Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other Essay Example for Free

Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other Essay Nowadays, the use of social media has increased enormously, making us more connected either in public or privet communication in the region. It has tremendous effects on challenging many countries that have sought freedom. In fact, the so-called Arab spring has been titled as â€Å"social media revolution†, starting from Tunisia and spreading over to Egypt, Libya, and other countries. The Arab Spring got worldwide social, political and media attention due to its characteristics and connectedness with local, regional, and international interests. There is no doubt that social media had an impact on events that had happened in Arab spring, but it is not in the way that many researchers might think. These are confirmed by two individuals whose articles are going to be discussed, namely Malcom Gladwell and Richard Dawkins. Each one of them supports this in a different view. The article â€Å"Small Change† by Malcom Gladwell is about social media and its effect. The article aims to convince the reader that social media does not lead to any social and political changes as one would think. Although the popularity of social media has been increasing tremendously, social media fails when it comes to actual changes. While many researchers might think that social media played an important part in the Arab spring, it was supportive but not exclusively responsible for the events of the Arab spring. Malcom Gladwell offers a very effective argument to clarify why social media is not a sufficiently effective tool used in organizing social or political activism. Based on historical events Gladwell states that in the absence of social media protestors from different events tend to be stronger, more organized, and people have stronger emotional feelings. To make his argument strong, he starts with the Greensboro sit-ins as a solid example. Despite the fact that the protestors were only four college students, it ended up involving a large number of students across the South. This happened despite the fact that there was no social media such as Facebook or Twitter during that time. Then he illustrated the weak-ties that are related to social media and how it leads to high risk of activism. Social media establishes a large network based upon consensus beside a hierarchy, and then he disputes that many activist movements have not succeeded on the large scale when lacking a central author ity and hierarchy. These historical examples not only support his thesis with solid logic, but they draw an intense proof that Civil Rights Movement came without the use of social media. Gladwell shows extensive knowledge and research on the topic as well as the use of countless examples, making his article rhetorically effective and persuasive. He addresses counter-arguments in both the beginning and end of his article, making his article tremendously strong. However, throughout his article, Malcolm Gladwell could have built an indisputable rhetorical argument if he gave more evidence about the Arab Spring. For those countries that had been seeking freedom, especially the Arab spring, social media such as Facebook and Twitter played a major role to bring the news since the majority were not connected due to the lack of access to instruments that they could use to access information. During this time, even the social media in general was suspended. They therefore relied on radio and TV for news and information. Richard Dawkins on the other hand declares in his article that what lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, warm breath, not ‘a spark of life’ but information, words and instructions. He says that the cells of an organism comprise of nodes that are richly interwoven communication networks that transmit and receive information. They also codes and decodes the received information. Evolution in itself also embodies on an ongoing change of information between an organism and his or her environment. He says that whenever a person wants to understand life and all the aspect which surround it, one needs to think about information and technology. Human beings have been surrounded by information which is coming from all quarters. The skills of human beings now include Googling and texting. To some extent, it can be agreed that what is being proposed by Dawkins is true to some extent. He says that the rise in technology has led to the change in which people view life. People nowadays view their lives in a very different way. It is true that when technology was invented, its aim as to help improve the lives of the human being. Human beings are now using the technology not to benefit themselves to the extent that they forget their friends. People are more concerned nowadays with what they post in social sites like Facebook and Twitter than the conversation which they carry out with their friends. The overreliance on technology is affecting the society is quite a number of negative ways. When Googling and texting for example which Dawkins is proposing that people are now engaging themselves into, has led to a number of negative results. The students who should be engaging themselves in serious research are no longer doing that. They google whatever information that they are looking for and then present whatever they find as the result. This has led to production of professionals who are themselves amateurs. Copy pasting has been the order of the day (Turkle, 2011: 34). The society is also the social skills which used to be embraced in the olden days. When people meet, they rarely shake hands and this reduces the bond between people. Shaking hands make people share their deepest sentiments with each other. These are activities which are now not being done. They are considered as being outdated. Technology is truly isolating people. Sometimes during the break time, you realize that each and every student in school is attached to their phone. They have no time for the physical friends. They only appreciate the virtual friends whom they have on the social sites. When a person sees the number of followers they have on Twitter and Instagram, they tend to believe that they have the world with them. This might not be the case (Turkle, 2011: 34). Dawkins states that the way in which an idea is spread is not very important. The idea can either thrive in the meme pool or it can dwindle depending on the way in which the idea is perceived at first. An example that he uses is the belief in God. He says the belief has been replicating for now a long time. It has been spread through the use music and art. This is the reason to date, many people believe in the existence of God. This cannot be used to justify the fact that the meme pool is effective. The idea of the meme can only be applied to some elements. There are some people who are also just alive and they do not have the improved technology at their fingertips. They will still get access to the information but at later stages. It can therefore be agreed that even though the technology improves the way in which people interact with one another, it has also affected the manner in which people are interacting. References Log In The New York Times. Log In The New York Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Nov. 2014. Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Cambridge, 2011. Print. Source document

Portrait Of A Man Trying To Hang On :: Essays Papers

Portrait Of A Man Trying To Hang On Wade Whitehouse is a man who is frightened to death of following in his father's footsteps, yet he follows them exactly. His violent temper and alcoholism are giant neon signs of how much he is like his father Glen and how closely related their actions are. Wade and his brother Rolfe lived with a violent and destructive man whose behavior was both mentally and physically threatening to his sons. Their father had successfully destroyed them in a long process that began when they were young boys, as they stood and watched him strike their mother. These boys grew up with only feelings of fear and loathing toward their father. Rolfe is the son who in a sense escapes and tells this story as the narrator. Wade, on the other hand, is captured by the violence and alcoholism and acts in the same manners as his father before him. Wade and his father anesthetize their pain through alcoholism which Rolfe manages to just barely escape. We see Wade as a drunk, abusive, and overall sad father, ex-husband and sheriff who has lost control of his life. He is a very complex character from a small town that becomes mentally ill as time goes by. Is this due to his alcoholism? Does everything stem from his alcoholism and the fact that his father was mentally and physically abusive to both him and his brother? Is alcoholism Wade’s affliction? Or is it the devastating and lingering effects of the child abuse he grew up with? There are many things in Wade’s life that might have driven him to become an alcoholic. For example his actions have cost him his marriage to Lillian, his daughter Jill doesn’t want to live with him, he is a sheriff in a small town with little crime, his mother dies and his father is hard to cope with in his old age, and his girlfriend Margie only stands by him until finally she too has had enough. These seem like common occurrences in the life of many Americans today, yet these are the things that lead people to alcoholism. Wade is being held down by more baggage than most have. In a quest to assert himself, Wade strikes out against those who are most important in his life and is faced with the disrespect of the town.

Siebel’s Critical Success

The definition of Customer Relationship Management is providing exceptional customer service. This entails rapid responses to all customer inquiries and demonstrations of active concern for customer satisfaction. CRM is a comprehensive sales and marketing approach to building long term customer relationships and improving business performance. It is a way of helping an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way. For example, an enterprise might build a database about its customers that described relationships in sufficient detail. The best Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems include: 1) The ability to provide faster response to customer inquiries 2) Increased efficiency through automation 3) Having a deeper knowledge of customers 4) Getting more marketing or cross-selling opportunities 5) Identifying the most profitable customers 6) Receiving customer feedback that leads to new and improved products or services 8) Obtaining information that can be shared with the company's business partners. How Siebel's Critical Success Factors assists in the internal growth of the company and their competitive advantage. Siebel Systems enable organizations to create a single source of customer information that makes it easier to sell to, market to, and service customers across multiple channels, including the Web, call centers, field, resellers, retail, and dealer networks. This is done by providing a comprehensive family of multichannel eBusiness applications and services. Built on a proven, component-based architecture, Siebel eBusiness Applications are designed from the ground up to be completely Web-based, deliver support for multiple computing platforms, and provide automatic upgrades and software distribution that significantly reduce the total cost of ownership. By using the web Siebel use a common channel to market their wares which financial feasible, considering the amount of information they have to make available to existing and potential customers. The fact that one of their CSF's is to satisfy customers through any service channel, is an advantage that would benefit Siebel in terms of internal growth and competition. Since they have such a multiplicity of service channels incorporating many aspects of customer cohesion, they have a competitive edge over other companies offering the same services. How Siebel address it's clients needs – Siebel eBusiness Applications allow organizations to create a single source of customer information that makes it easier to sell to, market to, and service customers across multiple channels, including the Web, call centers, field, resellers, retail, and dealer networks. The multiplicity of the informative avenues that they provide is very compatible with whatever variety of customers they may come into contact with. – They provide support for all the major computing platforms including mobile clients, connected clients, thin clients, and handheld clients. – Create a single source of customer and product information that can be used to tailor product and service offerings to meet the unique needs of each customer across all channels of customer interaction – Deliver the only integrated, multichannel, Web-based configuration solution that is easy to use, deploy, and maintain Critical Success Factors of Claritas Claritas is a provider of marketing data. This data is arranged so that their customers can more easily initiate contact with customers in whatever field they choose to apply. Their users can target their own consumer needs so that the product or service they use can be tailored to fit the desired customer. The vast areas that their data covers i.e. trends, geographical locations and important events, ensures that they offer the best service possible for the service that they are offering which is a resource for marketing needs. This is a competitive advantage and as their clients speak of their efficiency to colleagues, this can only mean internal growth in favour of the company. Claritas addresses its clients needs by combining customer data with unique market information and insights enabling its clients to systematically identify, quantify, reach, and retain their most profitable customers. Their ways of doing this are by providing geodemographic information, qualitative audience research, and highly detailed data on advertising spending across all media. This is a main Critical Success Factor. It involves providing customers with all the information that is available and necessary to gain and retain customers. The service Siebel offers is providing comprehensive application software that can reach a plethora of customers by travelling through many avenues such as the Web, field, retail networks. This service can be improved by Claritas marketing data which can help direct Siebel's customers to choose the appropriate channel to reach the customers through. In layman terms, Claritas provides the information about the customers and Siebel provides the means in which to contact the customers. This can help both companies and allow them to mutually benefit from each other's strengths. What is a call centre infrastructure? The call centre is a central information point, which the rest of the company can use to gather data about the relationship between companies, products and customers. Murphy Brewery has 9,000 customers base. The problem with them is that their customers were presented with various points of contact within our organization without any one individual taking responsibility for a specific order, query, or request. Customers found that their requests and queries often went unresolved. This information was derived through conducting a self-commissioned survey. The solution was to establish a Customer Care service, i.e. a call centre, that would integrate all concerned information for any agent dealing with a customer. By understanding how customer trends are moving, a company can control the bases of their existence, their customers, and thus maintain a competitive edge over their rivals like Murphy Brewers. This relates to CRM because it is providing the best customer service possible by knowing the customer needs. Activity 2: A Power Analysis of your position Activity 3: Research Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Benchmarking. The definition of ERP is an attempt to integrate all departments and functions across a company onto a single computer system that can serve all those different departments' particular needs. It facilitates communication and enables information to be shared more easily. In the business sense for example, if an order is made, it can be done with all the information about the product or service being ordered available and by eliminating the need to go into different departments, it saves time. Benchmarking involves setting a baseline against what a company should have done or being doing to remain competitive. This follows certain criteria such as portability, flexibility, geographical application, facility of integration and facility of implementation. PeopleSoft run a client server architecture supporting Windows, cell phone technology (WAP), Unix, Linux and Macintosh. They are able to cater for industries, the federal government, Healthcare, manufacturing, Higher Education, Retail and Utilities. This shows an ability to tailor packages for almost any given enterprise. PeopleSoft can implement applications that can handle enterprises on a world wide basis.Facility of integration They offer an open integration platform to connect your enterprise to almost any form of enterprise which links to their application on worldwide basis. Facility of Implementation Their software can be easily implemented and installed if desired. PeopleSoft offers a complete packaged software solution for medium sized companies. Since 1987, they have built global enterprise application solutions that meet the changing business demands of organizations worldwide. Portablity The company whose ERP systems are being benchmarked is called SAP. Linux, WAP (Mobile phone communications) and Unix. Flexibility Offers custom made solutions and off the shelf industry solutions. Geographical application Supports global e-commerce, allowing the organisation to trade world wide with their systems. Facility of integration All major departments can be integrated into a large software solution. Facility of implementation Support provided after the software package has been purchased by a company. Activity 4: Profiling a Strategic team: Executive EQ test The company mission statement appears to be the best British garden magazine. They aspire to become the leading focus of expertise in garden designing, house decoration and culinary worldwide. For example, the service of providing gardening lessons through the Internet could be offered, and eventually they would expand into other educational areas. They seek to explore other medium attaining international coverage. A means of doing this could be by using SPY IN THE SKY services enabling HiMAC to take aerial photos of any garden and sell specialised tours. This would serve as a means to provide course over the Internet. This involved aligning financial activities and reports for all titles. In terms of business change, they proposed to have a team solely devoted to dealing with customer queries. They recognised the need for the customer base to expand in order to deal with a greater diversity of customers. They noted some supplier that could help the primary set up of computer based courses as a support if HiMAC took up more educational courses for other organisations. There was a recognition for the need of some departments to receive training for these new technologies. The accounting functions needed to be integrated into one single report. The decision to copy the model of an Internet based course from SurferTeaching Company was both good and bad. It was good in the sense that by copying, it reduced labour content with less work being involved than if one was innovative. It also provided less work by speeding up processes. It was bad in the sense that by copying another practice, it might not have been tailored for HiMAC as a specific company and thus caused problems like internal division. By not being specifically tailored for their company, its design would not cater for their CSF, goals and objectives. Secondly, the practice may carry inherent imperfections which HiMAC might not recognise and breed into their companies thus bringing new issues to consider.

Quality Management Process At Jubilee Services - 1254 Words

Quality Management Process at Jubilee Services Incorporation Student’s Name University Affiliation Date Quality Management Process at Jubilee Services Incorporation Quality Management Process Jubilee Services Incorporation (JSI) has been successful in business since 2003. However, ten years later, Jane, the human resource manager locates herself in a critical financial quandary. The demand for manpower resource in the company is speedily declining. She thinks that this is a consequence of a slowdown in economic milieu and that her company is one of the victims. Jane also believes that she has done nothing erroneous and that financial turmoil her company is undergoing will be a thing of the past soon. However, the truth is that the problem of the entire organization transcends the monetary crisis. The human resource manager must hence come up with viable solutions to mitigate the challenges facing the company. The paper explains the process of total quality management at Jubilee Services Inc. from the human resource manager s standpoint. Problem Statement Even though Jubilee Services Corporation have been doing good in the business for the past ten years, the current pecuniary plunge calls for drastic actions to salvage the company. Customers have been complaining of poor services, a situation that makes them opt for the competitors services. 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