function as a social media hub, music center, and digital wallet. His idea is to offer slick designs in brilliant colors that shoppers can either subscribe to monthly or pay as they go for data access. Select all of the target market factors Joseph needs to consider as he finalizes design and designs on promotion strategies. a. Ethnicity b. How social media use has changed the way people communicate c. Consumer Privacy d. Purchasing power e. Size of the population f. Age demographic g. State Laws h. Inflation Answer 1: Correct. Answer 2: Correct. Answer 3: Correct. Answer 4: Correct. Answer 5: Incorrect. Answer 6: Correct. Answer 7: Incorrect. Answer 8: Incorrect. 6. A local bank has developed a new line of credit with a lower interest rate and large lines of credit. Of the following, what considerations will the bank have to take into account before granting a line of credit to an applicant? a. Recession b. Consumer income c. Competition d. Inflation e. Ethnicity f. Purchasing Power Answer 1: Correct. Answer 2: Correct. Answer 3: Incorrect. Answer 4: Incorrect. Answer 5: Incorrect. Answer 6: Correct. 7. Why are Asian Americans sometimes called a marketers dream? 8. Component lifestyles: Incorrect. Component lifestyles encompass a much wider range of interests (and needs) than traditional lifestyles. Increased buying power has also contributed to the evolution of component lifestyles. d. have developed because consumers can choose from a growing number of goods and services. 9. From the following, choose all of the following are methods companies are using to stimulate innovation. a. Enlisting the web b. Increasing efficiency c. Talking to early adopters d. Using marketing research e. Building scenarios Answer 1: Correct. The ways to stimulate innovation are: build scenarios, enlist the web, talk to early adopters, use marketing research, create an innovative environment, and cater to entrepreneurs. Answer 2: Incorrect. The ways to stimulate innovation are: build scenarios, enlist the web, talk to early adopters, use marketing research, create an innovative environment, and cater to entrepreneurs. Answer 3: Correct. The ways to stimulate innovation are: build scenarios, enlist the web, talk to early adopters, use marketing research, create an innovative environment, and cater to entrepreneurs. Answer 4: Correct. The ways to stimulate innovation are: build scenarios, enlist the web, talk to early adopters, use marketing research, create an innovative environment, and cater to entrepreneurs. Answer 5: Incorrect. The ways to stimulate innovation are: build scenarios, enlist the web, talk to early adopters, use marketing research, create an innovative environment, and cater to entrepren eurs. 10. After learning that many of its customers were shopping at a nearby health-food store for grass-fed beef and organic milk, REF:-Price Grocers began stocking more organic items. REF:-Price Grocers adjusted its marketing strategy based on: Environment management Chapter 5: Pre-Test The Pilcher Company manufactures tents and other canvas goods in its two factories, located in Kentucky and West Virginia. Seven years ago, Pilcher began exporting its goods to several countries in Latin America, and sales have been very good. At least 25% of Pilchers revenue comes from its foreign sales. The Pilcher Company can probably best be characterized as a _____ multinational corporation. a. first-stage b. second-stage c. third-stage d. fourth-stage e. fifth-stage Mari is in Brazil for a vacation and has stumbled upon the most beautiful Brazilian cedar chest inlaid with Brauna wood veneers. She desperately wants the trunk, but isnt sure how much it actually costs. The shopkeeper is asking her for 2500 reals (the Brazilian currency). Maris husband knows that the exchange rate to the U.S. dollar is about 0.5 USD for 1 real. Calculate the cost of the trunk in U.S. dollars. $ Select all of the following that are true about globalization. a. Globalization has cost millions of Americans their jobs, particularly those in the manufacturing and tech industries. b. Globalization encourages political as well as economic freedom. c. Job outsourcing has decreased with globalization. d. Globalization raises the living standards of people in countries that embrace it. e. U.S. white-collar jobs are immune to being outsourced because they require a native speaker of English. 4. Select the table with the rest of the G-20 Member countries. Australia Japan Brazil Germany Turkey India Russia United Kingdom (or England) Saudi Arabia United States [or USA] 5, Select the methods of entering the Global Marketplace to the appropriate level of risk on the spectrum. Exporting Licensing and Franchising Contract Manufacturing Joint Venture Direct Investment 6. In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan Come alive with the Pepsi Generation came out as Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead. The managers at Pepsi evidently overlooked the importance of _____ factors in global marketing. a. demographic b. political c. technological d. cultural e. economic Incorrect. Language is a central part of culture and has created problems for many companies entering foreign markets. 7. Pillsbury advertisements on Indian television depict the familiar Doughboy pressing his palms together and bowing in the traditional Indian greeting. Pillsbury obviously understands the rewards of _____ marketing. a. sales b. guerilla c. regional d. global e. green 8. A Vietnamese textile factory sells its goods in the United States at a price 40% less than that charged in Vietnam. The textile factory may be engaging in: a. boycotting. b. price gouging. c. dumping. d. bouncing. e. countertrading 9. Campbells watercress and duck gizzard soup (which is popular in China) and Frito-Lays shrimp-flavored potato chip (sold in Thailand), are examples of: a. product standardization. b. promotion adaptation. c. product adaptation. d. competitive pricing. e. product invention. Incorrect. In the context of global marketing, product invention can be taken to mean either creating a new product for a market or drastically changing an existing product. Mercosur is the largest Latin American trade agreement, created in 1991 to promote free trade and the fluid movement of goods, peoples, and currency in South America. Select all of the following countries that are part of Mercosur. a. Venezuela b. Mexico c. Brazil d. Costa Rica e. Peru f. Uruguay Chapter 5: Post-test 1. Dynamo Industries spent $10 million on equipment in its new South Korean facilities last year, but only $3 million on labor. It is safe to say that Dynamos operations in South Korea a. are capital intensive. b. greatly increase employment in South Korea. c. are underfinanced. d. are labor intensive. e. have probably cost many South Koreans their jobs. 2. Match the company description with the stage of global business development. WRONG 3. The Camay soap you buy at your local grocery store is virtually the same as the Camay soap offered for sale in Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, and Taiwan. Procter Gamble has moved toward _____ with this product. a. contract manufacturing b. global marketing standardization c. product adaptation d. competitive advantage e. product myopia After class one day, your friend Miguel says that he can foresee a time in the not too distant future when the European Union (EU) will essentially become the United States of Europe. Based on what youve read in your textbook, you: a. agree, because the EU has purchasing power almost equal to that of the United States. b. disagree, because the political instability in Europe will never allow that to happen. c. agree, because the EU is already the largest economy in the world. d. disagree, because Europes diverse languages and national cultures will make it almost impossible for marketers to develop single European products for generic European consumers. e. agree, because over the past few years labor productivity in the EU has equaled or exceeded that of the United States. Fill in the blanks of the paragraph using the drop down menu to select the choice that best fits each blank. Wilmaris build your own homemade cupcake business is booming. She has received inquiries from all over the world about retailing her Foolproof Bakery Style Cupcake Baker toaster oven and her wide range of cupcake mixes, fillings, and frosting, which are Production adaptation for a global market. Wilmari knows that she has to make sure her electronics work in foreign outlets and shes been researching retailers, distributors, and even flavors that other countries my enjoy. Wilmaris E-commerce distribution is helping her make her first steps towards having a global business. For now, however, Wilmari directs all the international inquiries to her website, where her customers can use Currency exchange to order sets or mixes, as well as see the cost of international shipping. Wilmari also has a Money back guarantee that she offers only domestic customers, just in case there are regulations in other countries. For now, the web is her easiest road into the global market, but Wilmaris research and diligence should enable her to be one of the few small promotion adaptations located in the United States! 6. Right Wedding dress designers change white to red for Chinese customers. Culture, PG offers single use sizes of deodorant in India for much less than full size deodorants in the U.S. Economic Factors, Google is sued by a doctor in France for libel when search results for his name brought up an old malpractice suit that he had served time for. Legal and Political Factors, Up-and-coming diamond retailer Hearts of Fire fights with larger companies for limited diamonds from Africa. Natural Resources 7. Langdon Farms sends milk to Yinkers, a Canadian cheese maker; in payment, Yinkers sends Langdon Farms cheddar and Swiss cheese, which Langdon Farms in turn markets in the United States. Langdon Farms and Yinkers are engaging in: a. price fixing. b. dumping. c. countertrading. d. a quota system. e. bribery 8. Select all of the following that are product adaptation. a. Offering ketchup sized packets of Pantene 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner in Bolivia for 5 cents. b. Campbells offering duck gizzard soup in China. c. Dunkin Donuts selling green tea donuts in Korea. d. HM offering fringed burquas in Dubai. 9. Martin just gave a business presentation where he emphasized benefits to the bottom line, that his company would provide strong service support, and the products guarantee. Where is Martin giving his presentation? a. Sweden b. Germany c. Japan d. Hungary e. Peru Incorrect. These are all characteristics listed for giving successful business presentations in Germany. 10.Plast-eet, a Vermont manufacturer of plastic eating utensils, sells its products to Misha, who has an office in New York City. Plast-eet takes its money from Misha and goes away happy. Misha, in turn, sells the products to buyers in several African countries and keeps the revenues. Misha is most likely a(n): a. buyer for export. b. export broker. c. buyer for import. d. venture capitalist. e. export agent

How WW1 Led To WW2 Essay Example for Free

How WW1 Led To WW2 Essay WW1 was the most gruesome war up until that time. With the central powers fighting the allied powers, germany was defeated and forced to take all blame for WW1 which led to WW2. They were forced to admit the war was their fault, pay all damages, and lose their military. After the war, all powers met in France and discussed the treaty of versailles and all allied powers except the U.S. made Germany sign the document and admit that the war was entirely their fault. They hoped it would keep Germany from starting another war but in reality it sparked them to get revenge. Also in the treaty, the allied powers forced them to pay for all expenses in the war. The total cost was well over a billion dollars. This hurt the economic system of Germany and they couldnt pay for it all. It sparked the Germans to once again get revenge on the allied powers and gain control of their country again. IN the treaty, the military power was ceased from Germany. They were now left defenseless. When Adolf Hitler comes to power the first thing he does is restore the army and navy so Germany isnt completely defenselss and he wants the strongest army in the world to go back out and defeat the allied powers. Even though all the allied powers wanted was full revenge on Germany for their many expenses and casualities, it led to another war full of more expenses and casualities. Hitler stepped into power and didnt think it was fair for the Germans to be treated this way. WW2 then begins and it the most destructive war ever.