Brave New World: Utopia or Dystopia Essay

The novel Brave New World has often been characterized as dystopia rather than utopia. Nevertheless, the superficial overview of the novel implies a utopian society, especially if judging by what the Controller said to John, the Savage: People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma. (Huxley, 2002: 151) Enjoying themselves in feelies, electromagnetic golf and in soma they are never worried, sad, nor solitary. The most frequent sentence pronounced in the novel which describes the people’s emo tional state of mind is „Everybody’s happy nowadays.â€Å" People spend time at work, spending money on new things, having fun and sex which does not involve any deep feelings or love relationship. The moment we take a deeper insight into this society, ideal perfection, or utopia, immediately disappears. The human kind is artificially generated, people are conditioned to suit their social roles in the Community, they are unconscious that their lives are carefully planned, manipulated and controlled by a few leaders. This picture does not imply a Brave New World to be a utopian society. Opposite to utopia stands dystopia, defined by dictionaries as „an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful livesâ€Å" (Hornby, 1995: 362). A little bit softer tone of this definition can be applied to Huxley’s society. People do not live in a fear, they do the job they are predestined to and therefore comfortable with, they lead the life they are made for, without making any arguments, and the most of all they are satisfied and happy with the way the things are. „All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren’t satisfied with orthodoxy, who’ve got independent ideas of their own.† (Huxley, 1995: 155) are punished. But â€Å"Brave New World has its own gentler punishments: for non-conformists, it’s exile to Iceland, where Man’s Final End can be discussed among like-minded intellects, without pestering â€Å"normal† people – in a sort of university, as it were.â€Å" (Atwood, 2007: par. 17). Contrary to this civilized society, there is another smaller society, a Savage Reservation. John, the Savage, raised in the Reservation, has been taken to the Other Place. He was eager to go there as his mother told him beautiful stories about that civilized world. People living in the Reservation are considered not to have been „civilizedâ€Å" and they lead their lives as people did before, in harmonization with nature. They believe in marriage, they are monogamous and religious. Family is important to them. All the aspects of their lives are considered as uncivilized by people from the Other Place who consider them primitive. They still undergo the process of aging and mourn when someone dies. Growing old is artificially stopped in the Other Place, and death is accepted as the usual end. In a Hospital for the Dying eighteen months – old – children get accustomed to death. „All the best toys are kept there, and they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to take dying as a matter of course.† (Huxley, 1995: 109). This society, the World State, has its motto „Community, Identity, Stabilityâ€Å" which governs its citizens’ lives. The society is arranged so that apart from the division to social classes, everybody is part of one unit, one large community which is controlled by only a few people, called the Controllers. The Controllers created the environment which suits people’s lives in order to benefit the Community. Identity is related to the Bokanovsky process. This process creates identical people, twins of the same qualities. They can hatch out up to 96 twins from only one ovary and a gamete. These armies, or sets of identical people with same abilities serve the Community. Therefore „Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!† (Huxley, 1995: 7). Community has to be stable in order to survive. They strive for stability, â€Å"the primal and ultimate need.† (Huxley, 1995: 31). For this reason, apart from bokanovskification, controllers do their best to satisfy people’s impulses and vices, so they arranged â€Å"no strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies.† (Huxley, 1995: 153). Unrestricted copulation and the proverb â€Å"everyone belongs to everyone else†, repeated for so many times during hypnopaedic lessons, complete one another together. They can copulate with anyone they like whenever and wherever they want. Moreover, it is quite impolite not to do so. Having been raised in this manner it was so strange for Lenina when the Savage rejected to be intimate with her. Unlike Lenina, he relies on monogamy and romance, which in the World State are considered as „a narrow channelling of impulse and energy.† (Huxle y, 1995: 29). Even though they are not burdened with problems, people in the Brave New World are deprived of most human qualities. They cannot think for themselves as they have literally built-in instincts, aspirations and abilities. They are ufamiliar with what the term family connotes. What used to be the base of a prosperous and a healthy society is now regarded as something unnecessary, impure and offensive to talk about. When the Controller talked to students about family and relations in family „one of the boys, more sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the mere description and was on the point of being sick.† (Huxley, 1995: 27) since the negative attitude and feelings towards family and family life are embedded from their early childhood. The Controller once more reminds them: â€Å"And home was as squalid psychically as physically. Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group!† (Huxley, 1995: 28). According to Atwood „The word â€Å"mother† – so thoroughly worshipped by the Victorians – has become a shocking obscenity.â€Å" (Atwood, 2007: par. 18). Wherever in the novel characters mention mother it drew impure connotation, like „that smutty word againâ€Å" (Huxley, 1995: 27) „full of mothers–therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity† (28) or â€Å"the word made Lenina look uncomfortable† (79) and finally â€Å"To say one was a mother–that was past a joke: it was an obscenity.† (103). One of the main characters Bernard, an Alpha plus, an intellectual, occasionally shows independent opinion. When he and Lenina were in a visit to a Savage Reservation and saw two mothers breastfeeding, Bernard noted: â€Å"What a wonderfully intimate relationship,† he said, deliberately outrageous. â€Å"And what an intensity of feeling it must generate! I often think one may have missed something in not having had a mother. And perhaps you’ve missed something in not being a mother, Lenina. Imagine yourself sitting there with a little baby of your own. †¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Huxley, 1995: 76) Such an observation was not something somebody would notice in that way, nor say out loud. Lenina is shocked. She looks for soma to calm her down. Her reaction is not unusual, most of the people coming from the World State would react this way for they reproduce artificially and do not take care of the children. The controllers developed many ways to manipulate people’s lives. Reproduction, which used to be the primary goal for all species, including the humankind, is now artificially carried out in laboratories. There are the so called „hatcheriesâ€Å" where human babies are hatched out of bottles and conditioned to fit their anticipated social position. The positions are occupied according to the level of their intelligence. Huxley used the Greek alphabet to name positions, starting from Alpha, the most intelligent people, and ending with Epsilons, morons who are capable for manual work. Different components are given to them while they are in bottles, as well as the amount of the oxygen. This manipulation with lives and deciding upon the role in the society in the Brave New World is a dehumanizing act. Mustapha Mond, one of the controllers, proudly explains to the Savage, who is getting more and more disappointed with what he has seen, the great biotechnology of people mani pulation „his conditioning has laid down rails along which he’s got to run. He can’t help himself; he’s foredoomed.† (Huxley, 1995: 152). Another element of manipulation is soma. It is a kind of a drug, distributed by the State, which brings about pleasant feelings, makes people happy and easygoing, with no side effects. â€Å"Soma promotes a superficial hedonism and causes alienation from the kind of â€Å"real human life† that we know. Furthermore, soma is used to keep the social order as it is.† (Schermer, 2007: 121). When his mother dies in the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying, the Savage encounters Deltas who are about to get their portions of soma. Thinking of his mother, Linda, who died as a slave he decides to free the others. He cries out â€Å"poison to soul as well as body.† (Huxley, 1995: 145) and asks them if they would rather be slaves and puppets, than to experience manhood and freedom. He creates chaos among Deltas when he starts to throw the soma pills out of the window. Deltas panic and attack him. In the end policemen spray the soma cloud into the air and play the Voice of Reason and the Voice of Good Feelings. â€Å"Two minutes later the Voice and the soma vapour had produced their effect. In tears, the Deltas were kissing and hugging one another–half a dozen twins at a time in a comprehensive embrace.† (Huxley, 1995:147). Peace and social stability were restored. World State controllers apply the so called hypnopaedic lessons to manipulate people’s psychology. Hypnopaedic proverbs, rhymes, prejudices and wisdoms are played to children while they sleep. The hypnopaedia turned out to be â€Å"the greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time.† (Huxley, 1995: 21). Moreover, hypnopaedic lessons are not the same for all social classes. For example, when Lenina, the Alpha, saw Deltas she noted â€Å"what hideous colour khaki is.† (Huxley, 1995:42) the hypnopà ¦dic prejudices of her caste. Among many of the themes hypnopaedia covers, some of them are about â€Å"hygiene, sociability, class-consciousness and toddler’s love life† (Huxley, 1995: 99). They also use the hypnopaedic rhyme â€Å"Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches.† ( Huxley, 1995:35) to encourage people to get rid of old things and constantly buy new ones. In this way they created a society accustomed to get rid of the old things and immediately replace them with the new ones. „The novel provides a prophecy of a world of test tube babies, genetic engineering, and social control.â€Å" (Carter and McRae, 2001: 433). This prophecy turned out to be in practice nowadays. Test tube babies are for those who cannot have children in natural way and genetic engineering is used to improve organisms. Ordinary people know almost nothing if those are used for manipulation and creating lives or organisms to compromise humankind. Huxley saw the beginnings of consumer society and therefore incorporated it into the novel. „There was the conscription of consumption. Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the interests of industry.† (Huxley, 1995:35). Nowadays there are numerous shopping malls in cities attracting consumers. Buildings and roads are full of billboards as well as mass media with advertisements which hypnotize masses and make them anxious to spend money. „Brave New World eliminated all problems, sense of loyalty or compassion, love for art and philosophy, as well as any other activities which can lead to individual thinking or even more dangerous to induce passion or feelings.† (Koljević, 2002: 133). In this way Huxley tried to warn the society of his time what can to happen to humankind if people are deprived of activities which can induce individuality, like philosophy, art, religion, family, and above all freedom, to be free to make their own choice and think for themselves. Likewise the existence of one community in the novel, the contemporary world is under the process of globalization, erasing borders between countries, and turning into one global village, one state, offering the same products worldwide and promptly delivering information. The present world is a mixture of the futuristic elements which Huxley mentioned, but it retains all activities which enable people to show their skills, their individuality. In the end the Savage dies. â€Å"The Savage seeks the admittedly narrow freedom to be unhappy rather than to escape into an induced, tidy and controlled soma dream.† (Sanders, 1994: 556). Despite his eagerness to live in the World State with all amenities it offers, he realized that he would rather feel pain if it meant to be free, than to be happy and at the same time to be someone’s slave. Brave New World developed technology to manipulate people. Its dystopian environment eventually killed the Savage, a representative of true moral values which raised the question: Will the true moral values resist as technology and science move forward? Nobody cannot stop their development, but can make use of them for proper purposes. Hopefully the humankind will be smart enough to take out the best of its history, develop science and technology to benefit people, and prevent creating uniformity and sameness to preserve the diversity of human souls. Bibliography 1. Atwood, Margaret. (2007). Everybody is happy now. Retrieved November 5, 2012, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/nov/17/classics.margaretatwood 2. Carter. R. & J. McRae (2001). The Routledge History of literature in English: Britain and Ireland. New York: Routledge 3. GaÃ… ¡parić, Velimir. (2011). Vrli novi svijet – Novi Svjetski Poredak. Retrieved November 2, 2012, from http://2012-transformacijasvijesti.com/novi-svjetski-poredak/vrli-novi-svijet-novi-svjetski-poredak 4. Hornby. A.S. (1995). Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press 5. Huxley, Aldous. (2002, May 18). Brave New World. Retrieved November 6, 2012, from http://www.idph.com.br/conteudos/ebooks/BraveNewWorld.pdf 6. Koljević, Svetozar. (2002). Engleski romansijeri XX veka. Beograd: Zavod za udÃ… ¾benike i nastavna sredstva 7. Sanders, Andrew. (1994). The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press 8. Schermer, M. H. N. (2007). Brave New World versus Island – Utopian and Dystopian Views on Psychophar macology, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 10:119 –128

A Pen and A Paper: The Beauty of Life Essay

When can a person say that he or she finally learn what is life and what life offers? It is such a hard question and maybe not all people can answer it but when can we really give a proof that we were able to fulfill our mission in life? Life is a mystery and not all of the things happening in us have an explanation. Yes, maybe science can answer our question but can it lead us into understanding that life is a matter of taking choices and doing something worthy of our endeavors? One person’s life can be different to other and so it tells us that there are differences and one situation can be the same with hundred more all over the world. Thus, the power of a pen and a paper, magnificently performed its ultimate purpose, and it is to tell the whole world what it there in your world, no restrictions but just plain storytelling of something different or something common but made you who you are and changed the lives of many others. The perfect medium for intercultural communication that will unite several cultures from all over the world, literature is the key to understanding one’s roots and environment. Hidden Magic of Pen and Paper One of the best things in this life is the ability of the people to tell their own stories despite of it passing already. There are some things that can never be done again. However, through literature, we can go back to those days or we can simply learn about the great things in life, whether the story is sad or happy, in the end, we were able to give happiness in this life and we were able to share a piece of paper that holds down someone’s thought about everything in life. There could be several ways on how a person can share his or her thoughts, but a story that can last over a lifetime can be achieved when we decide to write down everything that we wanted to share to others. Although it is not the kind of medium that everyone can understand and everyone can learn on an instant, it is the medium that can be passed to several generations and can reach several nations. Traditional will always be more admired than what the present offers us. Perhaps we can simply say that as we use pen and paper in sharing magnificent stories about life and touching the lives of other people we do not know, we certainly understand that books, pen and paper have the ability to let other know about something associated with us. A Brave Thing It is indeed brave enough to hold an event that each and every one of the people around the world can participate into especially those who prefer to hold a paper and write down their thoughts. Not everyone can come out from their shell and simply let go of their creativity but some are good enough to take the risk. When you finally decided that in writing you can provide others help and enlightenment, then probably you can try to work on something that can help authors and others. Emirates Airline international festival of literature although is new was able to become successful and bring authors and fans together for a conversation, a debate, a dialogue which probably was a good part of the itinerarium. As the festival brings sixty-five authors and poets, they aimed to help others wherein poverty is one of the issues they have to tap. Organizing such events have deep reasons and the organizers were really intelligent to let something like this happened which will link other people from each other especially when we are talking about the boundaries of culture already. Although most of the participants came from one country to another which has different cultures and different environment, the festival served as a stepping stone towards uniting the field, the industry and the people who can understand that there should be no boundaries but the freedom to explain what they feel about. Although the festival seem to be a small gathering well, it is not and that the people have their own ways on how will understand what this festival wanted to convey. There are problems before the festival happened but because of the good intention of this event, it was not stopped and it was able to continue and perform its goal which is to bring writers together and also to bridge between cultures and differences.

Humans & ability Essay

Humans’ most important ability is our ability to communicate through spoken language. The ability of humans to speak makes us stand out in the animal kingdom, according to many philosophers and scientists. It is just natural for humans to desire to know how we developed the ability of using language in communicating. This paper focuses on how the human language evolved. Through the comparative studies of the apes with the human language, it provided information to humans when the necessity for the language structure was developed. INTRODUCTION Study of Primates Communication Abilities. Since the ‘homo sapiens’ have been considered as the human’s cousin, the language of the apes have been studied. Some believes that the human language evolved earlier than them. The American Sign Language or ASL has been taught to a number of apes. Different approaches were also used from 1970s for some species of apes to be trained and taught disciplines of communication. Comparison of the Primate and Human Communication Abilities. Human children’s development of their language was compared to the studies made on different forms of primates. It was evident on human children that their development comes slowly as they grow older. Children in the earliest age start with a single word utterance. At fifteen months old of a child, utterance of two words comes easier. Protosyntatic structures in the language development of children come next with longer word utterances. At this stage, noun phrases were observed in the language structure too. This kind of language development on children is comparatively the same with many primates studied from 1970s to present. CONCLUSION The ability of primates to communicate with protolanguage may be a sign that apes can actually understand, learn, and communicate. However, in many instances where primates were trained and disciplined, it is also important to consider that none of the subjects were able to be taught to verbally speak. Moreover, primate language studies have never showed any language exhibitions from the primates in the wild. The protolanguage development on the human children may be a similarity on both but the primates lack the gestural complex in humans. Therefore, this comparison shows that the humans have the natural linguistic ability and the primates do not. WORKS CITED William O’Grady, et al. (1997). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition. New York : Adison Wesley Longman. Pg. 586. Savage-Rumbaugh, S. , Shanker, S. , & Taylor, T. (1998). Apes, Language and the Human Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Deacon, T. W. (1989). The Neural Circuitry Underlying Primate Calls and Human Language. Human evolution, 4, 367-401.

Economy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Economy - Essay Example At the same time the sociological factors for divorce, single parents and even lesbian and gay marriages has entered into the equation, further increasing choices and complicating matters. When the marriage roles were highly specialized, it gave more power to both man and wife. However the dilution of these roles was necessitated by changing economic circumstances and uncertainty, which led to the evolution of dual income families and its negative impact on family life. Opportunities for women had expanded by the end of the war since some of them had trained to take over male dominated jobs in factories, shops and other establishments. Social acceptance of cohabitation, sex outside marriage and divorce had impacted upon the role of the family. From a high point in the 1960s, marriage had plummeted to lower rates in the 1970s but steadied somewhat since the 1980s (Blau, Ferber & Winkler, 277). Today people prefer to cohabit with or without marriage or children. Recent trends indicate that the median age of marriage has also gone up since people defer getting married till they are well settled individually. There is a marked decline in the space between first and second marriages for the lower segments of the population. While black women are lifting themselves up through education, black males are still falling victim to crime, criminal activities and blame them perhaps erroneously on lack of opportunities for blacks. When it comes to divorce, the specialization of labour roles and opportunities for increasing incomes to become self-supporting has been seen as a reason to walk out of an unhappy marriage. Lack of support in the home and sudden loss of jobs impacting incomes have also been factors for increasing rates of divorce. The trend is that divorce has shown an increasing trend from the 1960s to the 1980s, then steadied somewhat and has declined to 3.6 per 1000 couples in 2006 (Blau et al, 280). As regards cohabitation, while this was taboo and frowned upon in the 1960s, it has become commonly accepted today. Research suggests that it is a prelude to marriage in the USA, with as much as 50 percent of cohabiting couples deciding to get married eventually. Recent trends suggest that young couples today are more inclined to experiment with cohabitation for the short or long term as a prelude to marriage. As regards the comparatively recent trend of same sex marriages and cohabitation, this relationship is not without its problems, as the separation of gender roles is less pronounced and one person may be not willing to step into a defined role for the long term for the mutual benefit of both. When it comes to the question of fertility, the important factor is not only biological, as it does impact on cost of raising a family, juggling responsibilities, career sacrifices, work life balance and quality of children raised. The legalization of abortion, social acceptance of cohabitation with or without children and even rules for child suppo rt has affected the decision to have children. Dual income families have a number of advantages over single parent families, including the full development of the children resulting from the relationship. In Chapter 11 of the book, the authors discuss policies affecting paid employment and the family. The discussion starts off with the former US Welfare program entitled AFDC or Aid to Families of Dependent Children began in the 1960s. Originally started with a view to support widows, the

The strategy that was used by MTN Group to expand to different parts Essay

The strategy that was used by MTN Group to expand to different parts of the African and Middle Eastern markets - Essay Example In 1994, the government authority granted a license to Vodacom and Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN) to operate mobile phone networks in South Africa (Oxford Business Group, 2008). The MTN Group had the vision â€Å"to be the leading provider of telecommunications in emerging markets† (Erasmus and Shenk, 2008 p61). This has been the watchword of MTN and the group is now operational in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East (Banhegyi, 2007). In all these countries, MTN has access to over 488 million people and has over 28 million subscribers (Banhegyi, 2007). It is now listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. In Africa, MTN has operations in Botswana, Cameroon, Cote D'Ivoire, Nigeria, Congo, Rwanda, Swaziland, Uganda and Zambia amongst other nations. MTN Group has its headquarters in South Africa where it all started. This paper examines the strategy that was used by MTN Group to expand to different parts of the African and Middle Eastern markets. It will examine the strategies from the context of dominant theories and ideas relating to international business. The second part of the research will examine the strategies for further expansion of MTN into other markets around the world. MTN Group Expansion Strategy In order to examine the expansion of MTN to different countries around the world, important elements and aspects of International Business will be examined. This include: Entry Mode Entry Timing Firm Size Institutional Matters Entry Mode Entry mode describes the methods and systems used by a business to expand into a foreign country (Andexer, 2008). It describes the various approaches that a business uses to create a presence in a foreign land. Popular methods include franchising, licensing and joint ventures (Ireland et al, 2011). According to Singh (2008), MTN expanded to other countries through a mixture of Greenfield Investments and Mergers/Acquisition. A Greenfield Investment is the â€Å"establishment of completely new operations in a foreign land† (Paul, 2009 p357). In some countries, MTN created new telecommunication companies that were meant to provide services. This was particularly popular in smaller and war thorne African countries that had limited infrastructure. This involved investing and creating new infrastructure from the scratch. Through this, MTN exported their resources to these new venues. They applied principles from South Africa and learnt about the local environments. Through this, they built brands and new systems in the foreign nations that they operated within. In other countries, MTN expanded through mergers and acquisitions. Mergers and acquisitions involve forming strong partnerships or acquiring other businesses in order to being operations in a new country (Johnson and Turner, 2009: MacDonald et al, 2011). MTN Group purchased other companies like Areeba and Spacefon technologies in several parts of the continent (Bridge, 2009). These two companies were sprawling brands in th e Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa (Pan, 2011). MTN just purchased these companies and took over their assets and began to operate in their capacity as an independent company in these foreign countries (Venter et al, 2009). Through this mixture of mergers and acquisitions and greenfield investments, MTN was able to set up different operations around the world. The shareholders of the South African company expanded their scope of control and took over these foreign and new markets. The mergers were mainly

Advanced critical writing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Advanced critical writing - Essay Example This is especially the case where employees are set for promotion and career growth. The noble cause of training and developing the human resources is however not without flaws. Training carries potential financial risks and brain drain, especially when trained employees quit immediately after receiving the training. In light of this, training should be accompanied by best practices in employee management such as motivation and proper staffing in order to achieve the best outcomes. This paper argues that employee training is vital to organizations and individual staffs. Employee training and development improves the performance by eliminating most of the weaknesses in the staffs in the workplace. A training initiative enables the organization to sharpen those skills needed by each staff to limit errors and carry out tasks satisfactorily and within a reasonable duration of time (Jayakumar, David, & Sulthan, 2014). Such programs bring all the staffs covered by it to a higher pedestal where the skill-sets and knowledge are relatively uniform. This limits any weaknesses within the human resources which may otherwise prompt heavy reliance on a few staffs to complete certain tasks. Providing the vital training and development creates generally knowledgeable workforces who can stand in for one another and thus improve functioning teams that can work independently without continuous assistance and supervision (Sung, & Choi, 2014). In addition, Latif, Jan and Shaheen (2013) suggested that training limits employee burnout and high turnover rates which otherw ise would be ubiquitous in a workplace environment where the company relies of a few skilled employees to perform non-technical jobs. A structured employee training and development initiative ensures that the staffs have reliable experience and contextual knowledge to handle virtually any corporate challenge which they may come across. Jayakumar, David and

Implementing non-discriminatory service related to loss and Essay

Implementing non-discriminatory service related to loss and bereavement - Essay Example This paper intends to implement change in the bereavement process through instilling a counsellor in the ward. My clinical area ensures that services and resources are availed through education, health, voluntary sectors, and social care where each of the sectors comes to fore through different times of the bereavement process making work across providers significant to identify provision overlaps and gaps. The voluntary sector role is substantial in developing bereavement organisations across nations. The contribution is crucial because it provides support at points where contact to statutory services and relations to the deceased are over. Bereavement services of support are available through various voluntary agencies, mostly tailored to address bereavement impacts that result from various forms of deaths including road traffic accidents, neonatal and stillbirth deaths, suicide and murder (Humphrey, 2009). The sole Bereavement Services purpose is provision of services and facilities addressing the human life loss (Grey, 2010). The proposed change is to place a bereavement counsellor in one section of the ward. Continuity is in several cases more important as compared to the provider’s professional background while outside of palliative care and hospice services have a variation in willingness of some staff members towards providing this. The relatives will have an acknowledgement that the respective general practitioners will facilitate relief during the period (Machin, 2009). There are difficulties regarding the costing of volunteers’ contribution. Even though unpaid, these personnel have costs above opportunity costs that are relatively difficult to estimate. In case volunteers perceive counselling as favoured activities, the most appropriate choice is that reflecting leisure time rate. In adults studies, the bereaved have a likelihood of retiring while all other efforts of using wage rates in attending bereavement

Club IT's Information Management Needs Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Club IT's Information Management Needs - Essay Example To make it clear and execute effectively I visited the website of Club IT to get more information. It helped me to comprehend the basic structure of the informational technology resources available to them and to implement strategies that can attract more clients. With this in mind, I recollected the five strategies that companies use to achieve competitive advantage in their industries. They are, Cost Leadership strategy-produce products and services at the lower cost in the industry Differentiation strategy-It offers different products, services or products features Innovation strategy- introduce new products and services, put new features in existing products and service and develop new ways to produce them Operational effectiveness strategy: improved the manner in which internal business process is executed so that a firm performs similar activities. Customer-orientation strategy: It is to follow the basic principle of focusing on customers and be at the best.( Rainer & Turban, p . 52) After reviewing the place and its needs I have decided that the best strategy for competitive advantage for Club IT is to use the Customer-Orientation Strategy. The Club IT’s Mission is "We, Ruben and Lisa, offer you live music, DJ's, dance space and refreshments that suit your lifestyle. You are our friends, and we seek to build a community that meets regularly at Club IT" (â€Å"About Club It†, n.d.).This reflects that the club wants to provide friendly environment. The entertainment that they get from the live music and the dance space allows them to be a part of Club IT for a longer period of time. The primary clientele that I have come across is young aged to mid age like 20’s and 30’s.They are jubilant at the fun-filled place and mostly are music lovers with high spirits. It helped me to focus on this section and to enhance the IT resources that are available. The Club IT’s information include intranet resources and it can be well utili zed to the advantage of the clients. It can be managed by a Club In charge or a Manager who is well versed with the computer usage. I suggested that the software can be upgraded to upload the photos of the clients, e-mail address and so forth. It would be a good practice to enter the clients’ name and basic information at the entrance so that we can have track on the number of people visit daily and to give special preference to regular customers. This helps the management to avoid any discrepancy caused by under-aged drinkers. The best part would be to have track of the regular customer record and show them the gratitude and allow them to enter the place without any normal proceedings. They can have suggestions box in the website to get feedback once they visit the place. They can use around 2 to 4 computers as the place is small. The files have to be updated in an accurate manner. This type of software is a lifesaver for clubs, there is not much maintenance needed. The Cust omer-Orientation Strategy would be the right one to follow as its inclination is towards making the customer happy. The foremost step is to make the existing clients happy and to do so we can use the information that they provided and give them the details of the coverage of events through e-newsletters. The database that the club follows must have the information of the clients like the email

Sustainable Scottish Urban Property Development Coursework

Sustainable Scottish Urban Property Development - Coursework Example The Scottish Government has proposed a sustainable urban development strategy for the development of thriving and healthy communities. Such communities should be well planned, well connected and well maintained for making it attractive for inhabitants. The strategy supports an active effort in shaping local services and the local physical and cultural environment. The needs of everyone in the community should be considered and taken into account.The underlying policy behind the land reform is the community right to buy land in rural Scotland. Communities wishing to exercise the right to buy must have sustainable development as the heart of the community, and plans for the land. According to Pillai (2010), the most econocentric approach has been the focus on sustainable economic growth. Also, the community right to buy has its own sustainable development agenda. A diverse range of community ownership plans has been considered. These include the creation of sports facilities for the pr eservation of castles, lighthouses, and villages. Several economic, social and environmental objectives have been approved. It is widely held that communities failing to adopt the right approach will not succeed in using the legislation. Three themes have been critically examined in light of the strategy.Extensive land use rights are an integral attribute of property entitlements and ownership in the UK. Several legal and policy instruments have resulted in incremental reform. According to Rodgers (2009), some of these have been influenced by UK’s accession to the European Community and associated laws such as the European Union environmental law and Common Agricultural Policy. Some changes include the modification in allocation land-based utility in property rights. As land use policy increasingly has an increasing focus on the promotion of environmental stewardship, especially the countryside. General duty of environmental stewardship has become an attribute of land ownersh ip. This includes a consideration of recognition of larger community interests and sustainable management of land.  

Advanced Media Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Advanced Media - Case Study Example In such a fixe position, the Major League Baseball Advanced media (MLBAM) has had an influence on MLB. Some of them are as discussed below. MLBAM offers technological professionalism to MLB. It is in charge of all the television rights, online networks, website issues and club investments. Through this, it has been able to generate more than & 87 million for MLB (Elberse & Laffel, 2011). Years ago, MLB relied on revenue generated solely from ticket sale, stadium concession and clubs contribution. However, through the merchandising influence by MLBAM, it has been able to sell MLB-branded items like for instance hats, jerseys and baseballs. This merchandise was evident for instance when an MLB club; Boston Red Sox won the Baseball league in 2004. In less than a day after the win, there was a $ 4.8 million revenue generation from the club’s gear. After the return of MLBAM’s top executives from the Apple’s Headquarters, it became evident through a mobile meeting they held with Steve Jobs that they had been selected to show case a sport-related application on behalf of the iPad. This is because of its good reputation of having a convincing league website and having a genuine success record of accomplishment in the digital media history. From the reports, MLBAM is in a position to generate more than $440 million of revenue from the sale of tickets, money from paid content, adverts and involving itself in merchandise practice (Elberse & Laffel, 2011).It is true most business ventures have failed in surviving in a digital environment. Luckily, MLBAM has overcome such limitations and associated failures. With such a good record, the company came up with the At Bat app, which became the second sort after application on iPhones and IPods. With it having featured among the best selling apps on iTunes, it got so many nam es. For instance, Macworld

Budgeting and management of organization-reflective review Essay

Budgeting and management of organization-reflective review - Essay Example The research covers a great deal of advantages of budgeting and how it helps an organization to increase its effectiveness and efficiency using budgeting. This research provides knowledge and the importance of budgeting in practical life. The disadvantages of budgeting are also covered in detail providing the drawbacks and flaws in budgeting. This research provides information and scenarios when budgeting should be used and when it should be ignored under the given situation. According to my view, the part that the research failed to address well was the other management tools and techniques that could be used by the company instead of budgeting. Too much emphasizes is laid on budgets whereas, companies are shifting from budgeting to other tools to monitor performance and accomplishment of goals and objectives such as balance scorecard and beyond budgeting. Other tools are not described in detail making budgets look superior over other tools. This research provides an extensive knowl edge of budgeting but this research somehow is overlooking the disadvantages of budgeting. The substitute management tools of budgets are limited making the research vague. Forecasting, balance scorecards and beyond budgeting are some of the most used techniques around the world but this research failed to cover the importance of these tools. ... For literature review, I had to surf the internet for articles and previous researches to begin my work with. This was an easy task as all the relevant information that I needed was already available on the internet from different sources. I just had to pick information from authentic sources. Finding articles regarding the topic was also an easy task as there was much about it on the internet. The difficulty that I faced was in the literature review process, it was consuming too much time. The information on budgets was vast and I had to choose only information that was relevant to my research. Reading the articles was the best part. Articles regarding the method and importance of budgeting in companies provided me with a lot of exposure. After reading those articles I learned the importance of budgeting in real life. To understand more about the concept of budgeting, I had to borrow some books from the library and went through them to provide me with additional and up-to-date infor mation. What I basically wanted to know through this research was that how could budgets help companies to improve their performance and the methods used by the companies to do so. The process of literature review took the most of my time as information regarding the topic had to be covered in detail to provide the importance of budgets in the company. The experience related to data collection and data analysis was tiring and more difficult than I assumed. The data was collected from secondary sources that included articles and previous researches that were conducted on budgeting. The primary data was collected through interviews from managers of different departments of the organization. It was difficult to gather information from the managers of different

Motivation to Help Essay Example for Free

Motivation to Help Essay This paper discusses the social psychological perspective on helping. It tackles the factors that lead people to help other people and the theoretical basis on such actions. It also includes a reflection on the altruistic property in helping. Motivation to Help The murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 as one of the most disturbing cases where almost 40 people were witnesses but none of them called the police in time to rescue her. This baffled social psychologists as to how this was possible. The result of their investigation was the formation of the concept of the Genovese Syndrome. This condition is theorized to exist on certain emergency situations where people encounter a diffusion of responsibility. This was because of the notion that there will be someone who will carry out the responsibility (Alex, 2008). On a personal account, an example of this behavior was observed in the sidewalk near a well-known shopping center. A lady, approximately aged 50 years was walking on the nearly crowded pavement when two men riding a motorcycle snatched her bag. It was not easily taken from her since she tried to defend herself and her belongings. The struggle made the two men shoot the lady until she was down on the sidewalk. The initial reaction of the people there was to run away from the scene. When the two men quickly left, the people slowly went towards the lady. Nobody helped until the lady screamed in pain. There are a number of factors that have resulted to the lack of responsiveness of the people on the victim. One of which is the bystander effect. Since there are more people in the area, the responsibility of helping the victim is divided among them. Each of these people had two choices of whether they should act or wait for someone to do it. Thus, the more people there are in the area means that people feel less obligated (â€Å"The Bystander Effect†, n. d. ). Also, the scream of the lady may have somehow alarmed the people around her, which may have motivated the some people to finally help her. Basically, there are five steps to helping or prosocial behavior. First of all, in order to help, there must be a realization that something is happening. It must also be interpreted as an emergency. The person who is to help must also feel the responsibility towards the situation. He must also know how he is going to help. Finally, the costs of helping are also assessed (Stocker, n. d. ). In this particular scenario, the five steps were evident. Although the initial reaction was to run because of the gun shot, people did realize that it was an emergency situation. However, because there were a lot of people, they did not have much responsibility for the situation because of the assumption that someone will act. When the lady screamed and the two men left, it was the time when someone helped, knowing that the costs are already low and it was no longer dangerous. There are many theories which explain why people are motivated to help. However, the most widely accepted theory on the subject is the theory of Victor Vroom, known as the expectancy theory. This simply states that people are motivated to help because they are expecting something in return such as a reward, or a good performance appraisal (Shah, n. d. ). Based on this theory, the act of helping may not be truly altruistic because of the tendency to expect for something in return. If the one helping does not want anything as a reward, it may be because of other outside factors such as his social image, religion, or the dictate of the society. Nevertheless, additional helped could have been offered in the situation, knowing the there were a lot of people in the situation. If all of them felt responsible for the incident, it is most likely that the crime would have been prevented. References Alex. (2008, February 13). The Genovese Syndrome: When Nobody Helps. Retrieved July 14, 2010, from Neatorama: http://www. neatorama. com/2008/02/13/the-genovese-syndrome-when-nobody-helps/ Shah, K. , Shah, P. (n. d. ). Theories of Motivation. Retrieved July 14, 2010, from Laynetworks: http://www. laynetworks. com/Theories-of-Motivation. html# Stocker, S. (n. d. ). Social Psychology. Retrieved July 14, 2010, from http://webcache. googleusercontent. com/search? q=cache:P4aNe4_DzhsJ:www. spsp. org/student/intro/ppt/myers15. ppt+five+steps+to+prosocial+behaviorcd=4hl=enct=clnkgl=ph The Bystander Effect. (n. d. ). Retrieved July 14, 2010, from Changing Minds: http://changingminds. org/explanations/theories/bystander_effect. htm

Going Green Eco Friendly Practises Politics Essay

Going Green Eco Friendly Practises Politics Essay Going green has become a part of everyday speech. People converse with each other about their own eco-friendly practices, the media portrays new pro-environmental techniques, and the government is promoting going green as well. It seems that with the abundance of information about being eco-friendly, more people would participate. However, many people are reticent to joining the green revolution because of both cultural and psycho-social characteristics including; type of society they live in, location, race, socioeconomic group, gender, and age. In this essay, I will explore each of these factors and relate them to the bigger issues of pollution, global warming, and reduction of the ozone layer, as they affect a world that is far from being as green as it could be. These factors will also assist to provide a framework for a society that has the potential to develop eco-friendly habits. The technology for implementing environmentally sound practices is all around us. However,  ¿Ã‚ ½the biggest challenge is not inventing new technology but persuading more people to adopt technology and practices that already exist ¿Ã‚ ½ (Charles 804). Therefore, it could have been assumed that people did not engage in pro-environmental activities because of their ignorance; specifically, ignorance of the rewards, pleasures, and benefits of being eco-friendly. Some researchers suggest that one way to combat this is by forcing changes upon people. That way, they have no choice but to partake in pro-environmental activities. For example, In Juneau, Alaska, a transmission line for power was cut off and the civilians had to adjust their style of living to not waste the precious electricity they had left until the line was fixed. After the line was fixed, the eco-friendly practices the people had adopted did not disappear but were still used and consequently the city now saves electric al power every year (Charles 805). However, every city is not like Juneau, Alaska, and therefore people in other parts of the country may need to be motivated differently. Some researchers believe that incentives, mainly in the form of money, need to be produced in order to motivate the public. What motivates an individual according to Yeonshin Kim is what he calls Perceived Consumer Effectiveness, or PCE, which refers to  ¿Ã‚ ½the extent to which individuals believe that their actions will make a difference in solving a problem ¿Ã‚ ½ (Ellen, Weiner, and Cobb-Walgren 1991). If an individual has the desire to get involved in pro-environmental action to benefit society, they are more likely to undertake that task rather than put it off. The desire to be green is developed over time and it is based on individual ¿Ã‚ ½s experiences. Different experiences vary based on the type of societal view that an individual inhabits. There are two basic types of societal views that impact eco-friendly initiatives; individualistic and collectivistic. Both Yeonshin Kim and Sejung M. Choi, authors of  ¿Ã‚ ½Antecedents of Green Purchase Behavior: An Example of Collectivism, Environmental Concern, and PCE, ¿Ã‚ ½ as well as Gary Baverstock, an author who writes about sustainable energy at the national level, agree that eco-friendly activity is typically smaller in individualistic societies than in collectivistic societies. This is because individuals in individualistic societies, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, typically focus on themselves while other parts of the society focus on its own problems. Individualistic societies are also typically richer than average. Collectivistic societies, like many Latin American countries, on the other hand, combine the efforts of the individual with those of the community, the government, and the nation as a whole, and are typically on the poorer end of the spectrum. Ther efore all pro-environmental activities are directed at one goal either through education, self-interest, or mass movements. These positive actions are the result of a greater number of individuals that practice self efficacy in collectivistic societies. When individuals have confidence in what they do as well as confidence in that it will have a positive effect on others, it is easier to promote pro-environmental actions through them. Irene Tilikidou, author of  ¿Ã‚ ½Types and Influential Factors of Consumers Non-Purchasing Ecological Behaviors, ¿Ã‚ ½ proposes that to encourage such action in collectivistic societies, the government and the community must educate the individual instead of the other way around. This way, people can learn the values of going green and then combine their efforts with others. Collectivistic and individualistic societies can be found all around the world and one key determinant of whether a society is collectivistic or individualistic is location. Location, therefore, also has a profound effect on the possibility for societies to adopt eco-friendly practices. The Tilikidou survey, which earlier discussed pro-government action to promote eco-friendly actions, was conducted in Greece. One of the key causes of pollution in Greece is caused by their well known traffic problems ( ). However, they are a collectivistic society in which people come to the aid of others in times of need. If the government directs its efforts at educating the populous on the benefits of public transit, it is possible for Greece to start working its way into its own green revolution. Tilikidou also describes how people must have a desire to change. If they are not inclined to become eco-friendly in the first place, it will be much more difficult for them to adopt such practices. Luck ily, Greece is a collectivistic country. In other words it can be assumed that more citizens will be inclined to attempt almost any pro-environmental practice that the community educates them on. Australia is another example of a country trying to educate its population on green practices. It is not completely clear as to whether Australia is a collectivistic or individualistic society. However, based on the article , ¿Ã‚ ½A Case for Establishing a Nationally Based Program for Sustainable Energy and Water Use in the Built Environment: An Investigation Into: Establishing a Vibrant R, D  ¿Ã‚ ½ D Collaborative Centre for Energy Efficient Lifestyles, Developmental Patterns, Building Technologies and Building Design Strategies, ¿Ã‚ ½ by Gary Baverstock, I assumed it was another example of a collectivistic country. I base this assumption on the fact that Baverstock writes about the new establishment called the Research Institute for Sustainable Energy, RISE, which promotes the education of citizens on pro-environmental behaviors through a holistic approach. A country whose universities are actively involved in educating the populous falls under the category of a collectivisti c society. This, however, does not mean that those who do not attend universities are left behind. The government, communities, and lower level schools are also a key factors in educating all parts of any country on eco-friendly developments. RISE promotes the development of a Cooperative Research Centre, or CRC, in which universities across the country will educate their students and the public on eco-friendly behaviors. RISE proposes that the  ¿Ã‚ ½[CRC] needs to be a holistic entity, part of a learning system that includes the community, industry and governance ¿Ã‚ ½ (Baverstock et al 160). However, Australia actually ranks among the top countries in the world for individualism. After seeing this, it makes sense that a program such as RISE be put into place. Among the other highly ranked individualistic countries overall are Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, all countries that are considered rich. Latin American countries typically are more collectivistic but generally poverty stricken. Poverty stricken areas in the United States are usually populated by minorities, which brings me to my next point of emphasis, race. It is generally concluded in the United States that higher educated people, specifically white males with high income, are more likely to take on eco-friendly initiatives. However, there is now research proving that high levels of pro-environmental action are being proposed by minority groups. In Eugene Uyeki ¿Ã‚ ½s article,  ¿Ã‚ ½Diffusion of pro-environment Attitudes, ¿Ã‚ ½ he claims that minority groups are more likely to be pro-environmental since they are constantly being exposed to the least desirable living areas in the world. These places are typically located near waste plants and i ndustry, which are very highly polluted areas. He then concludes that since they are exposed to so much pollution, they are more inclined to take action against it ( ). The highly educated, white male typically lives in the suburbs, a place where there is most likely no effluence of pollution, and therefore he does not see the full effects of pollution. If he cannot see the problematic effects that occur, then cannot have any desire to fix them. However, minority groups might be more inclined to take on pro-environmental behaviors, but they do not always have the resources to do so. The highly educated white populous can actually take on pro-environmental activities because they have the money and the resources to do so. Still, this does not mean that said action is taken. Irene Tilikidou, who has written many articles on recycling and pro-environmental behavior, used a survey to attempt to collect data on people ¿Ã‚ ½s own opinions of their recycling habits. Some conclusions she drew from the survey include that individuals with positive attitudes towards recycling are more likely to participate in it because they are either swayed by self motivation or they think it is their social responsibility, people who are already involved in the going green revolution are more likely to engage in other pro-environmental activities, and that all nations must recognize the benefit of motivation when it comes to consumer attitudes on going green. However the most important conclusion she drew was that highly educated people are more likely to engage in eco-friendly initiatives. This caught my attention not only because it is contradictory to my point that minority and poverty groups are more likely to engage in eco-friendly initiatives, but also that this was based off of conclusion drawn from a survey. Since surveys have a high potential to being exposed to bias, this survey is no different. The highly educated people who participated in the survey could have answered how they thought society expected them to answer rather than giving the true answer. This reiterates how people are sometimes only claiming to be eco-friendly when they are actually not doing much if anything to participate in pro-environmental activities. This shouldn ¿Ã‚ ½t be surprising in the least bit because most people in the present day have been informed of the environmental problems the world is struggling with since childhood. Many children would construct or design posters with pictures of either a sick earth, a slogan promoting pro-environmental behaviors, or anything along those lines. However, what did those children actually do to help the environment after creating these posters or what could they even do to take the actions they promoted? The answer is usually nothing and with  ¿Ã‚ ½nothing ¿Ã‚ ½ could have come a mentality to promote action for or against something without the desire to take truly take action. In The Psychology of Environmental Problems, Deborah Du Nann Winter claims pro-environmental attitudes are more established in children and younger people because they are less likely to bring in family income so it is less complicated for them to vocalize their attitudes (Du Nann 61). Donna Lee King, in her book Doing Their Share to Save the Planet, describes exactly what children are doing to promote eco-friendly activities, but doing nothing about it, as well as why children are led to believe they must promote these activities. Children endorse pro-environmental behaviors mostly through their own illustrations of how to help the earth, what the future of the earth was doomed to become if no action was taken, and how they helped to keep the earth clean, but many had no method of carrying out their claims on a broader scale, no knowledge of the true effect of their claims, nor any inclination to fulfill their claims other than to broadcast them. Her logic for this is that children are led to believe they must advocate going green due through their schooling and the government, and are therefore filled with misinformation ( ). A key aspect of her research was the fact that she divided her observations into subgroups that include location, race, and gender. What she found was that, in the United States, the north was more pro-environmental than the south, girls are more pro-environmental than boys, and poor, black children are more pro-environmental than any other race or socio-economic group (King 67). The first result came as a slight surprise since the northern United States is typically thought of as individualistic and the southern states as collectivistic. My guess is that this is related to the civil war era when the northern states were all about small businesses and working alone to support their families while the south was focused around plantations and working together to support their family and friends. There is not much research to support this assumption however. The two basic conclusions that King drew in that minority groups are more pro-environmental than other socioeconomic groups and that women are more likely to promote going green than men did coincide with my previous research. The most important conclusion, nonetheless, is that support for going green is developed at an early age in the present day but taking steps to perform the actions necessary to complete what children are promoting is lacking. Much of this knowledge of environmental problems but lack of understanding what to do about it can be related to psychology, especially behavioral psychology, which focuses on how the environment plays a major role on how people ¿Ã‚ ½s behaviors develop (Du Nann 88). Behaviorism explains through operant conditioning how behaviors can be developed and modified. Operant conditioning involves taking a behavior and reinforcing it either positively or negatively. Positive reinforcement is used when a certain behavior is desired or should be constructive and can be conditioned through rewards for completing beneficial activities. Incentive recycling is an example of this, where the recycling company offers and incentive such as payment or rewards to those who participate in recycling. Negative actions are operations that need to be done away with through a process called negative punishment. This involves the removal of certain activities in order to promote the action of other activitie s. Some examples of this include the electric company making electric bills go up so people use learn to use electricity more sparingly, gas stations raising the prices of gasoline causing people to think of using alternative travel measures such as hybrid cars, car-pooling, or public transit ( ). It is through operant conditioning that we can educate the present and future generations on how to bring about positive change to the environmental problems surrounding us. Positive reinforcement should be applied to those who are actively participating in going green as well as those who are not so that everyone has an incentive to take pro-environmental action. Negative reinforcement should be applied to those who promote without taking action, such as giving them the resources they need in order to practice what they preach. According to Deborah Du Nann Winter, negative reinforcement should be carried out through three types of discriminative stimuli; prompts, information, and modeling (Du Nann Winter 97). Prompts are signals that communicate what actions are appropriate, including self-reminders to take out the recycle at the appropriate time (Du Nann Winter 97). Information refers to explaining procedures are providing examples of eco-friendly acts such as commercials promoting use of geothermal energy or riding a bicycle instead of driving a car. Modeling involves actions done in public that are then mimicked by others who saw the action take place. This can be as small as picking up a piece of litter in the park. Modeling in behaviorism relates largely to social psychology, the study of how society influences an individual ¿Ã‚ ½s decisions (Du Nann Winter 56). Society has always been a factor in manufacturing individual ¿Ã‚ ½s decisions. It influences career choices, relationships, and especially eco-friendly activities. Many pro-environmental decisions are made because sometime society causes people to feel uncomfortable in such a way that individuals believe they must get rid of that feeling, also known as cognitive dissonance (Du Nann Winter 57). The main way of doing this is by the individual doing what they think society will be most acceptable of. Take the example of the person who picks up a piece of litter in the park. Many of those who watched this person while they were picking up the litter will be influenced in some way. They will either mimic the action taking place at another point in time because they feel that society will accept them for it, or they feel that society will not scrutinize them if they do not do the same, and example of S.H. Schwartz ¿Ã‚ ½s norm activation theory in Rama Mohana R. Turaga ¿Ã‚ ½s article  ¿Ã‚ ½Pro-environmental Behavior: Rational Choice Meets Moral Motivation. ¿Ã‚ ½ Norm activation theory is composed of two aspects,  ¿Ã‚ ½awareness of consequences ¿Ã‚ ½ and  ¿Ã‚ ½ascription of responsibility. ¿Ã‚ ½ Awareness of consequences is described such as an individual must heed the consequences of their actions as it affects the welfare of others, such as not smoking in public, while ascription of responsibility is the drive that compels an individual to take on those actions, such as an incentive for recycling. Another example of cognitive dissonance at work is the survey conducted by Irene Tilikidou that was previously discussed. Those highly educated individuals who answered that they are very eco-friendly could have been acting under the influence of cognitive dissonance in order to stay humbled in the public e ye. The main factors that contribute to cognitive dissonance are social norms. A norm is  ¿Ã‚ ½and implicit rule, an expectation about what kind of behavior is appropriate in a given situation ¿Ã‚ ½ (Du Nann Winter 67). Environmental social norms are typically positive, in which the public expects others to participate in activities that are environmentally sound. However, not all actions are based on social norms. According to Freudian theory, people act of instincts and unconscious drives. Yes these instincts are sometimes socially acceptable because they follow the social norm, but this is not always the case. Some people ¿Ã‚ ½s instincts allow them to act differently than society expects them to. These unconscious drives have no motive other than an inner force compelling individuals to act instinctively or give themselves untrue rationales for their actions. . For example, someone throws an item that could be recycled into the trash based on the untrue rationale that their one item is insignificant and will have no major consequence upon the earth. They however forget that many people think like this because we all have similar human instincts. This could mean that in one day, if half of the people in the United States threw away one item that could have been recycled, over 150,000 pieces of recycle would have been added to the huge garbage dumps each day. Garbage dumps are a one of the biggest problems in America today and it continues to be a global problem (Bacard 43). This is only one aspect of pollution as a whole which is an ever increasing commodity around the world as well. Pollution is further exponentially increased by deforestation to build industry, oil dumping by not only large corporations but individuals as well, and increased use of individual transit instead of public transit. People who operate landfills claim that people will throw away almost anything which in turn causes there to be increasing amounts of damage. This carelessness could be attributed to the fact that people in individualistic countries throw away items without considering the benefits another person might have from it. Collectivistic countries, typically poor countries, need to use all the resources they have and share what they don ¿Ã‚ ½t use to maintain a steady and beneficial way of life. Location also affects pollution. For example, if a perso n lives in the slums, they are constantly exposed to pollution in the streets, at their job, and possibly even at their home. This kind of an environment might allow a person to think they are following the social norms of their society when they contribute to this litter. Also, they might be so overwhelmed and over-exposed to this pollution that they begin to advocate against it. Each of these outcomes can be determined by whether the society they live in is individualistic or collectivistic, as well as whether the person is male or female.

A Postmodernist View Of International Relations Politics Essay

A Postmodernist View Of International Relations Politics Essay Some scholars argue that alternative approaches to IR theory have not made any significant contributions to the theorization of IR. Moreover, these approaches lead our IR theory into disorder and we are left with a lack of direction. However, focusing on Postmodernism, we find it has produced the idea of the power-knowledge relationship to criticize the absolute truth which is proposed by Positivism, and also provides us with different methodologies such as genealogy, text, narrative, discourse, deconstruction and double reading to explain world politics. Besides, Postmodernism has utilized a variety of methods such as deconstruction of text to overcome the theories and concepts that people believe (Der Derian and Shapiro, 1989). In the past international theory has been dominated by four main theories: Realism, Liberalism, Marxism and Constructivism. However, in the last two decades there has been a dramatic change to this picture. A range of new approaches has developed to aid understanding of world politics. In the context of globalization, even Realism seems inadequate to explain issues like the rise of non-state actors, identity politics, transnational social movements and information technology. The new major development is not only underway in the academic discipline of social science but also in the philosophy of social science, in a movement known as Positivism. Thus many alternative ways of thinking about the social sciences have been proposed and since the picture of IR theory has changed a series of alternative approaches has emerged as more relevant to world politics in the twenty first century (Smith S, 2008). Until the late 1980s, most social scientists in International Relations tended to be Positivists. But since then Positivism has been under attack. The assumptions made by Positivism met with dissent as criticism of the IR theories led by Positivism began to emerge (Smith S, 2008). This is the so-called the third debate (Ashley R., 1987; 1990; Walker R. B. J., 1993). It can also be called the Positivism and Post-Positivism debate (Lapid Y., 1989; Jim G., 1990; Smith S., 1995).. The dissent from Positivism prominently contains Feminism, Critical theory, Post-colonialism, Poststructuralism and Postmodernism. Their common idea is that they all see the world as something external to the IR theory (Smith S., 2008).Postmodernism is the term used by sociologists and others to describe a way of thinking that has become pervasive in the Western world in the last twenty-five years. It is an approach to reality that is having a significant effect on architecture, art, education, law, literature, psychotherapy, science, theatre, and the study of history and peoples view of religion (Exploring Christianity-Truth, n.d.). It reached IR theory in the mid-1980s, but can only be said to have really arrived in the past fifteen years (Smith S., 2008).The term Postmodernism first entered the philosophical lexicon in 1979, with the publication of The Postmodern Condition by Jean-Franà §ois Lyotard (Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy, 2005). Other significant writers who have promoted Postmodernism are De Man, Elshtain, Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom, Michel Foucault, J. Hillis Miller, Jacques Derrida, Habermas, Richard Rorty and Rob Walker. Postmodernists who have made important contributions to IR theory are Richard Ashley, James Der Derian, David Campbell and William Connolly. Its origins are found in the philosophies of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Marx and Freud (Exploring Christianity-Truth, n.d.; Smith S., 2008). As cited in Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy (2005), That Postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning. Until today there is no fit definition for the Postmodernism because it appears to be so open a theory that not even its advocates can agree upon how to define it (Geuras D., 2002). Some define Postmodernism as distrustful of all authority and dogmatism. Jean-Franà §ois Lyotard defined it as incredulity towards metanarratives and essentialism (1984: xxiv). The following paragraphs will discuss the significant contributions that Postmodernism brings to IR theory and use the methods that Postmodernists provide to deconstruct the Iraq war. 1. Power-Knowledge relationship and the non-existence of absolute truth Postmodernists emphasized the power-knowledge relationship and criticized the notion dominant in rationalist theories and Positivism that knowledge is irrelevant to the working of power; they also opposed the existence of absolute truth. From the rationalists and Positivists perspective, knowledge is not related to power and truth exists. However, Michel Foucault (1977, 1978, 1984, and 1994) totally disagreed with this idea and argued that power in fact produces knowledge. There is a well-known saying from Foucault that All power requires knowledge and all knowledge relies on and reinforces existing power relations. Thus, no truth exists outside power. To paraphrase Foucaults idea, Smith (2008) provided another saying, how can history have a truth if truth has a history? Whilst Marxism, -Sandpoint feminism Critical theory and Freudian psychoanalysis all support the existence of some fundamental truth about the world, Postmodernism still quarrels with direct access to truth. This aspect is stated most clearly by Stanley Grenz (1995) in a Primer on Postmodernism: Postmodernism affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate . . . There is no absolute truth: rather truth is relative to the community in which we participate (summarized in Dean G., 2002). The Postmodernists use Foucaults approach which is known as genealogy to register and expose the significance of history in the light of this relationship between power and knowledge. Genealogy helps us to realize the process whereby the origins and regimes of truth edge out other discourse and are constructed into the so-called truth. Postmodernism focuses on how fragmental facts dominate others in very concrete ways (see, for example, Edwards P. 1996; Devetak R., 1996, pp.184-188). Postmodernists apply the genealogy approach to doubt the unity and certainty of national identity and explain how the existing appearance of unity and certainty is not natural but artificially constructed (Huang C. C., 2009: pp.138). Richard Devetak (1996) has mentioned that different configurations of power and knowledge give rise to different conceptions of sovereignty, statehood and intervention. Postmodernists always focus on counter-histories, seldom portray the impossible-to-get-to truth, but emphasize the existence of multi-histories, not just the one grand-history (cited in Pà ¶lling-Vocke B., 2005b). Take the ongoing war in Iraq for example; it could be an interesting field of study for Postmodernists to think about its shifting justifications. The US administrations purpose in making war upon Iraq has shifted from Iraqs disarmament to the spread of democracy. Public support from US citizens is essential throughout the ongoing war in the aftermath of 9/11 and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan and the Philippines), and it is reasonable to explain that the power-knowledge relationship contributes to the absence of outcry from US people. People have no means to access what they do not know about (Pà ¶lling-Vocke B., 2005b). 2. Divergent methodologies on analyzing text In addition to elaborating the power-knowledge relationship, Postmodernists are also concerned with the textual interplay behind power politics (Pà ¶lling-Vocke B., 2005b; Derrida J., 1976). They believe that the world needs to be understood as a text, and all references to it are interpretative. Postmodernists claim that the best explanation for the text does not exist because the world is plural and explanations must be plural (Luo Li, 2009). All the interpretations of the world are meaningful and equal thus they use many ways to realize the world, and Postmodernists use techniques such as deconstruction and double reading in explaining the text (world) (Smith S., 2001: 240). 2.1 Deconstruction Postmodernists suggest deconstruction as a method of showing how all discourses and theories depend on artificial stabilities produced by means of seemingly objective and natural oppositions as well as a way to help us realize that there is not only one but always more than one truth behind an event (Smith S., 2008). A good summary of postmodern thinking is given by Os Guinness in Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Where modernism was a manifesto of human self-confidence and self-congratulation, Postmodernism is a confession of modesty, if not despair. There is no truth, only truths. There are no principles, only preferences. There is no grand reason, only reasons. There is no privileged civilization, only a multiple of cultures, beliefs, periods, and styles. There is no grand narrative of human progress, only countless stories of where people and their cultures are now. There is no simple reality or any grand objectivity of universal, detached knowledge, only a ceaseless representation of everything in terms of everything else. In sum, Postmodernismis an extreme form of Relativism. (Cited in Exploring Christianity) People always accept language or concepts constructed with the concept of binary opposition (such as black/ white, public/ private, right/ wrong, male/ female, homosexuality/ heterosexuality) as a matter of course. Constructivists make one of the binary privileged over the other by means of degrading the latter one. For example, in order to diminish white, Constructivists enhance the value of black (Luo Li, 2009). This concept is commonly used in contemporary political systems. When a dominant authority intends to intensify the reliability of a certain interpretation with respect to an event, it puts down the other possible but contrary interpretation.Jacques Derrida, a French Postmodern philosopher, originated the idea of deconstruction (Cky J. Carrigan, 1996). He himself found it difficult to explain the concept, and perhaps the clearest and most succinct definition comes from The Gale Cengage glossary: A method of literary criticismà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦characterized by multiple conflicting interpretations of a given work. Deconstructionists consider the impact of the language of a work and suggest that the true meaning of the work is not necessarily the meaning that the author intended. Whilst the approach has been widely criticized and indeed ridiculed, for example by Anthony J. Fejfar (2006a, 2006b), it is an important tool in understanding what a text may be hiding. What Postmodernists try to do is to use deconstruction approaches to seek the truths behind an event that have been forgotten or deleted, and to explore the idea that a text is not a discrete whole but includes several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; there is always more than one interpretation behind an event. Through the process of deconstruction, several explanations for the first occurrence of war in Iraq are revealed. From the standpoint of the Iraqi government, it was a matter of getting back their territory. For the elite members of an Iraq army group, it seemed a good opportunity for praiseworthy achievement. From an Iraqi generals perspective, it was a good opportunity for promotion. On the other hand, the women of Baghdad who suffered and became homeless may have attributed the terrible war to their fate or to America or may have seen it as a punishment from Allah. English and Egyptian soldiers may have seen different truths behind the war. American Ex President G.H.W. Bush claimed that the purpose of the Gulf war was to prevent the emergence of a dictator like Hitler in Middle East area (Nicholson M., 1998; Yuen H.L., 2006). The deconstruction approach can be used again to seek out more than one truth about the Second Gulf War in 2003. On 5th of February, 2003 United States Secretary of State, Colin Luther Powell proclaimed that the declaration of war was because of Iraqs possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The American government claimed that they were going to destroy the connection between Saddam Husseins Government and Al Qaida terrorists. American Ex President George Bush claimed that the war was inevitable in order to turn Iraq into a democratic nation. Some scholars argued that America intended to plunder Iraqs large oil reserves (Cited in Chui A.T., n.d.). The American administration tends to exclude many other possible interpretations of an event by only presenting the most favorable one with the assistance of the media (Nicholson M., 1998; Yuen H.L., 2006). While G. Bush refers to good and evil and frames the world in such terms, techniques as used during the Cold war, Postmodernists argue that neither term is pure or complete, but only becomes so in contrast to the other (Pà ¶lling-Vocke B., 2005b). Behind any event there is always more than one truth, as with the Gulf War and the 9/11 terrorism attacks on the New York Trade Centre: the reason broadcast to the world by the American administration was not the only one. The American government tends to intensify the reliability of certain interpretations with respect to these two events, and puts down the other possible but contrary interpretation. There are still lots of truths behind these wars that have not been exposed; Postmodernists try to use deconstruction to excavate truths (Nicholson M., 1998; Yuen H.L., 2006). 2.2 Double Reading Double reading is the other means used by Postmodernists to read a text more deeply and realize how there is always more than one reading. After the 1980s, Postmodernists started to use this method to analyze aspects of world politics like the anarchy problematique of dominant IR theory (Ashley R., 1988) and to explain international events such as the Kosovo War, the Gulf War or Nazi issues. Double reading and deconstruction are both methodologies used by Postmodernists to focus on texts and help us to realize that there is no absolute truth. These two ways of elaborating texts are both from Derrida. Derrida used this technique to show how these stabilizations operate by subjecting the text to two readings. The first time of the reading is only a repetition of the dominant concept and text and shows how it achieves its coherence (Smith S., 2008). The second time of reading is trying to read the text deeper and find the obvious contradictions from the first reading. All ideas in the text via the first reading seem natural stabilization; however, utilizing the second reading can help scholars to find some differences. From the double reading approach, people can realize that this way of reading the same text can reveal not only one seemingly natural idea but also can explore the other, contradictory ones. Double reading is a useful, Postmodernist tool to illustrate the shortcomings of the dominant analytical languages. For example, the anarchy problematique- no existence of central government or hegemonic nation in the world- rests on a series of questionable, theoretical suppositions or exclusions, and sovereignty and anarchy are mutually exclusive concepts, which have to be deconstructed (Pà ¶lling-Vocke B. , 2005b). In International Relation Theory, Richard Ashley has performed exactly such a double reading of the concept of anarchy(on the state-level). He first provided the reading of anarchy based on traditional IR theories and then went through the second reading which showed that the seemingly natural opposition between anarchy and sovereignty in the first reading is in fact false opposition. Ashley showed that the truth of the traditional assumptions made about anarchy is arbitrary (Smith S., 2008). While the dominating, orthodox analytical languages of the modernist project analyze the war in Iraq in neo-realistic terms, Postmodernism would use double readings to make visible the assumptions underlying such interpretations (Pà ¶lling-Vocke B., 2005b). Double reading is a useful tool for analyzing the post-war-war (May 2003 onwards) and illustrating that the reality is not as it is perceived by mainstream media (Pà ¶lling-Vocke B., 2005a). Postmodernists would also focus on analyzing the different interpretations of current affairs in Iraq and other world affairs. Conclusion Post-Positivism movements including Critical theory, Feminism, Post-colonialism, Poststructuralism and Postmodernism (which are so-called alternative approaches of IR theory) emerged as a reaction to the methodology led by Positivists and rationalists. . Some scholars have argued that Postmodernism does not have anything significant to contribute to the theorization of International Relations. Not only that, it also leads IR theory into chaos. However, the supporting evidence presented in this essay suggests that Postmodernism effectively provides many different ways of explaining and understanding systems of world politics. Postmodernism can be described as a challenge to the prevailing modernity project. It focuses on counter-hegemonic-theories and explains how conclusions perceived as rational only work within certain parameters. Postmodernists criticize the statement proposed by Positivism and Rationalism that power and knowledge are irrelevant. They present the Power-Knowledge relationship to let us understand that power in fact produces knowledge and they also propose the idea that there is no existence of absolute truth. From the Postmodernists perspective, there is always more than one truth existing in an event. Postmodernism also teaches us to employ techniques such as deconstruction and double reading to deconstruct texts and re-consider concepts that are seemingly natural and a matter of course. With regard to the war in Iraq, Postmodernists prefer to portray a wide array of descriptions and explanations than providing just one as the truth. With the world understood as a text, it is important that the textual interplay behind power politics is clearly seen and that we realize that all the references to this text are interpretive. Politicians always provide a reason for the war in Iraq such as It is about democracy and freedom or It is about the abundant oil. Postmodernists do not believe in the existence of only one truth behind the war and try to utilize genealogy, deconstruction and double reading to deeply analyze the text and explore the multiplicity of reasons. Although there are so many controversies surrounding the emergence and existence of Postmodernism, it is absolutely wrong and unfair to say that Postmodernism does not bring any significant contribution to our IR theory. During the past 20 years, Postmodernists have provided intelligent methodologies like double reading and deconstruction that may enable us to better analyze contemporary political issues. Obviously, Postmodernism plays an important role in the theorization of IR especially since economic structures, media, political and diplomatic systems have evolved into completely different forms from what they used to be, and they can no longer be easily analyzed by traditional IR theories.

Workplace Violence Essay -- Workplace Health and Safety

Workplace Violence In January 1997, a man drove into the parking lot of a major company in Baltimore County, pulled out a gun, and aimed it at his girlfriend who was sitting in her car and killed her. The man shot himself. Several days after that, another man in another part of the county, in attempt to commit suicide, drove his vehicle the wall of a business and injured an employee who was sitting at his desk. (National, 1996) There is a general perception that violence is growing in our society. Almost everyday we can turn on the news or read the newspaper and we hear stories about horrific workplace murders and assaults. Not only is the workplace violence increasing in those workplaces where violence is expected, such as correction, enforcement, and mental health, but also it has become a danger in almost every occupation that deals with the public. Therefore, few would argue that over the last ten years, occupational violence has become a serious problem facing workers and employers alike. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, murder was the second leading cause of death in the workplace in 1996, accounting for 15% of all workplace deaths. Although the press focuses on the â€Å"crazy worker-type violence,† where a worker kills his supervisor or co-worker, violence among co-workers occurs very infrequently compared to other types of workplace violence. Since 1992, violence among co-worker s has averaged only about 6% of all work-related homicides. The rest are the result of robberies or other crimes. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, each year nearly one million individuals become victims of violent crime while working or on duty. Eight percent of all rapes, 7% of all robberies, and 16% of all assault... ...al Safety and Health Alert: Request for Assistance in Prevention Homicide in the Workplace, US Department of Health and Human Services, Sept 1993. 6. Irvine, Robert B, â€Å"Workplace Violence, What To Do When Tragedy Strikesâ€Å", Public Relations TACTICS, Dec. 1995. 7. Labor Occupational Health Program, Violence on the Job: A Guidebook for Labor and Management, University of California, Berkeley, 1997 8. Mattman, Jurg W, â€Å"Preventing Violence in the Workplace â€Å", Online Available: http://www.noworkviolence.com/articles/preventing_violence.htm 9. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, â€Å"Violence in the Workplace, Risk Factors and Prevention Strategies†, Current Intelligence Bulletin 57, June 1996. 10. Robinson, Janet, â€Å"10 Facts Every Employer Should Know About Workplace Violence†, Online Available: http://www.smartbiz.com/sbs/columns/robin1.htm Workplace Violence Essay -- Workplace Health and Safety Workplace Violence In January 1997, a man drove into the parking lot of a major company in Baltimore County, pulled out a gun, and aimed it at his girlfriend who was sitting in her car and killed her. The man shot himself. Several days after that, another man in another part of the county, in attempt to commit suicide, drove his vehicle the wall of a business and injured an employee who was sitting at his desk. (National, 1996) There is a general perception that violence is growing in our society. Almost everyday we can turn on the news or read the newspaper and we hear stories about horrific workplace murders and assaults. Not only is the workplace violence increasing in those workplaces where violence is expected, such as correction, enforcement, and mental health, but also it has become a danger in almost every occupation that deals with the public. Therefore, few would argue that over the last ten years, occupational violence has become a serious problem facing workers and employers alike. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, murder was the second leading cause of death in the workplace in 1996, accounting for 15% of all workplace deaths. Although the press focuses on the â€Å"crazy worker-type violence,† where a worker kills his supervisor or co-worker, violence among co-workers occurs very infrequently compared to other types of workplace violence. Since 1992, violence among co-worker s has averaged only about 6% of all work-related homicides. The rest are the result of robberies or other crimes. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, each year nearly one million individuals become victims of violent crime while working or on duty. Eight percent of all rapes, 7% of all robberies, and 16% of all assault... ...al Safety and Health Alert: Request for Assistance in Prevention Homicide in the Workplace, US Department of Health and Human Services, Sept 1993. 6. Irvine, Robert B, â€Å"Workplace Violence, What To Do When Tragedy Strikesâ€Å", Public Relations TACTICS, Dec. 1995. 7. Labor Occupational Health Program, Violence on the Job: A Guidebook for Labor and Management, University of California, Berkeley, 1997 8. Mattman, Jurg W, â€Å"Preventing Violence in the Workplace â€Å", Online Available: http://www.noworkviolence.com/articles/preventing_violence.htm 9. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, â€Å"Violence in the Workplace, Risk Factors and Prevention Strategies†, Current Intelligence Bulletin 57, June 1996. 10. Robinson, Janet, â€Å"10 Facts Every Employer Should Know About Workplace Violence†, Online Available: http://www.smartbiz.com/sbs/columns/robin1.htm

A New Type of Film Essay -- Filmmaking Media Entertainment Movies Essa

A New Type of Film Every day we are one step closer to filmmaking being as easy as taking out the brush and oils for a painting (Veneruso, 1998). The new technologies that have emerged in films have been the latest in a string of inventions, to help make the film industry better. Films have become an important part of our culutre since they started being made and shown regularly around the world. Although new technology in films may be nothing compared with other technology, it does seem that this technology will benefit a lot of people, and help to improve the quality of the entertainment. These new technologies to the film industry all have important roles in the new industry. Computer generated images, subtitle technology, digital theatre systems, three-dimensnal sound, the colour and black & white technology and the new digital media technology are the main and most infulensal of these technologies for the film industry. First though to see how far films are technologically advancing we need to see have far they have come already, by following the history that is filmmaking. The movie business has been adapting to changing technology for more than 80 years. Prior to the 1930’s, movies were not only without colour, but also had no sound or dialouge (Howell, 2001). The 1920’s started films off in black and white, and most had no sound, as they were difficult to make because of the microphones being unable to move. This lead to films being accompanied by live musicans in the theatre. It become easier to make talking films in the early 1930’s and they become very famous quite quickly. The first full-length colour film was â€Å"Becky Sharp† and it was made in 1935. Once TV hit the scenes in 1950 the film industry had to re... ...ry Movies. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june01/movies_tech.html Jardin, Xeni. (2004). MP3 Pioneer Debuts Spatial Sound. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,64353,00.html Microsoft Corporation. (2002). Digital Media Distribution Opportunies for the Film Industry. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/disopwhitepaper.aspx Saenger, Diana. (2004). New Black and White/Color Technology for Stooges DVDs. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://classicfilm.about.com/od/dvdnews/a/stoogesnews7210.htm Veneruso, Tara. (1998). A Report from the National Association of Broadcasters Convention Las Vegas, Nevada April 4-9, 1998. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://www.nextwavefilms.com/ulbp/cutnab98.html A New Type of Film Essay -- Filmmaking Media Entertainment Movies Essa A New Type of Film Every day we are one step closer to filmmaking being as easy as taking out the brush and oils for a painting (Veneruso, 1998). The new technologies that have emerged in films have been the latest in a string of inventions, to help make the film industry better. Films have become an important part of our culutre since they started being made and shown regularly around the world. Although new technology in films may be nothing compared with other technology, it does seem that this technology will benefit a lot of people, and help to improve the quality of the entertainment. These new technologies to the film industry all have important roles in the new industry. Computer generated images, subtitle technology, digital theatre systems, three-dimensnal sound, the colour and black & white technology and the new digital media technology are the main and most infulensal of these technologies for the film industry. First though to see how far films are technologically advancing we need to see have far they have come already, by following the history that is filmmaking. The movie business has been adapting to changing technology for more than 80 years. Prior to the 1930’s, movies were not only without colour, but also had no sound or dialouge (Howell, 2001). The 1920’s started films off in black and white, and most had no sound, as they were difficult to make because of the microphones being unable to move. This lead to films being accompanied by live musicans in the theatre. It become easier to make talking films in the early 1930’s and they become very famous quite quickly. The first full-length colour film was â€Å"Becky Sharp† and it was made in 1935. Once TV hit the scenes in 1950 the film industry had to re... ...ry Movies. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june01/movies_tech.html Jardin, Xeni. (2004). MP3 Pioneer Debuts Spatial Sound. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,64353,00.html Microsoft Corporation. (2002). Digital Media Distribution Opportunies for the Film Industry. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/disopwhitepaper.aspx Saenger, Diana. (2004). New Black and White/Color Technology for Stooges DVDs. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://classicfilm.about.com/od/dvdnews/a/stoogesnews7210.htm Veneruso, Tara. (1998). A Report from the National Association of Broadcasters Convention Las Vegas, Nevada April 4-9, 1998. Retrieved September 14, 2004, from http://www.nextwavefilms.com/ulbp/cutnab98.html