Communications and the City Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Communications and the City - Essay Example Consider the tricorders in use in the original Star Trek television series and early films; the video wristwatches that were available to James Bond back in the 1970's, and the eerie way in which Sandra Bullock's droid character was able to see into Sylvester Stallone's memories in Demolition Man. Now that the 21st century has arrived, we are completely surrounded by communication. We carry access to the World Wide Web in our pockets; the ability to communicate digitally has actually slowed our interpersonal communication, as we spend our time with other people texting people who are not with us, or posting information about what we are doing on Facebook or other social media sites. However, communication from the media to us does not just travel through smartphones, and the newest forms of urban planning are taking this change into account. One of the challenges facing urban planners is the inclusion of robust methods of communication and media technology without ending up living in the dank, black sort of city that served as The Running Man's labyrinth. However, incorporating media into city planning does not mean that citizens have to have walls built up between themselves and others, either in the form of dark skyscrapers or suburban sprawl. The very word â€Å"media† has taken on the connotation of passive reception of entertainment, networking with people close at hand as well as on the other side of the globe (McCullough 2006, 16). McCullough (2006) applies the term â€Å"locative† to media technology that leaves the desktop and the laptop behind and works its way into the other parts of our mundane lives. The good news is that the media technology that is used in urban planning does not have to take the form of a separate world that sits behind a large desktop monitor, as Walker (1989) envisioned. This vision of larger access to media did populate the cultural imagination, as such films as I, Robot and such novels as Ready Player One saw a future in which the true controllers of the world would sit behind glass walls in offices, manipulating events through touch screens and avatars. However, the world has proven not to be so difficult to infiltrate with media. The advent of the smartphone, as well as larger-scale technologies, enable people to indulge their taste for media while out on the streets. This has taken some time to take place, though. In 2005, the Where 2.0 conference was all about the transition of online information from the computer to geospace (McCullough 2006, 16). The advent of all of the Web 2.0 tools has made the notion of â€Å"cyberspace† almost an antiquated one. While one still sees ruddy invitations to come to websites, more often than not one can find the necessary web content all about one, no matter where one is. You no longer have to unplug from your social surroundings, go upstairs, power on the computer, plug in the modem, and wait for your information. You don't even have to sit down; you can access it while on the move. In fictive environments, of course, this was predicted long ago, most frightfully by the visions of George Orwell in 1984. The purpose of the information technology in Smith's world, of course, was surveillance, as Big Brother and the Party were all about keeping tabs on the deeds, words, and even thoughts

Financial economics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Financial economics - Essay Example Theories that have brought about pop assume that at some circumstances, it would cost exactly the same number of for exampleUs dollars to buy euros and then to use the proceeds to purchase the same basket as it would cost to use those US dollars directly in buying the market basket of goods. For example, a cake that sells for C$1.50 in Australian city should cost US$1.00 in a U.S. city when the exchange rate between Canada and the U.S. is 1.50 USD/CDN. (Both cakes cost US$1.00.) Therefore, the fundamental for PPP is the "law of one price". Consequently, on elimation or assumptiontransportation and other transaction costs, competitive markets will have same price for identical good in two countries, on expressing the prices of involved countries into the same currency. The concept and principle of purchasing power parity enables and aids in estimation of what the exchange rate between both currencies should be in order for the exchange to be the same with the purchasing capability of the currencies of the two countries. Thus, when a countrys domestic price level is increasing as it is in the case when it is experiencing inflation that countrys exchange rate must depreciated so as to stabilize the PPP. PPP exchange rates is significant in that it helps to avoid inaccurate and erroneous international comparisons that arise due to use of market exchange rates. A good example is when two countries output similar physical amounts of goods in two separate years. Due to adverse fluctuation in market exchange rates when the GDP of one country (measured in its own currency is converted to the other countrys currency using market exchange rates) one country can be deemed to have higher real GDP than the other country in one year but relatively lower in the other; both of these comparisons wouldmiss-reflect the reality of their relative levels of