The 19th Century: Machine-Assisted Manufacturing Eli Whitney's proposal for a simplification and standardization of component parts marked a further milestone in the advance of the automation of work processes. In 1797 he suggested the manufacture of muskets with completely interchangeable parts. As opposed to the older method under which each gun was the individual product of a highly skilled gunsmith and each part hand-fitted, his method permitted large production runs of parts that were readily fitted to other parts without adjustment and could relatively easy be performed by machines. By the middle of the 19th century the general concepts of division of labor, assembly of standardized parts and machine-assisted manufacture were well established. On both sides of the Atlantic large factories were in operation, which used specialized machines to improve costs, quality and quantity of their products.

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Public Relations and the Advertising Industry The public relations industry, the same as advertising, is concentrated in the hands of few dominant firms. Still, the striking element about corporate public relations is that PR firms are tightly related to advertising companies. Nine out of the ten biggest international PR agencies have close ties with the advertising industry. Also, looking at the largest acquisitions involving U.S. PR firms from 1997 to 1999 it is apparent that money coming from advertising agencies has played an important role. Table: Top 10 PR Firms 1998 Rank 1998 PR Firm Advertising Agency Related 1998 Net Fees (in U.S. $) 1997 - 1998 % Change 1 Burson-Marsteller yes 258,417,000 4.2 2 Hill and Knowlton yes 206,000,000 8.9 3 Porter Novelli Int. yes 183,050,000 23.6 4 Shandwick yes 170,300,000 7.3 5 Fleishman-Hillard yes 160,692,000 19.1. 6 Edelman PR Worldwide no 157,840,530 18.1 7 Ketchum yes 125,248,000 29.6 8 BSMG Worldwide yes 118,963,000 93.0 9 Weber PR Worldwide yes 83,166,000 36.2 10 GCI/APCO yes 79,667,957 28.4 With many PR agencies sold to advertising companies, the advertising industry's influence further increases; enabling them to offer their clients not only advertising services, but also know-how in marketing, public opinion, crisis and issues management and political lobbying. Table: Acquisition of PR Agencies (1997 - 1999) Acquired Company Buyer Buyers Industry Estimated Purchase Price (in millions of U.S. $) International PR Interpublic Group of Cos. Advertising 230 Fleishman-Hillard Omicom Group Advertising 85 Ketchum Omnicom Group Advertising 60 Dewe Rogerson Incepta Advertising 40 Financial Rel. Bd. BSMG/TN Public Relations 33 Weber PR Interpublic Group of Cos. Advertising 15 Alexander WPP Group Advertising 15 Charles Barker BSMG/TN Public Relations 15 Source: Odwyerpr.com.

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Internet, Intranets, Extranets, and Virtual Private Networks With the rise of networks and the corresponding decline of mainframe services computers have become communication devices instead of being solely computational or typewriter-like devices. Corporate networks become increasingly important and often use the Internet as a public service network to interconnect. Sometimes they are proprietary networks. Software companies, consulting agencies, and journalists serving their interests make some further differences by splitting up the easily understandable term "proprietary networks" into terms to be explained and speak of Intranets, Extranets, and Virtual Private Networks. Cable TV networks and online services as Europe Online, America Online, and Microsoft Network are also proprietary networks. Although their services resemble Internet services, they offer an alternative telecommunication infrastructure with access to Internet services for their subscribers. America Online is selling its service under the slogan "We organize the Web for you!" Such promises are more frightening than promising because "organizing" is increasingly equated with "filtering" of seemingly objectionable messages and "rating" of content. For more information on these issues, click here If you want to know more about the technical nature of computer networks, here is a link to the corresponding article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Especially for financial transactions, secure proprietary networks become increasingly important. When you transfer funds from your banking account to an account in another country, it is done through the SWIFT network, the network of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). According to SWIFT, in 1998 the average daily value of payments messages was estimated to be above U$ 2 trillion. Electronic Communications Networks as Instinet force stock exchanges to redefine their positions in trading of equities. They offer faster trading at reduced costs and better prices on trades for brokers and institutional investors as mutual funds and pension funds. Last, but not least clients are not restricted to trading hours and can trade anonymously and directly, thereby bypassing stock exchanges.

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Actual Findings on Internet Advertising Although Web advertising becomes a significant portion of marketing budgets, advertisers are still unsure on how to unlock the potential of the Internet. Current findings show that: - Consumer brands spend only a fraction of their advertising budget on on-line advertising. - Technology companies spend five times more on advertising in the WWW. - While banner campaigns are still popular, there is no standardized solution for on-line advertising. - Ad pricing is based on CPM (costs per 1.000 visitors), rather than on results. - Personalized targeting has not yet taken hold. Instead advertisers mainly target on content. At the moment three dominant models are used for Internet advertising: Destination Sites: They use entertainment, high production values and information to pull users in and bring them back again. Micro Sites: Content sites or networks host small clusters of brand pages. Banner Campaigns: Those include other forms of Web advertising like sponsorships.

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ARPAnet ARPAnet was the small network of individual computers connected by leased lines that marked the beginning of today's global data networks. Being an experimental network mainly serving the purpose to test the feasibility of wide area networks, the possibility of remote computing, it was created for resource sharing between research institutions, not for messaging services like E-mail. Although research was sponsored by US military, ARPAnet was not designed for directly martial use but to support military-related research. In 1969 ARPANET went online and links the first two computers, one of them located at the University of California, Los Angeles, the other at the Stanford Research Institute. But ARPAnet has not become widely accepted before it was demonstrated in action to a public of computer experts at the First International Conference on Computers and Communication in Washington, D. C. in 1972. Before it was decommissioned in 1990, NSFnet, a network of scientific and academic computers funded by the National Science Foundation, and a separate new military network went online in 1986. In 1988 the first private Internet service providers offered a general public access to NSFnet. Beginning in 1995, after having become the backbone of the Internet in the USA, NSFnet was turned over to a consortium of commercial backbone providers. This and the launch of the World Wide Web added to the success of the global data network we call the Net. In the USA commercial users already outnumbered military and academic users in 1994. Despite the rapid growth of the Net, most computers linked to it are still located in the United States.

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1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) The 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, which focused on taking steps to protect copyright "in the digital age" among other provisions 1) makes clear that computer programs are protected as literary works, 2) the contracting parties must protect databases that constitute intellectual creations, 3) affords authors with the new right of making their works "available to the public", 4) gives authors the exclusive right to authorize "any communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means ... in such a way that members of the public may access these works from a place and at a time individually chosen by them." and 5) requires the contracting states to protect anti-copying technology and copyright management information that is embedded in any work covered by the treaty. The WCT is available on: http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/diplconf/distrib/94dc.htm http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/diplconf/dis...

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Industrial design Industrial design refers to the ornamental aspect of a useful article which may constitute of two or three-dimensional elements. To be qualified for intellectual property protection the design must be novel or original. Protection can be obtained through registration in a government office and usually is given for 10 to 15 years.

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Internet Societal Task Force The Internet Societal Task Force is an organization under the umbrella of the Internet Society dedicated to assure that the Internet is for everyone by identifying and characterizing social and economic issues associated with the growth and use of Internet. It supplements the technical tasks of the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Steering Group and the Internet Engineering Task Force. Topics under discussion are social, economic, regulatory, physical barriers to the use of the Net, privacy, interdependencies of Internet penetration rates and economic conditions, regulation and taxation. http://www.istf.isoc.org/ http://www.istf.isoc.org/

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CIM To perform manufacturing firm's functions related to design and production the CAD/CAM technology, for computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, was developed. Today it is widely recognized that the scope of computer applications must extend beyond design and production to include the business functions of the firm. The name given to this more comprehensive use of computers is computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM).

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