Technology is the greatest factor that is linked to economic growth. According to Oxford Economics emerging markets are increasing because digital technologies are growing
consumer income and demand. As a result of these successes, corporations are
investing in this industry in order to fuel economic growth.
According
to Oxford Economics, this is considered the “third wave of capitalism”. It is
considered so because of the tremendous impact it is having on societies,
governments, innovations and economics. With increasing technology, there is a
need for new business models in order to evolve with this megatrend.
The Aspen Institute believes that as the internet grows in scale and scope, it accelerates
innovation in new and existing businesses, and enhances the creation and
delivery of public goods. For example, Etsy is a perfect example of a new, successful online business model, because its
innovations allow for people to sell, buy, and trade their art and clothing.
The simplicity of the site’s model has led to growth, and an interest in those
who would like their sites to be interactive. The Aspen Institute believes that
because the internet is run by the many, there are highly beneficial qualities
that go along with that.
Going paperless is thought to be saving the environment, “going-green” and of course a tax write-off. But how does “going-green” really affecting our economy and what are the real reason companies are going paperless?
According the an article on huffingtonpost.com called “Newsweek Ending Print Edition, Going All-Digital In 2013; Job Cuts Expected” by Jack Mirkinson, Newsweek is going paper-less and its not to save the enviroment. Newsweek is just one of many companies being pushed to go all digital for the cost of print is tremendous. Editor of Newsweek, Tina Brown said it costs $42 million to print and distribute the paper. While an all digital version would save the paper a tremendous amount of money.
The all digital newsweek will begin in 2013 and will require a paid subscription. WIth the shift to an all digital magazine layoffs will be necessary. Newsweek is just one of many companies moving towards digital and away from manual. This transition is causing layoffs across the board which has a great affect on the US economy.
Newspaper circulation has dropped 51% in the last five years causing print to phased out. There are three weekly newspapers in the US that stand out as the top papers. Newsweek, US News and World Report and Time. Of these three major papers only time has enough circulation to remain in print in the new year.
Another devastating effect of the lack of paper circulation is discussed in the New York Time article titled, “The Fissures Are Growing For Papers” by David Carr. Newspapers have acquired a tremendous amount of debt. Either from stock shares bought at the wrong time or pension plans they are struggling to pay. With The rising costs of printing, the large amount of debt and the diminishing amount of paper circulation the newspaper industry is taking a turn for the worst.
According to Rick Edmonds, a media business analysis “Most newspapers are in a place right now that they are going to have to make big cuts somewhere, and big seams are bound to show up at some point”. These major cuts equate to job layoffs and a move to digital. There have already been several bankruptcies in the newspaper industry, and the way things are looking there are only more to come. THe shirt to digital isn't promising to increase enough revenue to pull these papers out of debt. It looks more like a last chance to keep journalism alive.
The truth is that printed papers are not a priority in the life of many americans. The digital revolution has provided for a virtual cornucopia of sources for people to obtain daily news updated hourly and streaming live. Not only are online and television sources updated frequently and faster to produce, many are free. There is little reason for a person to pay for a printed press when they can google news and find over 1000 stories written daily covering the latest news both locally and globally. For many people by the time a article goes to press and is distributed that story is old news. Print is just not current enough in the fast pace lives of us living in a digital world.
All newspaper companies are feeling the hard times. Even the local daily papers are having trouble staying afloat. The New York Times Article, “Newspapers Cut Days From Publishing Week” discusses how most daily papers are only distributing 3 days a week to cut spending costs. The hope to cut back on spending does come at an expense. Consumers lose a sense of loyalty to a paper and are invited to look elsewhere for their daily news. Advertisers would also be affected by this cutback. By distributing a paper only 3 days a week instead of daily there are less ads being printed as well.
The push to digitize everything in the new world of instantaneous information at our fingertips we lose a once profitable source of journalism. The newspapers are all going digital, and slowing down print production. This is not to save the environment but caused by financial pressures. Technology has changed what consumers want. People want to have the most current news in their pocket at all times. There is less and less money circulating in the newspaper industry and jobs are being affected.
With most services available online, it was just about time for banking to catch up, and today, it's pretty much become a requirement for Banks. The benefits are enormous, from faster and simpler banking, it also made tracking your money, paying bills and making deposits easier. Online Banking has now also become a must for small businesses.
According to David Lipschultz of the New York Times, the origins of Advanced Online Banking were first seen in the 90's in Brazil, where their "economy faced such inflationary pressures that the currency, the real, would sometimes lose 3 percent of its value in a day. In grocery stores, shoppers heard announcements that the price of bread had just gone up. To combat the hyperinflation, banks built communications systems to clear checks and allow their customers to pay bills as soon as possible. That helped the customers avoid losing money during processing." Since then the services have continued to improve, bringing their advances to the mainstream in Brazil. In fact their services are the model for US and other digital banking services espite the fact that only 4% of the the Brazilian population has internet access due to it's high cost in this South american Country.
When I first opened my Bank of American Account in 2009, I was a college student who just began working at Daycare Center. The owner thought it might be easier to pay me weekly with direct deposit if I opened up an account with her bank. Hesitantly, I agreed, she paid for me to open an account, and as soon as I did, she got onto her computer and added me to her payroll. From then on, I received my pay like clockwork by Friday morning in my Bank of America Student Account. I also began to recieve BofA notices to my e-mail, including account changes and monthly statements.
The perks of being a BofA customer just continued as they took online banking further. First, you were able to easily check your funds online and make tranfers within the accounts (and eventually to outside accounts with other banks) . Next, there was Bill Pay with the option to make it automated, meaning you wouldn't forget to pay a bill again. You simply select a date, and funds would be deducted from your account regularly for said bill. After that, we saw the Bank of America smartphone app, tht allowed you to do all those things, and also find a location nearby. Finally, this year, after being slow on the curve, Bank of America finally allowed mobile check deposits, making depositing check's values to ones account as simple as taking a picture, a feature that has been available at competing banks for a little while now.
However, the benefits aren't just for customers alone. As I mentioned earlier with my old employer, online banking has become ideal for small business. So it's become pretty much a requirement for banks to have these services available. Not only is it making life easier for regular customers, but it's drawing in small business owners, taking the hard work out of payroll, loans, bill pay, and even taxes. According to Bank of America's Newsroom, "The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 56 million consumer and small business relationships with approximately 5,600 retail banking offices and approximately 16,200 ATMs and award-winning online banking with 30 million active users." Online, the company also provides investment opportunities, with Merrill Lynch, along with online trading options.
Bank of America is pushing more and more going paperless, they claim it's a greener approach but what they are truly trying to do is push online banking more and more. The conveneince isn't just for customers, but for the bank itself they don't need so many employees. BofA in fact is charging fees for those customers that prefer physical banking at centers and paper mail for their statements.
Online banking is making a huge difference in regards to our economy, making any dealings with money easily done and available at your fingertips. It's also taking banking global. It's no longer necessary to be at a local branch to manage you account. Checks and paper mail statements for accounts are also becoming obsolete with options to go green annd paperless on ppretty much all accounts. Banks, seeing the convenience to this type of banking are also incurring fees to those that prefer to go to a physical bank and get paper mail to increase revenue. Clearly, online banking is pretty much the cheapest and best option. It shouldn't even be a surprise if and when it becomes the only option as more bank locations close, and more online options and ATMs become available.
The idea of online stores tracking what consumers purchase and read about seems like an outrageous idea. It made me wonder why they choose to track the purchase of their customers and what benefits do they recieve from this? In an article for Bits by Saul Hansell titled "What online Stores Sell: Data About You" my questions were answered.
I learned the reason why online stores track or collect information of what consumers buy and read about is to sell the information to company called Acerno. What Acerno does is it takes the information and places ads on hundreds of websites on behalf of marketers. These ads are geared towards what an individual person normally purchases or reads about online.
For example I love to shop on Amazon.com. I always buy iPhone accessories and school textbooks. Whenever I visit the website as soon as I sign in the home page changes to new iphone accessories or new books that have been released. This happens because they track what I purchase on the website and what I read about to make sure the right items are on display to catch my attention. This is done to make sure that every time I visit Amazon.com I make a purchase.
I bet your wondering is this safe? Well in this article I also learned that it is safe. Online stores like Swatch, and American Girl do not take your personal information like your name and credit card number instead they track a consumer by placing a identification number as a cookie in the browser. That way they are tracking you without truly invading your privacy.
The last thought that came to me was why they are able to do this? In an article by Somini Senguta titled "Less Web Tracking Means Less Effective Ads, Researcher Says" for Bits it explained that online companies are able to do this because there is no strong legislation placed to prevent this from happening.
"The
success of online advertising relies on Internet companies tracking and
analyzing an unwitting consumer’s behavior online" What this quote mean is if online companies were not able to track what their consumers purchase then it would harm them more than benefit them. It's through collecting data that online companies understand what their consumers are geared towards.
In a way it's like playing devils advocate. I personally do not like that online companies track me as a consumer but I love when I sign onto a website and the items I would normally purchase are on the homepage its convenient.
There is only a handful of
ways of handling money through cyberspace. When shopping online through popular
market sites such as eBay or Amazon, the popular methods of payment are through
either, credit cards, debit, direct deposit, electronic bill payments, checks
or money orders, and e-commerce sites such as PayPal. While there are several
websites that offer payment methods online, PayPal really leads the market with
e-commerce on the internet. When looking at all the possible e-commerce
possibilities on the world wide web, PayPal ends up being the service that
offers the most accessible service rather than others. When considering this,
is PayPal a monopoly?
PayPal is not a monopoly,
even if it sometimes feels as if they are. There are still other options out
there for those running e-commerce sites. For example, Google
Checkout does much the same thing that PayPal does, even though it’s
much less popular. Amazon
Payments is also available for some things. But on the sideline of
all its legitimacies, it is a monopoly in its own kind of way.
Peter Theil, founder of
PayPal, is also a professor at Stanford University. One of his core points is
that we tend to confuse capitalism with competition. We tend to think that
whoever competes best comes out ahead.
"we often
shouldn’t seek to be really good competitors. We should seek to be really good
monopolists. Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded
and established field, it’s often more valuable to create a new market and
totally dominate it. The profit margins are much bigger, and the value to
society is often bigger, too."
PayPal
has long dominated the electronic payment space, having launched roughly 12
years ago with a roster of 98 million users. On October 3, 2002, PayPal became
a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay, the online market place for auctions. eBay hosts global
auctions and online stores and profits on every listing and taxes a 10% final
value fee for everything sold. The profits eBay makes for their services are
enormous, and the marriage between eBay and PayPal is a power couple.
Paypal is in all reality a global bank which straddles every frontier on
the planet. Not only are they regulated only by their own business
interests, but they impose their own set of rules and regulations to
your money and you have absolutely no recourse, no appeal process, no
hope, when they decide to take your money away from you, as is
happening more and more. In midst of the Digital Revolution, PayPal is still young in the concept of a regulated cyberspace, and whats amazing is that they have remained one of the biggest players in e-commerce for all these years, almost unopposed.
Is
it okay for young children to use iPads? Nowadays more parent use iPads as a
way to entertain their children instead of using books or toy cars. Can the
exposure of modern technology between the ages of two and seven be a good or bad
thing?
I walked into Walmart two weeks ago
and was completely blown away when I noticed a two year old using an iPad. She
was playing this game where she had to identify different shapes that popped up
on the screen. Astonished I stopped and told her parents how smart their
daughter was. Her parents laughed and said "thank you" then
admitted to me that the two year old could practically use the iPad better than
them.
So again I ask; is it okay for young
children to use iPads? Well my answer is yes. I think it allows them the
chance to embrace the changes of the future at a young age. In an
article by Warren Buckleitner titled Five
Great iPad Apps for Toddlers
from the New
York Times it touches on how
although there is a lot of controversy over young children using the iPad or
any smart systems, hundreds of apps are geared for the young child that are
learning to read, write, and even speak. I think the article brings light to
the fact that these apps are teaching children what they need to know but in a
less traditional manner.
I was in the third grade when
I first started learning how to use the computer. My little sister who is four
years younger than me was in the first grade when she started learning how to
use the computer. The reason I'm explaining this is because I want to show how
as times and technology changed so did the need to expose young children to
these changes at a more consuming age. The fact that parents can start this
process of exposing their child to iPads, computers and smart systems gives
their child an advantage in school also.
What makes this more
interesting is now parents can buy books for their child on an iPad or any
smart phone and it’s really cheap. Warren Buckleitner wrote an article titled The Best Children Books on the iPad for the New York Times it touches on how a
parent can easily purchase books that range from one dollar to five dollars to
read to their children. Now parents no longer have to go to book stores they
can simply purchase a book right off their smart phones or Ipads. Therefore
allowing their child to benefit from the advancements in technology and learn
at the same time.
Nicole Laborite wrote an
article for the New York Times titled Where Apps Become Childs Play
and this piece focuses on how companies like Fisher Price, Leepfrog, Crayola
and Hasbro are all developing different products that will teach young
children how to use touch screen electronics. “We bring babies in
with their moms and watch them at play with different types of apps, different
types of products,” said Deborah Weber, senior manager of infant research for
Fisher-Price. Through this process a company like Fisher -Price can basically
double check to make sure that these apps they are creating are appealing to
these little children and that they can navigate through them. It gives them a
window to understand what this younger generation can and cannot comprehend
using an iPad.
I feel as though if these companies
can see the importance in creating touch screen toys for children between the
ages of two and seven then it is up to the parents to take advantage of these opportunities.
I honestly believe that parents
allowing their young child to use iPads or any smart systems would
only benefit the child in the long run.
A major issue when it comes to the internet is online purchasing and the fraud that can be associated with this action called E-tail fraud. When most people think of E-tail fraud they think of consumers being scammed, however on many occasions the merchants themselves are scammed aswell which can result in the loss of large amounts of revenue.
The article "E-tail Fraud Remains a threat" by Joanna Glasner discusses E-tail fraud at its stage in 2004, when it was already in full affect. According to a survey commissioned by CyberSource, a developer of online
payment-processing technology, merchants during this time expected to lose $2.6 billion annually with an estimated 1.8 percent of all online sales being fraudulent. Although these numbers may seem somewhat alarming, fraud rates were actually somewhat under control at this time due to the use of what was then known as advanced technology. This technology included anti-fraud tools used to detect phony credit card data. Also many companies refused to ship to countries where fraud rates were high.
As there years went on E-tail fraudsters have evolved, developing new techniques to bypass security systems and moving onto newer platforms of retail. The article "For Apple, Pressure builds over App Store Fraud" by Evelyn M. Rusli addresses the hundreds of online complaints saying that Apple’s iTunes Store, and in
particular its App Store, which the company portrays as the safest of
shopping environments, is not so secure. App store fraud has resulted in many people being scammed and this is often difficult to track or stop because of how unclear it is how criminals get iTunes passwords or credit card information. These scams have also effected the devolopers of iTunes apps (merchants), by resulting in a huge loss of revenue and often a tarnishing of the developer's reputation.
As you can see E-tail fraud is a crime that is in full affect. Is there a technology that can put an end to online shopping fraud? and will this technology be indefinitely successful? These are questions which have yet to be answered.
WNYC has launched a new radio show that delivers tech news with a local twist: New Tech City. This blog and podcast cover how the digital revolution is changing life and work in the Big Apple. It'a a great source for news and story ideas as well as a model for how to deliver a radio/podcast news story in a tight well produced segment. Each segment is a little over eight minutes long. A link has been added to the sidebar so that you can use New Tech City as a source for your research and as a model for podcasting.
Here's a list of some other worthy tech media for your consideration:
Global Media News is a weekly webcast covering media & technology news from around the world. This webcast is a production of Media Studies students from the SUNY College @ Old Westbury.
This week on the 'Digital Revolution' edition of Global Media News:
"Game Changer: Are Gaming & Interactivity a Catalyst for Change?"
Side-Effects? Gaming the Future of Medicine.
Gaming Bots: Tech for Games in Robotics
Gaming as a Marketing Tool
Gaming to Save the Environment?
Are Pro-Gamers Addicts with a Pay Check?
More Studies on Gaming and Violence
Gaming for War: How Is Gaming Being Used by the Military?
See you in two weeks for more news from the Digital Revolution!
Next on Global Media News:
e-Commerce: Shopping Online
Listen to our webcast streaming live on Thursdays @ 11am EST.
Can't listen live? Our next webcast will be posted by 2:00pm, Thursday, October 25, 2012.
Online shopping is becoming more and more popular as the use of the internet becomes the way of life. People are no longer going to different stores to buy what they need; instead they are using websites like EBay and Amazon to buy a range of items. So how do stores like Macy's, Best Buy, Nordstrom and Walmart just to name a few retain their costumers?
In an article by Stephanie Clifford for the New York Times titled "Lurring Online Shoppers Offline" it explains how stores like WalMart, Macys, Best Buy, and etc are creating an online presence so that their consumers can continue to shop with them instead of going to EBay and Amazon.com to shop for all their needs. Not only are these stores creating an online presence but they are making the shopping experience for online shoppers more personalized. For example Nordstrom now combines their online and offline inventory for shoppers. The reason behind this is if Nordstrom.com no longer has a size that a shopper needs then the shopper can check their local store inventory also known as the offline inventory to find that size. Therefore the customer will still have a good shopping experience with the store. Stores are changing the way in which they sell to consumers because of the change in the digital revolution.
Why leave the comfort of your home to go to the mall? Why deal with any traffic? When a consumer can easily shop online.
''As more consumers come on the Internet, it drives retailers to expand their offerings on line. And when the retailers offer better selection and easier-to-use stores, it draws even more consumers on line.'' said Maria Latour Kadison, an analyst with Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., firm that tracks Internet trends. This quote is from an article by Saul Hansell titled "On-Line Shopping: Good, Bad and Growing; Not Every Maker Wants Its Products Sold on the Net, at Least Not by Others" for the New York Times.
I fell as though this quote highlights the reason why online shopping is becoming so popular. For example personally I love to shop online. I think it's faster and easier. If I'm in a rush and I don't have the time to go to a mall I simply use my phone and order what I need. Depending on how fast I need to recieve the purchase I then decide between free shipping or paying for shipping. Performing this task takes less than ten minutes because everything is at my disposal. I love that stores are making it a priority to have a strong online presence.