In an increasingly technisised world where technology has also become a determinant of value-free values, mind and body are increasingly considered as "imperfect" compared to the brilliant designs of technology. While for centuries the "weakness" of the human flesh has been the object of lamentations, the 21st century seems set to transform the genre of tragedy into a sober technological project of improvement. Within this project, men and women receive the status of "risk factor" which potentially destabilises technological systems, a circumstance which calls for correction and control measures.
Two main ways of checking the risk of "human error", as well as inefficiency, irrationality, selfishness, emotional turbulence, and other weaknesses of human beings: by minimizing human participation in technological processes, and, to an increasing extent, by technically eliminating such risk factors in human beings themselves.
Human beings, once considering themselves as the "crown of creation" or the "masters of the world" are reducing themselves to the "human factor" in globally networked technical systems, that factor which still escapes reliable calculation and which, when interacting with fast and potent technical environments, is a source of imperfection. For the human mind and body to perfect itself - to adapt itself to the horizon of perfection of science and technology - takes long time periods of discipline, learning, even biological evolution.
In the calculating thinking required in highly technisised context, mind and body inevitably appear as deficient compared to a technology which, unlike the human organism, has the potential of fast and controlled "improvement". Surely, the human organism has always been prey to defects, to "illnesses" and "disablement". Disease has therefore been one of the main motivations behind the development of Bio-ITs: Bio-ITs are being developed to help the blind get their eyesight back, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, the depressed to be happy. Such medical applications of Bio-ITs are nothing essentially new: Captain Silver's crunch, the wheelchair, a tooth filling save the same basic purpose of correcting a physical deficiency.
But there is a much wider scope to this new development, in which the "normal" biological condition of a human being, such as proneness to death, forgetfulness, aging, inefficiency, solitude, or boredom are understood as defects which can and should be corrected. The use of ITs to overcome such "biological" constraints is often seen as the "ultimate" technological advance, even if the history of utopian visions connected to technological innovation is as old as it is rife with surprise, disappointment, and disaster.
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Although it is generally hard to distinguish between public relations and propaganda,
It furthermore played a central role in the Gulf War. On behalf of the Kuwaiti government it presented a 15-year-old girl to testify before Congress about human rights violations in a Kuwaiti hospital. The girl, later found out to be the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S., and its testimony then became the centerpiece of a finely tuned PR campaign orchestrated by Hill & Knowlton and co-ordinated with the White House on behalf of the government of Kuwait an the Citizens for a Free Kuwait group. Inflaming public opinion against Iraq and bringing the U.S. Congress in favor of war in the Gulf, this probably was one of the largest and most effective public relations campaigns in history.
Running campaigns against abortion for the Catholic Church and representing the
Accused of pursuing potentially illegal proxy spying operation for intelligence agencies, Richard Cheney, head of Hill & Knowltons New York office, denied this allegations, but said that "... in such a large organization you never know if there's not some sneak operation going on." On the other hand former
(Source: Carlisle, Johan: Public Relationships: Hill & Knowlton, Robert Gray, and the CIA.
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Each definition of the Internet is a simplified statement and runs the risk of being outdated within a short time. What is usually referred to as the Internet is a network of thousands of computer networks (so called autonomous systems) run by governmental authorities, companies, and universities, etc. Generally speaking, every time a user connects to a computer networks, a new Internet is created. Technically speaking, the Internet is a
What constitutes the Internet is constantly changing. Certainly the state of the future Net will be different to the present one. Some years ago the Internet could still be described as a network of computer networks using a common communication protocol, the so-called
Also, the Internet is not solely constituted by computers connected to other computers, because there are also point-of-sale terminals, cameras, robots, telescopes, cellular phones, TV sets and and an assortment of other hardware components that are connected to the Internet.
At the core of the Internet are so-called
Since these networks are often privately owned, any description of the Internet as a public network is not an accurate. It is easier to say what the Internet is not than to say what it is. On 24 October, 1995 the U.S.
What is generally and in a simplyfiying manner called the Internet, may be better referred to as the Matrix, a term introduced by science fiction writer
Strictly speaking, the Matrix is not a medium; it is a platform for resources: for media and services. The Matrix is mainly a very powerful means for making information easily accessible worldwide, for sending and receiving messages, videos, texts and audio files, for transferring funds and trading securities, for sharing resources, for collecting weather condition data, for
For a comprehensive view of uses of the Matrix, especially the World Wide Web, see "
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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
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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)
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Source: Odwyerpr.com.
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Realizing that he'd need to lower costs
The use of interchangeable parts meant making the individual pieces of the car the same every time. Therefore the machines had to be improved, but once they were adjusted, they could be operated by a low-skilled laborer. To reduce the time workers spent moving around Ford refined the flow of work in the manner that as one task was finished another began, with minimum time spent in set-up. Furthermore he divided the labor by breaking the assembly of the legendary Model T in 84 distinct steps.
Putting all those findings together in 1913 Ford installed the first moving
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A server is program, not a computer, as it sometimes said, dedicated to store files, manage printers and network traffic, or process database queries.
Web sites, the nodes of the
The term refers to the separation of a work process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or group of persons. It is most often applied to
American automotive company first incorporated in 1925 and reorganized and newly incorporated in 1986. It has long been the third largest automaker in the United States (after General Motors and the Ford Motor Company). Founded by Walter P. Chrysler, it took over the business and properties of Maxwell Motor Company, Inc. (first formed in 1913). Today its major subsidiaries include Chrysler Automotive Operations, Inc., which manufactures Plymouth, Dodge, and Chrysler passenger cars, Dodge trucks, and auto parts and accessories; and the Chrysler Financial Corporation. Headquarters are in Highland Park, Mich., U.S.
The German contribution to the Western defence system, apart from playing host and contributing to the continued presence of allied troops on its soil, takes the form of its combined arm of defence known as the Federal Armed Forces (Bundeswehr). Constituting the largest contingent of NATO troops in Europe, the armed forces are divided into an army, navy, and air force. From its inception it was envisioned as a "citizens' " defence force, decisively under civilian control through the Bundestag, and its officers and soldiers trained to be mindful of the role of the military in a democracy. Conscription for males is universal, the military liability beginning at 18 and ending at 45 years of age.