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Dot-com

Dot-com

Dot-com (also dotcom or redundantly dot.com) companies were the collection of start-up companies selling products or services using or somehow related to the Internet. They proliferated in the late 1990s dot-com boom, a speculative frenzy of investment in Internet and Internet-related technical stocks and enterprises. The name derives from the fact that many of them have the ".com" internet top-level domain suffix built into their company name.

Overview

In 1994 the Internet came to the general public's attention with the public advent of the Mosaic web browser and the nascent World Wide Web, and by 1996 it became obvious to most publicly-traded companies that a public web presence was no longer optional. Though at first people saw mainly the possibilities of free publishing and instant worldwide information, increasing familiarity with two-way communication over the "web" led to the possibility of direct web-based commerce (e-commerce) and instantaneous group communications worldwide. These concepts in turn intrigued many bright young, often underemployed people (many of Generation X), who realized that new business models would soon arise based on these possibilities, and wanted to be among the first to profit from these new models. The suddenly low price of reaching millions worldwide, and the possibility of selling to or hearing from those people at the same moment when they were reached, promised to overturn established business dogma in advertising, mail-order sales, customer relationship management, and many more areas. The web was a new killer app -- it could instantaneously bring together unrelated buyers and sellers, or advertisers and clients, in seamless and low-cost ways. Visionaries around the world grabbed friends, developed new business models that would not have been possible just 3 years before, and ran to their nearest venture capitalist. The venture capitalists saw the fast rise in valuation of other such companies, and therefore moved faster and with less caution than usual, choosing to hedge the risk by starting many contenders and letting the market decide which would succeed. The low interest rates in 1998-1999 helped increase the startup capital amounts. Of course a proportion of the new entrepreneurs were truly talented at business administration, sales, and growth, but the majority were just people with ideas, and didn't manage the capital influx prudently. This majority formed the bulk of the "dot-com" companies. A canonical "dot-com" company's business model relied on network effects to justify losing money to build market share, or even mind share, through giving their product away in the hope that they could eventually charge for it. (Yahoo! and a few other successful survivors of the era actually succeeded with this strategy.) Many raised cash through public offerings on the stock exchanges, with stock often soaring to dizzying heights and making the initial controllers of the company wildly rich on paper. Dot-com companies were stereotyped as having extremely young and inexperienced managers wearing polo shirts with lavish offices including foosball, free food and soft drinks as well as Aeron chairs. Companies frequently held parties or expositions where free pens, t-shirts, stress balls, and other trinkets were given away emblazoned with the company's logo. The companies were also stereotyped as requiring extremely long work hours and high pressure. An annual event started in 1995, the Webby Awards, working to recognize the best websites on the Internet. The event was typically an extravaganza held annually in San Francisco, California, near the heart of Silicon Valley. The ceremonies mirrored the flashy dot-com lifestyle with costumed guests, modern dancers, and faux-paparazzi to make guests feel important. The event peaked in 2001 with thousands in attendance. In 2002, it was a more somber event with only several hundred guests and little of the excess of the late 1990s. In 2003, the awards were reduced to a virtual event because many of the nominees couldn't fly to San Francisco due primarily to corporate belt-tightening and fear of losing their jobs. The 2005 edition was held in New York City. Historically the dot-com boom can be seen as similar to a number of other technology inspired booms of the past including railroads in the 1840s, radio in the 1920s, transistor electronics in the 1950s, computer time-sharing in the 1960s, and home computers and biotechnology in the early 1980s. Software engineer and entrepreneur Brad Templeton claims on his homepage [http://www.templetons.com/brad/] to have been the creator of the first dot-com.

Soaring stocks

A stock market bubble in financial markets is a term applied to a self-perpetuating rise or boom in the share prices of stocks of a particular industry. The term may be used with certainty only in retrospect when share prices have since crashed. A bubble occurs when speculators note the fast increase in value and decide to buy in anticipation of further rises, rather than because the shares are undervalued. Typically many companies thus become grossly overvalued. When the bubble "bursts", the share prices fall dramatically, and many companies go out of business. The late 1990s boom in technology dot-com company stocks is a good example of a bubble, which burst in late 2000 and through 2001. The dot-com model was inherently flawed: a vast number of companies all had the same business plan of monopolising their respective sectors through network effects, and it was clear that even if the plan was sound, there could only be at most one network-effects winner in each sector, and therefore that most companies with this business plan would fail. In fact, many sectors could not support even one company powered entirely by network effects. In spite of this, vast fortunes were made by a few company founders whose companies were bought out at an early stage in the dot-com stock market bubble. These early successes made the bubble even more buoyant. An unprecedented amount of personal investing occurred during the boom. Stories of people quitting their jobs to become full-time day traders, while not representative, were common in the press.

Free spending

According to dot-com theory, an internet company's survival depended on expanding its customer base as rapidly as possible, even if it produced large annual losses. The phrase "Get large or get lost" was the wisdom of the day. At the height of the boom it was possible for a promising dot-com to make an initial public offering of its stock and raise a substantial amount of money even though it had never made a profit. But then the matter of burn rate came into play as capital was expended in operating a company with no profit and no viable business model. Public awareness campaigns were one way that dot-coms sought to grow their customer base. These included television ads, print ads, and targeting of professional sporting events. The January 2000 Super Bowl featured seventeen dot-com companies (most memorably pets.com) that each paid over $2 million for a 30-second spot. In January 2001, just three dot-coms bought advertising spots. Iwon.com gave away $10 million to a lucky contestant on an April 2000 show that aired on CBS. Many dot-coms named themselves with onomatopeic nonsense words that they hoped would be memorable and not easily confused with a competitor. Not surprisingly, the "growth over profits" mentality and the aura of "new economy" invincibility led some companies to engage in lavish internal spending, such as elaborate business facilities and luxury vacations for employees. Executives and employees who were paid with stock options in lieu of cash became instant millionaires when the company made its initial public offering; many invested their new wealth into yet more dot-coms. Cities all over the United States sought to become the "next Silicon Valley" by building network-enabled office space to attract internet entrepreneurs. Communication providers, convinced that the future economy would require ubiquitous broadband access, went deeply into debt to improve their networks with high-speed equipment and fiber optic cables. A Worldcom executive famously remarked that internet traffic would double every hundred days for the foreseeable future. Companies that produced network equipment, such as Cisco Systems, profited greatly from these projects. Similarly, in Europe the vast amounts of cash the mobile operators spent on 3G-licences in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom for example led them into deep debt. The investments were blown out of proportion regardless of whether seen in the context of their current or projected future cash flow, but this fact was not publicly acknowledged until as late as 2001 and 2002. Due to the highly networked nature of the IT industry this quickly led into problems for small companies that were dependent on contracts from operators.

Thinning the herd

Over 1999 and early 2000, the Federal Reserve had increased interest rates six times, and the runaway economy was beginning to lose speed. The dot-com bubble burst, numerically, on March 10, 2000, when the technology heavy NASDAQ Composite index [http://dynamic.nasdaq.com/dynamic/IndexChart.asp?symbol=IXIC&desc=NASDAQ+Composite&sec=nasdaq&site=nasdaq&months=84] peaked at 5048.62 (intra-day peak 5132.52), more than double its value just a year before. The NASDAQ fell slightly after that, but was attributed to correction; the actual reversal and subsequent bear market may have been triggered by the adverse findings of fact in the United States v. Microsoft case in the US. The findings, which declared Microsoft a monopoly, were widely expected in the weeks before their release on April 3. April 3 Another reason may have been accelerated business spending in preparation for the Y2K switchover. Once New Year had passed without incident, businesses found themselves with all the equipment they needed for some time and business spending dried up. This correlates quite closely to the peak of U.S. stock markets. The Dow Jones peaked in January 2000 and the Nasdaq in March 2000. Hiring freezes, layoffs, and consolidations followed in several industries, especially in the dot-com. By 2001, the bubble's deflation was running full speed. A majority of the dot-coms have now ceased trading, after having burnt through their venture capital, often without ever making a gross profit, thereby becoming dot-compost.

Aftermath

On January 11, 2000, America Online, a favorite of dot-com investors, acquired Time Warner, the world's largest media company. Within two years, boardroom disagreements drove out both of the CEOs who made the deal, and in October 2003 AOL Time Warner dropped "AOL" from its name. The acquisition thus became a symbol of the dot-coms' challenge to "old economy" companies and the old economy's ultimate survival. The revolutionary optimism of the boom faded, and analysts once again recognized the relevance of traditional business thinking. Several communication companies, burdened with unredeemable debts from their expansion projects, sold their assets for cash or filed for bankruptcy. WorldCom, the largest of these, was found to have used accounting devices to overstate its profits by billions of dollars. The company's stock crashed when these irregularities were revealed, and within days it filed the largest corporate bankruptcy in US history. Other examples include NorthPoint Communications, Global Crossing, JDS Uniphase, XO Communications, and Covad Communications. Demand for the new high-speed infrastructure never materialized, and it became dark fiber. Some analysts believe that there is so much dark fiber worldwide that only a small percentage of it will be "lit" in the decades to come. One by one, dot-coms ran out of capital and were acquired or liquidated; the domain names were picked up by old-economy competitors or domain name investors. Several companies were accused or convicted of fraud for misusing shareholders' money, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined top investment firms like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch millions of dollars for misleading investors. Various supporting industries, such as advertising and shipping, scaled back their operations as demand for their services fell. A few dot-com companies, such as Amazon.com and eBay, survived the turmoil and appear to have a good chance of long-term survival.

List of well-known dot-coms

Successful dot-coms

- Amazon.com
- eBay
- Google
- MSN
- PayPal (now a subsidiary of eBay)
- Priceline.com
- Yahoo!
- Netflix

Failed dot-coms

:For more comprehensive listing of failed dot-coms, see here
- Boo.com
- Excite@Home
- Kozmo.com
- Pets.com
- Webvan

External links

- [http://www.stock-market-crash.net/nasdaq.htm The Nasdaq Stock Market Crash] - Learn about the spectacular rise and downfall of the Nasdaq.
- [http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1433697,00.html Looking back on the crash] - 5 years on, the Guardian sums up
- [http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6278387-1.html?tag=cnetfd.sd Top 10 dot-com flops] - CNet's list of ten most notable failed dot-com companies
- [http://www.geocities.com/dbdoggle Tech Rip-off HowTo] - Techniques for Wanna-be Dot Com Millionaires
- [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743411218/qid=1129779727/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-9488875-7362502?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 Silicon Follies] - Dot-com lifestyles Category:Digital Revolution Dot-com Category:Economic bubbles Category:Economic history of the United States Category:Electronic commerce Category:Information technology management Category:Internet terminology ja:インターネット・バブル

Startup company

A startup company is a company recently formed, usually until IPO or acquisition. In the late 1990s during the dot-com boom much stock market speculation and hype surrounded small hi-tech startup companies seeking early IPO and promising enormous future profits. Many such start-ups started as spin-offs from university research groups.

Internet

:For the more general networking concept, see internetworking. The Internet, or simply the Net, is the worldwide system of interconnected computer networks which makes information stored on it accessible. This information is transmitted by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols. It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Creation of the Internet

During the 1950s, several communications researchers realized that there was a need to allow general communication between users of various computers and communications networks. This led to research into decentralized networks, queuing theory, and packet switching. The subsequent creation of ARPANET in the United States in turn catalyzed a wave of technical developments that made it the basis for the development of the Internet. Contrary to popular myth, the DoD did not create the ARPANET so that they could communicate to the US Government after a nuclear war. The first TCP/IP wide area network was operational in 1984 when the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) constructed a university network backbone that would later become the NSFNet. It was then followed by the opening of the network to commercial interests in 1995. Important separate networks that offered gateways into, then later merged into the Internet include Usenet, Bitnet and the various commercial and educational X.25 networks such as Compuserve and JANET. The ability of TCP/IP to work over these pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth. Use of Internet as a phrase to describe a single global TCP/IP network originated around this time. The collective network gained a public face in the 1990s. In August 1991 CERN in Switzerland publicized the new World Wide Web project, two years after Tim Berners-Lee had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few web pages at CERN in Switzerland. In 1993 the Mosaic web browser version 1.0 was released, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 the word "Internet" was common public currency, but it referred almost entirely to the World Wide Web. Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks such as FidoNet have remained separate). This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.

Today's Internet

FidoNets, FTP client, and Telnet client]] Apart from the complex physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is held together by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (for example peering agreements) and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to exchange data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is essentially defined by its interconnections and routing policies. In an often-cited, if perhaps gratuitously mathematical definition, Seth Breidbart once described the Internet as "the largest equivalence class in the reflexive, transitive, symmetric closure of the relationship 'can be reached by an IP packet from'". Unlike older communications systems, the Internet protocol suite was deliberately designed to be independent of the underlying physical medium. Any communications network, wired or wireless, that can carry two-way digital data can carry Internet traffic. Thus, Internet packets flow through wired networks like copper wire, coaxial cable, and fiber optic; and through wireless networks like Wi-Fi. Together, all these networks, sharing the same high-level protocols, form the Internet. The Internet protocols originate from discussions within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its working groups, which are open to public participation and review. These committees produce documents that are known as Request for Comments documents (RFCs). Some RFCs are raised to the status of Internet Standard by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). Some of the most used protocols in the Internet protocol suite are IP, TCP, UDP, DNS, PPP, SLIP, ICMP, POP3, IMAP, SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, SSH, Telnet, FTP, LDAP, SSL, and TLS. Some of the popular services on the Internet that make use of these protocols are e-mail, Usenet newsgroups, file sharing, Instant Messenger, the World Wide Web, Gopher, session access, WAIS, finger, IRC, MUDs, and MUSHs. Of these, e-mail and the World Wide Web are clearly the most used, and many other services are built upon them, such as mailing lists and blogs. The Internet makes it possible to provide real-time services such as Internet radio and webcasts that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Some other popular services of the Internet were not created this way, but were originally based on proprietary systems. These include IRC, ICQ, AIM, and Gnutella. There have been many analyses of the Internet and its structure. For example, it has been determined that the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks. Similar to how the commercial Internet providers connect via Internet exchange points, research networks tend to interconnect into large subnetworks such as:
- GEANT
- Internet2
- GLORIAD These in turn are built around relatively smaller networks. See also the list of academic computer network organizations In network schematic diagrams, the Internet is often represented by a cloud symbol, into and out of which network communications can pass.

Internet culture

The Internet is also having a profound impact on work, leisure, knowledge and worldviews. worldviews]]

ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet protocol addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. A globally unified namespace (i.e., a system of names in which there is one and only one holder of each name) is essential for the Internet to function. ICANN is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, but is overseen by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and non-commercial communities. The US government continues to have a privileged role in approving changes to the root zone file that lies at the heart of the domain name system. Because the Internet is a distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected networks, the Internet, as such, has no governing body. ICANN's role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body on the global Internet, but the scope of its authority extends only to the Internet's systems of domain names, Internet protocol addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers.

The World Wide Web

Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Google, millions worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data. Some companies and individuals have adopted the use of 'weblogs' or blogs, which are largely used as easily-updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to fill them with advice on their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, via whose product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work. For more information on the distinction between the World Wide Web and the Internet itself — as in everyday use the two are sometimes confused — see Dark internet where this is discussed in more detail.

Remote access

The Internet allows computer users to connect to other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. They may do this with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements. This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working book-keepers, in other remote locations, based on information e-mailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private, leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker away from his or her desk, perhaps the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can open a remote desktop session into his or her normal office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection via the Internet. This gives him or her complete access to all their normal files and data, including e-mail and other applications, while they are away.

Collaboration

This low-cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge and skills has revolutionized some, and given rise to whole new, areas of human activity. One example of this is the collaborative development and distribution of Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS) such as Linux, Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. See Collaborative software.

File-sharing

A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a website or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networking. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication; the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands before or after access to the file is given. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example a credit card whose details are also passed - hopefully fully encrypted - across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 message digests. These simple features of the Internet, over a world-wide basis, are changing the basis for the production, sale and distribution of many types of product, wherever they can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of office documents, publications, software products, music, photography, video, animations, graphics and the other arts. This in turn is causing seismic shifts in each of the existing industry associations, such as the RIAA and MPAA, that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products.

Streaming media and VoIP

Many existing radio and television broadcasters have provided Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC). They have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licences. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a TV or radio receiver. The range of material is much wider, from pornography to highly specialised technical web-casts. The simplest equipment can allow anybody, with little censorship or licencing control, to broadcast on a worldwide basis. Time-shift viewing or listening is not a problem as the BBC have shown with their Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. Web-cams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. In this case the picture may update only slowly - perhaps once every few seconds or slower, but Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal or the traffic at a local roundabout live and in real time. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams have become popular. Some people install webcams in their bedrooms that can be accessed by other voyeurs, often with two-way sound. VoIP stands for Voice over IP, where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional two-way voice extension to some of the Instant Messaging systems that took off around the turn of the millennium. In recent years many people and organizations have made VoIP systems as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the actual voice traffic is carried by the Internet, VoIP is free or costs much less than an actual telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on ADSL or DSL Internet connections anyway. The disadvantages are that it is still difficult to initiate a call with someone, unless they also have a VoIP phone or are at their computer and that there are still several competing standards that are mitigating against universal acceptance. In all of these cases, existing large organisations, that have grown accustomed to regular incomes for their services, are finding increased competition in their service areas, coming directly from the Internet. While newcomers strive to make these inroads, the traditional industries are having to adapt, adopt, complain or suffer. Meanwhile the consumer in each case most probably benefits from the increased range of services and possible price reductions. Some worry about censorship and control while others see a continuing globalisation of culture and norms.

Language

Main article: English on the Internet The most prevalent language for communication on the Internet is English. This may be due to the Internet's origins or to the growing role of English as an international language. It may also be related to the poor capability of early computers to handle characters other than those in the basic Latin alphabet (see Unicode). After English (32 % of web visitors) the most-requested languages on the world wide web are Chinese 13 %, Japanese 8 %, Spanish 6 %, German 6 % and French 4 %. (From [http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm Internet World Stats]) By continent, 33 % of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 29 % in Europe and 23 % in North America.[http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm] The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years that good facilities are available for development and communication in most widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake still remain.

Cultural awareness

From a cultural awareness perspective, the Internet has been both an advantage and a liability. For people who are interested in other cultures it provides a significant amount of information and an interactivity that would be unavailable otherwise. However, for people who are not interested in other cultures there is some evidence indicating that the Internet enables them to avoid contact to a greater degree than ever before.

Censorship

Some countries, such as Iran and the People's Republic of China, restrict what people in their countries can see on the Internet, especially unwanted political and religious content. In the Western world, it is Germany that has the highest rate of censorship. Internet Service Providers are required by law to block some sites that contain child pornography or Nazi or Islamist propaganda. Censorship is sometimes done through government sponsored censoring filters, or by means of law or culture, making the propagation of targeted materials extremely hard. At the moment most Internet content is available regardless of where one is in the world, so long as one has the means of connecting to it.

Internet access

Germany Common methods of home access include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or copper wires), Wi-Fi, satellite and cell phones. Public places to use the Internet include libraries and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in many public places like airport halls, in some cases just for brief use while standing. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", and "Web payphone". Many hotels now also have public terminals, though these are usually fee based. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi-cafes, where a would-be user needs to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. The whole campus or park, or even the entire city can be enabled. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular or mobile phone networks, and fixed wireless services. These services have not enjoyed widespread success due to their high cost of deployment, which is passed on to users in high usage fees. New wireless technologies such as WiMAX have the potential to alleviate these concerns and enable simple and cost effective deployment of metropolitan area networks covering large, urban areas. There is a growing trend towards wireless mesh networks, which offer a decentralized and redundant infrastructure and are often considered the future of the Internet. Broadband access over power lines was approved in 2004 in the United States in the face of stiff resistance from the amateur radio community. The problem with modulating a carrier signal onto power lines is that an above-ground power line can act as a giant antenna and jam long-distance radio frequencies used by amateurs, seafarers and others. Countries where Internet access is available to a majority of the population include Germany, India, China, Chile, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Australia, Denmark, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and Norway. The use of the Internet around the world has been growing rapidly over the last decade, although the growth rate seems to have slowed somewhat after 2000. The phase of rapid growth is ending in industrialized countries, as usage becomes ubiquitous there, but the spread continues in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East. However, there are still problems for many. ADSL and other broadband access are rare or nonexistent in most developing countries. Even in developed countries, high prices, mediocre performance and access restrictions often limit its uptake. Within individual countries, wide differences may exist between larger cities (often having multiple providers of broadband access) and some rural areas, where no broadband access may be available at all. The expansion of the availability of Internet access is a way to bridge the so-called digital divide.

Capitalization conventions

In formal usage, Internet is traditionally written with a capital first letter. The Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the World Wide Web Consortium, and several other Internet-related organizations all use this convention in their publications. In English grammar, proper nouns are capitalized. Most newspapers, newswires, periodicals, and technical journals also capitalize the term. Examples include the New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, The Times of India, Hindustan Times and Communications of the ACM. In other cases, the first letter is often written small (internet), and many people are not aware of any convention of using a capital letter. Some argue that internet is the correct form. Since 2000, a significant number of publications have switched to using internet. Among them are The Economist, the Financial Times, the London Times, and the Sydney Morning Herald. As of 2005, most publications using internet appear to be located outside of North America although one American news source, Wired News, has adopted the lowercase spelling.

Leisure

The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web, with entertaining social experiments such as MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related USENET groups receiving much of the main traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to neta; short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other Web sites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries' use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity. One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet. Online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer, which players of games would typically subscribe to. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or certain games. With the release of Diablo by Blizzard Entertainment, gamers were treated to a built in online game service that was free of charge. With Blizzard's next game, StarCraft, the gaming world saw an explosion in the numbers of players using the Internet to play multi-player games. StarCraft may have been the first non-MMO game in which most players utilized the online gameplay as opposed to the single-player gameplay. Online gaming has progressed so much in the last 10 years that gamers earn a living from being a professional at the subject by winning tournaments and prizes as well as signing sponsor deals. Because there is a large support for certain online games, a new community has been born for people modding games, where users edit games to add a whole new element to it. This is how games such as Counter-Strike were born from the Half-Life Gaming Engine. Cyberslacking has become a serious drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spends 57 minutes a day surfing, according to a study by Peninsula Business Services[http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=914&id=1001802003].

A complex system

Many computer scientists see the Internet as a "prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly complex system" (Willinger, et al). The Internet is extremely heterogeneous. (For instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of connections vary widely.) The Internet exhibits "emergent phenomena" that depend on its large-scale organization. For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity.

Marketing

The Internet has also become a big market, and the biggest companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient low-cost advertising and commerce through the Internet. It is the fastest way to spread information to a vast community of people all at once. The Internet has revolutionized shopping –– a person can order a CD online and receive it in the mail within a couple of days, or download it directly in some cases.

Criticism

Many hyperlinks are outdated as time takes its toll on the existence of URL weblinks. These weblinks are often times defunct and are retained as hyperlinks for extended timeframes as a result of laziness or being busy enough to be sidetracked away from updating webpages. This is a common hoax for people who are fans in the field of what those links provide them with/to.

External links

General

- [http://www.channel101.com/ Internet TV Stations]
- [http://www.isoc.org/ The Internet Society (ISOC)]
- [http://www.techterms.org/internet.php Internet Dictionary] - Definitions of Internet-related terms
- [http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1099-webmaster-glossary/ The Alternate Internet Glossary] (Humor)
- A [http://www.illusivecreations.com Calgary Web Design] company that has put together over 300 articles about the internet and web development. You can view them by going [http://www.illusivecreations.com/articles/ here].
- [http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/geographics/article.php/5911_151151 Internet access stats]
- [http://www.sharpened.net/glossary/ Glossary of Computer and Internet Terms]
- [http://scoreboard.keynote.com/scoreboard/Main.aspx?Login=Y&Username=public&Password=public Internet Health Report] from Keynote
- [http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm Internet World Stats]

Articles

- [http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/29/business/net.php "EU and U.S. clash over control of the Net" - International Herald Tribune article by Tom Wright]
- [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/intro.html "10 Years that changed the world" - WiReD looks back at the evolution of the Internet over last 10 years]
- [http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ John Walker: The Digital Imprimatur]
- [http://www.addressingtheworld.info addressingtheworld.info] - website accompanying a book (ISBN 0742528103) on the history of DNS
- [http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm How Stuff Works explanation of the Infrastructure of the Internet]
- [http://www.searchandgo.com/articles/internet/net-explained-1.php Internet Explained] Seven part article explaining the origins to the present and a future look at the Internet.
- [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64596,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_7 "It's Just the 'internet' Now" - Wired.com article by Tony Long]

History

- [http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml The Internet Society History Page]
- [http://www.internetvalley.com/archives/mirrors/cerf-how-inet.txt How the Internet Came to Be]
- [http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ Hobbes' Internet Timeline v7.0]
- [http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/e-scholarship2000.html Futures and Non-futures for Scholarly Internet. ]
- [http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/internet_history.html History of the Internet links]
- [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc801.txt RFC 801, planning the TCP/IP switchover]
- [http://www.archive.org/ Internet Archive] - A searchable database of old cached versions of websites dating back to 1996
- A list of lectures, some of which relate to the Internet, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is available [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Comparative-Media-Studies/CMS-930Media--Education--and-the-MarketplaceFall2001/VideoLectures/index.htm here]. Of particular interest is lecture #3 The Next Big Thing: Video Internet which is delivered in Real Player format. The lecture gives a brief history of networking; discusses convergence between the internet/telephone/television networks; the expansion of broadband access; makes predictions about the future of delivery of video over the internet.

References

- Walter Willinger, Ramesh Govindan, Sugih Jamin, Vern Paxson, and Scott Shenker. (2002). Scaling phenomena in the Internet. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, suppl. 1, 2573 – 2580. Category:Communication Category:Digital media Category:Internet Category:Digital Revolution Category:Technology Category:Computer networks Category:Networks ko:인터넷 ms:Internet ja:インターネット simple:Internet th:อินเทอร์เน็ต fiu-vro:Internet

Speculation

Speculation involves the buying, holding, and selling of stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, collectibles, real estate, derivatives or any valuable thing to profit from fluctuations in its price as opposed to buying it for use or for income ( via dividends, interest etc). Speculation or agiotage represents one of three market roles in western financial markets, distinct from hedging and arbitrage.

Speculation areas

Convention - and especially satire - sometimes depicts speculators comically as speculating in pork bellies (in which a real market and real speculators exist) and often "losing their shirts" or making a fortune upon small market changes. Speculation exists in many such commodities but, if measured by value, the most important markets deal in financial futures contracts and other derivatives which involve leverage that can transform a small market movement into a huge gain or loss.

Type of speculators

Most non-professional traders lose money on speculation, while those that do make money tend to become professional. Occasionally some dramatic event will occur such as the effort of the Hunt brothers to corner the silver market or the currency speculations of George Soros. Many "investors" in the stock market actually speculate, betting on a gain in price: "buy low sell high". In fact, it is hard to differentiate a speculator from an investor. The degree of leverage, the length of holding, and the frequency of operations might offer clues for distinguishing the two roles. But a degree of speculation exists in every investing decision, and even in every life action that ventures to anticipate the future. Speculation (gambling) appears as a very common human trait.

The economic role of speculation

The roles of speculators in a market economy are to absorb risk and to add liquidity to the marketplace by risking their own capital for the chance of monetary reward. For example, if a certain market - say in pork bellies - had no speculators, only producers (pig farmers) and consumers (butchers etc) would participate in that market. With fewer players in the market, there would be a larger spread between the current bid and ask price of pork bellies. Any new entrant in the market who wants to either buy or sell pork bellies will be forced to accept an illiquid market and market prices that have a large bid-ask spread. A speculator (e.g. a pork dealer) will exploit the difference in the spread and, in competition with other speculators, reduce the spread thus creating a more efficient market. Another example of the value of speculators is the ability of a pig farmer to sell his pork on a futures exchange at a known price ahead of its production.

Some perverse effects

Auctions are a method of squeezing out speculators from a transaction, but they have their own perverse effects; see winner's curse. Speculative purchasing can also create inflationary pressure, causing particular prices to increase above their "true value" (real value - adjusted for inflation) simply because the speculative purchasing artificially increases the demand. Speculative selling can also have the opposite effect, causing prices to artificially decrease below their "true value" in a similar fashion. In various situations price rises due to speculative purchasing cause further speculative purchasing in the hope that the price will continue to rise. This creates a positive feedback loop in which prices rise dramatically above the underlying "value" or "worth" of the items. This is known as an economic bubble. Such a period of increasing speculative purchasing is typically followed by one of speculative selling in which the price falls significantly, akin to a crash (see stock market crash). This crash is often greater in severity than the preceeding period of rising prices.

External links

Category:Financial markets ko:투기 ja:投機

Investment

Investment or investing is a term with several closely-related meanings in finance and economics. It refers to the accumulation of some kind of asset in hopes of getting a future return from it. Technically, the word means the "action of putting something in to somewhere else" (perhaps originally related to a person's garment or 'vestment').

Types of investment

- In theoretical economics, investment means the purchase (and thus the production) of capital goods - goods which are not consumed but instead used in future production. Examples include building a railroad, or a factory, clearing land, or putting oneself through college. In a stricter sense, investment is also a component of GDP given in the formula GDP = C + I + G + NX. The investment function in that aspect is divided into non-residential investment (such as factories, machinery etc) and residental investment (new houses). Investment is a function of income and interest rates, given by the relation I = (Y, i). An increase in income will encourage higher investment, whereas a higher interest rate will discourage investment as it becomes costlier to borrow money. Even if a firm chooses to use its own funds in an investment, the interest rate represents an opportunity cost of investing those funds rather than loaning them out for interest.
- In finance, investment means buying securities or other monetary or paper assets. Valuation is the method for assessing whether a potential investment is worth its price. Types of investments include equity investment or real estate investment, foreign currencies or bonds or postage stamps. These investments may then provide future cash flows and may increase or decrease in value. In the stock markets it is performed by the stock investors.
- Collective investment schemes encourage investors to purchase securities by marketing the merits of investment.
- Investment clubs are groups of individuals who meet on a regular basis for the purpose of investing money, most often in stocks and other publicly-traded securities. Various online communities devoted to this type of investing have recently emerged and have contributed to the personal investing boom in the United States.

Notes

UK and U.S. English, respectively.

External links

- Investing textbook - in Wikibooks
- [http://www.ft.com Financial Times]
- [http://online.wsj.com/public/us Wall Street Journal]
- [http://finance.yahoo.com/ Yahoo! Finance]
- [http://www.investopedia.com/ Investopedia] Category:Macroeconomics ja:投資

Technology

:See also: Innovation Innovation.]] Technology is a word with origins in the Greek word technologia (τεχνολογια), techne (τεχνη) "craft" + logia (λογια) "saying". It is an encompassing term dealing with the use and knowledge of humanity's tools and crafts.
Disambiguation of technology
Depending on context, the word technology has the following definitions and uses:
- Technology as tool-In its most common usage, technology is the tools and machines that help to solve problems. In this usage, technology is a far-reaching term that can include both simple tools, such as a wooden spoon, and complex tools, such as the space station.
- Technology as technique-In this usage, technology is the current state of our knowledge of how to combine resources to produce a desired products, to solve a problem, to fulfill a need, or to satisfy a want. Technology in this sense includes technical methods, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials. (such as artificial intelligence, building technology, or medical technology).
- Technology as culture former-a culture-forming (or destroying) activity (such as manufacturing technology, infrastructure technology, or space-travel technology). (McGinn). As a cultural activity, technology predates both science and engineering. This is not to imply that technology is the only culture forming activity, nor that it is the primary culture-forming activity. Often, it is dominant in cultural formation; often, it is not. In addition, culture may act to form technology. Due to widespread, and sometime careless, use of technology, several other topics arise in the study of technology, including technological ethics, environmental impacts, technological by-products, and technological risk, among many other philosophical and sociological topics.

Science and technology

The lines between science and technology are not always clear. Generally, science is the reasoned investigation or study of nature, aimed at finding out the truth, generally according to the scientific method. Technology is the application of knowledge (scientific, engineering, and/or otherwise) to achieve a practical result (Roussel, et.al.). For example, science might study the flow of electrons in an electric current. This knowledge may be used to create artifacts, such as semiconductors, computers, and other forms of technology.

History of technology

The history of technology is as old as the history of humanity because history proper refers to what could be recorded by technological means. Mind you that other animals currently use tools and animals prior to human existence may have as well. The history of technology follows a progression from simple (low-tech) tools and simple energy sources to complex ("hi-tech") tools. The earliest technologies converted natural resources into simple tools. Processes such as carving, chipping, scraping, rolling (the wheel), and sun-baking are simple means for the conversion of raw materials into usable products. Anthropologists have uncovered many early human houses and tools made from natural resources (although birds also build nests out of dried materials and we don't consider them to have a technological society). The use, and then mastery, of fire was a key turning point in man's technological evolution providing him with simple energy. The use of fire extended the capability for the treatment of natural resources and allowed the use of natural resources that require heat to be useful. Wood and charcoal were among the first materials used as a fuel. Wood, clay, and rock (such as limestone), would be among the earliest materials shaped or treated by fire, for making weapons, pottery, bricks, and cement, among others. Continuing improvements such as the furnace enabled the ability to smelt and forge metal (such as copper, ca. 8000 BC), and eventually to the discovery of alloys, such as brass and bronze (ca. 4000 BC). The first uses of iron alloys, steel, dates to around 1400 BC. Complex tools include both simple machines (such as the lever (ca. 300 BC), the screw (ca. 400 BC), and the pulley) and complex machines (such as the ocean liner, the engine, the computer, modern communications devices, the electric motor, the jet engine, among many others). Again we are confronted with an impractical vagueness as we categorise the lever with the jet engine. As tools increase in complexity, so does the type of knowledge needed to support them. Modern complex machines require written technical manuals of collected information that his been countinually added to and improved upon and are so complex, that entire technical knowledge-based processes and practices (also complex tools themselves) exist to support them, including engineering, medicine, computer science, etc. Further, complex machinies require complex manufacturing and construction techniques and organizations. Entire industries have arisen to support and develop complex tools.

The nature of technology

General characteristics

With all of the technology in use in modern society, it may seem futile to attempt a generalized list of common characteristics. Many authors, such as McGinn (1991) and Winston (2003), list the following: Complexity refers to the characteristic that most modern tools are difficult to understand. Some are easy to use, but difficult to comprehend source and means of make, such as a kitchen knife, or a baseball. Others are both difficult to use and difficult to comprehend, such as a tractor, gasoline, a television, or a computer. Dependency refers to the fact that modern tools depend on other modern tools, which depend on other modern tools, for their make and their use. Cars, as an example, have a huge complex of industry of means and methods. And to use them requires a complex of road, streets, highways, and gasoline stations, waste collection, etc., beyond our comprehension. Valence refers to the many, many different types of the same tool. Imagine the many different types of spoons available today, or scissors, and even complex tools come in many shape as well, like the construction crane, or the automobile. Scale refers to the sheer magnitude, size, and pervasiveness of modern technology. Simply put, technology seems to be everywhere. It dominates modern life. Scale refers also to the magnitude of some modern technological projects, like the cellular telephone network, the Internet, air travel, satellites, etc.

Types of Technology

One possible classification of technology uses the fields of technological studies, commonly found in academic institutions of higher learning:
- Applied Science;
- Athletics and recreation;
- The Arts and language;
- Business/information;
- Defense;
- Domestic/residential;
- Engineering;
- Health;
- Cognitive;
- Travel and trade .

Relationship with society

The relationship between society and technology is quite complex, creating what many characterize as a co-dependence upon the other; society creates and depends upon technology to meet its needs and desires, and technology's very existence arises due to society's needs and desires. However, this "symbiosis" goes further than that: Every advancement in technology influences and eventually changes society. So the needs of society change, creating more needs, and, eventually, creating more technology. (McGinn 1991) Consider the telephone, and its latest sibling the mobile phone. With the invention of the telephone, society began to depend on quicker ways of communication with others. Higher expectations for quicker communications were initially met using short-range radio systems for use in emergency vehicles. However, even higher portability was realized with miniaturization of components. This demand for a new product led to the invention of the mobile phone. The influence of portability is so pervasive now anyone can be accessible to talk in most urban places in the developed world Many technologies allow one society to have a military advantage over another society. This can be indirectly as something that creates population growth, for example, or this can be direct technology put into use like the gun or the atom bomb. The effects these technologies have on human society are complex and could result in slavery, assimilation, or genocide. Some technologies, like the video camera, start without militaristic use but eventually find themselves employed for those purposes. The car is another example of this... it is created and marketed with the promise of freedom (initially for the wealthy and without regard to the factory hands) but then it impedes upon other forms of transportation (like the free movement of the pedestrian), requires extensive paving for its full accommodation, and then it is employed militaristically. Its consumption of fuel eventually even becomes the potential basis for a resource war. The use of advanced mass media techniques, such as television programming, allows some members of society to have larger sway over the attititudes and opinions of others. Mass media often shapes mass opinion -- for better or, at least as often, worse. The effects that various forms of technology have upon the environment also sways public opinion. The Chernobyl effect (caused by a massive nuclear meltdown) is thought to have played a part in undermining the confidence that citizens of the Soviet Union had in their government. The exact causes for the collapse of that government are debatable but the new leader in Russia had a reputation as being a strong environmentalist.

Funding for technological development

Government

The government is a major contributor to the development of technology. In the United States, many agencies invest millions of dollars in new technology. In 1980, the UK government invested just over 6 million pounds in a 4 year Programme, later extended to 6 years, called the Microlectronics Education Programme (MEP) which aimed to provide every school in Britain with at least one computer, microprocessor training materials and software, plus extensive teacher training.

Military technology

Technology has frequently been driven by the military, with most modern applications being developed for the military before being taken up for civilian use. However, this trend has recently seen a reversal, with the industry often taking the lead in developing technology which is then adopted by the military.

Other

Some government agencies are dedicated specifically to research, such as the American's National Science Foundation, the United Kingdom scientific research institutes, the American's Small Business Innovative Research effort. And many government agencies dedicate a major portion of their budget to research and development.

Private source

For profit

Research and development is one of the biggest investments made by corporations toward new and innovative technology.

Non-profit

Many foundations and non-profit organizations contribute to the development of technology.

Side effects

There are two types of effects from the use of technology, main effects and side effects. Main effects are those intended by the technology, usually to fulfill some desire or need. Side effects are (usually) unintended, and often unknown prior to technology's implementation. This portion of the article deals with those side effects.

Sociological

The most subtle side effects from technological uses are sociological in nature. Subtle because those side effects can go unnoticed without careful observation and contemplation of individual, institutional, and group behaviors.

Values

The implementation of technology influence the values (beliefs, ideas, opinions) of society by changing expectations and realities. There are (at least) three major, interrelated, values that are the result of technological innovations:
- Mechanistic World View. A set of beliefs that views the universe as a collection of parts, like a machine, that can be individually analyzed and understood. (McGinn)
- Efficiency. A value, originally applied only to machines, but now placed upon all aspects of society, whereby each element (organizational structures and human beings) is expected to attain higher and higher performance, output, ability, etc. (McGinn)
- Progressivism. The belief that societal progress is good.

Ethics

Winston provides an excellent summary of the ethical implications of technological development and deployment. He states there are four major ethical implications:
- Challenges traditional ethical norms.
- Creates an aggregation of effects.
- Changes the distribution of justice.
- Provides great power.

Lifestyle

In many ways, technology simplifies life.
- The rise of a leisure class
- More informed
- Sets the stage for more complex learning tasks
- Increases multi-tasking
- Global Networking
- Creates denser social circles
- others In other ways, technology complicates life.
- Sweatshops and harsher forms of slavery are more likely to be found in technologically advanced societies (relative to primitive societies).
- More people are currently starving now that at any point in history or pre-history
- Work to drive to drive to work to work to drive -- consequently dealing with the traffic jams.
- the prison population grows with advancements in jailing techniques and tools.
- Too much information
- Consumerism
- Pace
- Technicism
- New forms of danger
- Can cause obesity and laziness
- Distraction among students-internet, gaming, etc. can take away from academic performance

Institutions and groups

Technology influences, often enables, organizational and bureaucratic group structures and influence. Example of this include:
- The rise of organizations: e.g., health institutions.
- The commericalization of leisure: sports events, products, etc. (McGinn)
- The advent of large organizational structures.
- Others

International

Technology provides a heightened awareness of international issues, values, and cultures. Due mostly to mass transportation and mass media, the world seems to be a much smaller place due to the following, among others:
- Globalization of ideas
- Embeddedness of values
- Population growth and control
- Others

Environmental

The effects of technology on the environment is both obvious and subtle. The more obvious effects include the depletion of nonrenewable natural resources (such as petroleum, coal, ores), and the added pollution of air, water, and land. The more subtle effects include debates over long-term impacts (e.g., global warming, deforestation, natural habitat destruction, costal wetland loss) Others

Control

Autonomous technology

In one line of thought, technology develops autonomously, in other words technology seems to feed on itself, moving forward with a force irresistible by humans. To these individuals, technology is "inherently dynamic and self-augmenting." (McGinn, p. 73) Jacques Ellul is one proponent of the irresistibleness of technology to humans. He espouses the idea that humanity cannot resist the temptation of expanding our knowledge and our technological abilities. He, however, does not believe that these seeming autonomy of technology is inherent. But the perceived autonomy is due to the fact that humans do not adequately consider the responsibility that are inherent to technological processes. Another proponent of these ideas is Langdon Winner who believes that technological evolution is essentially beyond the control of individuals or society.

Government

Individuals rely on governmental assistance to control the side effects and negative consequences of technology. Government intervenes many through laws.
- Supposed independence of government. An assumption commonly made about the government is that their governance role is neutral or independent. Often, if not usually, that assumption is misplaced. Governing is a political process, more so in some countries than in others, therefore government will be influenced by political winds of influence. In addition, government provides much of the funding for technological research and development. Therefore, even government has a vested interest in certain outcomes.
- Liability. One means for controlling technology is to place responsibility for the harm with the agent causing the harm. Government can allow more or less legal liability to fall to the organization(s) or individual(s) responsibile for damages.
- Legislation.
- Others

Choice

Society also controls technology through the choices that it makes. These choices not only include consumer demands; it includes
- the channels of distribution, how do products go from raw materials to consumption to disposal;
- the cultural beliefs regarding style, freedom of choice, consumerism, materialism, etc.;
- the economic values we place on the environment, individual wealth, government control, capitalism, etc.
- Others

Technology and philosophy

Technicism

Generally, Technicism is an overreliance or overconfidence in technology as a benefactor of society. Taken to extreme, some argue that technicism is the belief that humanity will ultimately be able to control the entirety of existence using technology. In other words, human beings will eventually be able to master all problems, supply all wants and needs, possibly even control the future. (For a more complete treatment of the topic see the work of Egbert Schuurman, for example at [http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v3n1/schuurman.html].) Some, such as Monsma, et al., connect these ideas to the abdication of God as a higher moral authority. More commonly, technicism is a criticism of the commonly held belief that newer, more recently-developed technology is "better." For example, more recently-developed computers are faster than older computers, and more recently-developed cars have greater gas efficiency and more features than older cars. Since current technologies are generally accepted as good, future technological developments are not considered circumspectly, resulting in what seems to be a blind acceptance of technological developments.

Optimism, pessimism and appropriate technology

Pessimism

On the somewhat pessimistic side, are certain philosophers like Herbert Marcuse, Jacques Ellul, and John Zerzan, who believe that technological societies are inherently flawed a priori. They suggest that the result of such a society is to become evermore technological at the cost of freedom and psychological health (and probably physical health in general as pollution from technological products is dispersed). Perhaps the most poignant criticisms of technology are found in what are now considered to be literary classics, for example Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Optimism

On the other hand, the optimistic assumptions are made by proponents of technoprogressivist views or ideologies such as transhumanism and singularitarianism, that view technological development as generally having beneficial effects for the society and the human condition. In these ideologies, technological development is morally good. Some critics see these ideologies as examples of scientism, mathematical fetishism, or techno-utopianism and fear the idea of technological singularity which they support.

Appropriate technology

The notion of appropriate technology, however, was developed in the twentieth century to describe situations where it was not desirable to use very new technologies or those that required access to some centralized infrastructure or parts or skills imported from elsewhere. The eco-village movement emerged in part due to this concern.

Theories and concepts in technology

There are many theories and concepts that seek to explain the relationship beteen technology and society:
- Appropriate technology
- Diffusion of innovations
- Jacques Ellul's Technological Society, is considered a classic criticism of modern culture's pursuit of technology for its own sake. For more on these ideas see http://www.usd.edu/~ssanto/ellul.html.
- Intermediate technology, more of an economics concern, refers to compromises between central and expensive technologies of developed nations and those which developing nations find most effective to deploy given an excess of labour, and scarcity of cash. In general, a so-called "appropriate" technology will also be "intermediate".
- Persuasion technology, in economics, definitions or assumptions of progress or growth are often related to one or more assumptions about technology's economic influence. Challenging prevailing assumptions about technology and its usefulness has led to alternative ideas like uneconomic growth or measuring well-being. These, and economics itself, can often be described as technologies, specifically, as persuasion technology — a concern covered in its own separate article.
- Posthumanism
- Precautionary principle
- Strategy of technology
- Technocapitalism
- Radovan Richta's theory of technological evolution
- Technological determinism
- Technological diffusion
- Technological singularity
- Technology acceptance model
- Technology lifecycle
- Technology transfer
- Transhumanism

References

- Adas, Michael. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance, Cornell University Press, 1990.
- Nobel, David. Forces of Production: a social history of industrial automation, New York: Knopf 1984, Paperback Edition: Oxford University Press, 1990.
- McGinn, Robert E. Science, Technology and Society, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1991.
- Monsma, S.V., C. Christians, E.R. Dykema, A. Leegwater, E. Schuurman, and L. VanPoolen. Responsible Technology. Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA): W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986.
- Roussel, P.A., K. N. Saad, and T. J. Erickson. Third Generation R&D, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press, 1991.
- Winston, M.E. "Children of Invention", in Society, Ethics, and Technology, Second Edition, M.E. Winston and R.D. Edelbach (eds.), Belmont, California (USA): Wadsworth Group/Thomson Learning, 2003.
- Smil, Vaclav. Energy in World History, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994, pp. 259-267, as quoted in http://www.thenagain.info/webchron/Technology/Technology.html, maintained by David W. Koeller, Northpark University, Chicago, Illinois (USA), downloaded September 11, 2005.

External links

- [http://www.pneumatica.be basic pneumatics]
- [http://www.memoryzine.com/cognitivetechnolgy.html Cognitive Technology Journal]
- [http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/525392/description#description Cognitive Technology, Elsevier]
- [http://topics.developmentgateway.org/egovernment Development Gateway's e-Government Page] — Depository of various e-government technology resources.
- [http://www.greatachievements.org/ Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century]
- [http://technologybusiness.blogspot.com/ The Business of Technology]
- ko:기술 ms:Teknologi ja:工業 th:เทคโนโลยี

Stock

:See stock (disambiguation) for other meanings of the term stock In financial terminology, stock is the capital raised by a corporation, through the issuance and sale of shares. A shareholder is any person or organization which owns one or more shares of a corporation's stock. The aggregate value of a corporation's authorized shares is its market capitalization. In British English, the word stock has another completely different meaning in finance, referring to a bond. It can also be used more widely to refer to all kinds of marketable securities. Where a share of ownership is meant the word share is usually used in British English.

History

The first company that issued shares is considered to be the Northern-European copper mining enterprise Stora Kopparberg, in the 13th century. The innovation of joint ownership made a great deal of Europe's economic growth possible following the middle ages. The technique of pooling capital to finance the building of ships, for example, made the Netherlands a maritime superpower. Before the widespread adoption of the joint-stock corporation, an expensive venture such as building a ship for the spice trade, could only be attempted by very wealthy individuals, families, or governments.

Ownership

The owners of a company may want additional capital to invest in new projects within the company. They may also simply wish to reduce their holding, freeing up capital for their own private use. By selling shares they can sell part or all of the company to many part-owners. The purchase of one share entitles the owner of that share to literally share in the ownership of the company a fraction of the decision-making power, and potentially a fraction of the profits, which the company may issue as dividends. In the common case, where there are thousands of shareholders, it is impractical to have all of them making the daily decisions required in the running of a company. Thus, the shareholders will use their shares as votes in the election of members of the board of directors of the company. Each share constitutes one vote (except in a co-operative society where every member gets one vote regardless of the number of shares they hold). Owning the majority of the shares allows other shareholders to be out-voted - effective control rests with the majority shareholder (or shareholders acting in concert). In this way the original owners of the company often still have control of the company.

Shareholder rights

Although owning 51% of shares does mean that you own 51% of the company and that you have 51% of the votes, the company is considered a legal person, thus it owns all its assets, (buildings, equipment, materials, etc.) itself. A shareholder has no right to these without the company's permission, even if that shareholder owns almost all the shares. This is important in areas such as insurance, which must be in the name of the company not the main shareholder. In most countries, including the United States, boards of directors and company managers have a fiduciary responsibility to run the company in the interests of its stockholders. Nonetheless, as Martin Whitman writes: :"...it can safely be stated that there does not exist any publicly traded company where management works exclusively in the best interests of OPMI [Outside Passive Minority Investor] stockholders. Instead, there are both "communities of interest" and "conflicts of interest" between stockholders (principal) and management (agent). This conflict is referred to as the principal/agent problem. It would be naive to think that any management would forego management compensation, and management entrenchment, just because some of these management privileges might be perceived as giving rise to a conflict of interest with OPMIs." [Whitman, 2004, 5] Even though the board of directors run the company, the shareholder has some impact on the company's policy, as the shareholders elect the board of directors. Each shareholder has a percentage of votes equal to the percentage of shares he or she owns. So as long as the shareholders agree that the management (agent) are performing poorly they can elect a new board of directors which can then hire a new management team. In practice, however, genuinely contested board elections are rare. Board candidates are usually nominated by insiders or by the board of the directors themselves, and a considerable amount of stock is held and voted by insiders. Owning shares does not mean responsibility for liabilities. If a company goes broke and has to default on loans, the shareholders are not liable in any way. However, all money obtained by converting assets into cash will be used to repay loans, so that shareholders cannot receive any money until creditors have been paid.

Means of financing

Financing a company through the sale of stock in a company is known as equity financing. Alternatively debt financing (for example issuing bonds) can be done to avoid giving up shares of ownership of the company.

Trading

Shares of stock are usually traded on a stock exchange, where people and organizations may buy and sell shares in a wide range of companies. A given company will usually only trade its shares in one market, and it is said to be quoted, or listed, on that stock exchange. However, some large, multinational corporations are listed on more than one exchange. They are referred to as inter-listed shares.

Buying

There are various methods of buying and financing stocks. The most common means is through a stock broker. Whether they are a full service or discount broker, they are all doing one thing – arranging the transfer of stock from a seller to a buyer. Most of the trades are actually done through brokers listed with a stock exchange such as the New York Stock Exchange. There are many different stock brokers to choose from such as full service brokers or discount brokers. The full service brokers usually charge more per trade, but give investment advice or more personal service; the discount brokers offer little or no investment advice but charge less for trades. Another type of broker would be a bank or credit union that may have a deal set up with either a full service or discount broker. There are other ways of buying stock besides through a broker. One way is directly from the company itself. If at least one share is owned, most companies will allow the purchase of shares directly from the company through their investor's relations departments. However, the initial share of stock in the company will have to be obtained through a regular stock broker. Another way to buy stock in companies is through Direct Public Offerings which are usually sold by the company itself. A direct public offering is an initial public offering a company in which the stock is purchased directly from the company, usually without the aid of brokers. When it comes to financing a purchase of stocks there are two ways: purchasing stock with money that is currently in the buyers ownership or by buying stock on margin. Buying stock on margin means buying stock with money borrowed against the stocks in the same account. These stocks, or collateral, guarantee that the buyer can repay the loan; otherwise, the stockbroker has the right to sell the stocks (collateral) to repay the borrowed money. He can sell if the share price drops below the

Dot-com

Overview

Soaring stocks

Free spending

Thinning the herd

Aftermath

List of well-known dot-coms

Successful dot-coms

Failed dot-coms

See also

Terminology

Media

Venture Capital

External links

Startup company

See also

Internet

Creation of the Internet

Today's Internet

Internet culture

ICANN

The World Wide Web

Remote access

Collaboration

File-sharing

Streaming media and VoIP

Language

Cultural awareness

Censorship

Internet access

Capitalization conventions

Leisure

A complex system

Marketing

Criticism

See also

External links

General

Articles

History

References

Speculation

Speculation areas

Type of speculators

The economic role of speculation

Some perverse effects

See also

External links

Investment

Types of investment

See also

Notes

External links

Technology

Science and technology

History of technology

The nature of technology

General characteristics

Types of Technology

Relationship with society

Funding for technological development

Government

Military technology

Other

Private source

For profit

Non-profit

Side effects

Sociological

Values

Ethics

Lifestyle

Institutions and groups

International

Environmental

Control

Autonomous technology

Government

Choice

Technology and philosophy