2000 A.D. 2000 Convergence of telephony, audiovisual technologies and computing Digital technologies are used to combine previously separated communication and media systems such as telephony, audiovisual technologies and computing to new services and technologies, thus forming extensions of existing communication systems and resulting in fundamentally new communication systems. This is what is meant by today's new buzzwords "multimedia" and "convergence". Classical dichotomies as the one of computing and telephony and traditional categorizations no longer apply, because these new services no longer fit traditional categories. Convergence and Regulatory Institutions Digital technology permits the integration of telecommunications with computing and audiovisual technologies. New services that extend existing communication systems emerge. The convergence of communication and media systems corresponds to a convergence of corporations. Recently, America Online, the world's largest online service provider, merged with Time Warner, the world's largest media corporation. For such corporations the classical approach to regulation - separate institutions regulate separate markets - is no longer appropriate, because the institutions' activities necessarily overlap. The current challenges posed to these institutions are not solely due to the convergence of communication and media systems made possible by digital technologies; they are also due to the liberalization and internationalization of the electronic communications sector. For regulation to be successful, new categorizations and supranational agreements are needed. For further information on this issue see Natascha Just and Michael Latzer, The European Policy Response to Convergence with Special Consideration of Competition Policy and Market Power Control, http://www.soe.oeaw.ac.at/workpap.htm or http://www.soe.oeaw.ac.at/WP01JustLatzer.doc.

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Biometrics applications: privacy issues All biometric technologies capture biometric data from individuals. Once these date have been captured by a system, they can, in principle, be forwarded to other locations and put to many different uses which are capable of compromising on an individuals privacy. Technically it is easy to match biometric data with other personal data stored in government or corporate files, and to come a step closer to the counter-utopia of the transparent citizen and customer whose data body is under outside control. While biometric technologies are often portrayed as protectors of personal data and safeguards against identity theft, they can thus contribute to an advance in "Big Brother" technology. The combination of personalised data files with biometric data would amount to an enormous control potential. While nobody in government and industry would admit to such intentions, leading data systems companies such as EDS (Electronic Data Systems; http://www.eds.com) are also suppliers of biometric systems to the intelligence agencies of government and industry. Biometric technologies have the function of identification. Historically, identification has been a prerequisite for the exercise of power and serves as a protection only to those who are in no conflict with this power. If the digitalisation of the body by biometric technologies becomes as widespread as its proponents hope, a new electronic feudal system could be emerging, in which people are reduced to subjects dispossessed of their to their bodies, even if these, unlike in the previous one, are data bodies. Unlike the gatekeepers of medieval towns, wear no uniforms by they might be identified; biometric technologies are pure masks.

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Mass production The term mass production refers to the application of the principles of specialization, division of labor, and standardization of parts to the manufacture of goods. The use of modern methods of mass production has brought such improvements in the cost, quality, quantity, and variety of goods available that the largest global population in history is now sustained at the highest general standard of living. A moving conveyor belt installed in a Dearborn, Michigan, automobile plant in 1913 cut the time required to produce flywheel magnetos from 18 minutes to 5 and was the first instance of the use of modern integrated mass production techniques.

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Assembly line An assembly line is an industrial arrangement of machines, equipment, and workers for continuous flow of workpieces in mass production operations. An assembly line is designed by determining the sequences of operations for manufacture of each product component as well as the final product. Each movement of material is made as simple and short as possible with no cross flow or backtracking. Work assignments, numbers of machines, and production rates are programmed so that all operations performed along the line are compatible.

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