text:
Hebrew/Aleph-Bet/4

 Aleph-Bet Lesson 4 —

Welcome to the fourth lesson of the Hebrew alphabet! In this lesson you will learn the two new Hebrew letters - and, and two new niqqud symbols - ħolam and shuruq.

Letters
This lesson we will learn two letters, each has only one form:

Lamed
The twelfth letter in the Hebrew alphabet is Lamed. It makes the "l" sound (IPA: /l/, "l" as in "lamb"). It is the only letter in the print Hebrew alphabet that rises above the line.

Vav
The sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet is Vav. It makes three sounds: Also
 * 1) The "v" sound (IPA: /v/, "v" as in "violin").
 * 2) The "o" sound (IPA: /o/, "o" as in "gore").
 * 3) The "u" sound (IPA: /u/, "u" as in "flu").
 * When doubled it makes the "w" semivowel (IPA: /w/, "w" as in "well"), but only in foreign words.

You might remember that we learned that the letter Aleph has three purposes: 1) It makes the glottal stop 2) When at the beginning of a word it means the word starts with a vowel and 3) When preceded by any "a" vowel, when at the end of a word (there are exceptions) and in foreign words (because in most texts there are no marked vowels) it makes the "a" sound (IPA: /a/, "a" as in "spa").

Vav plays the same roles as Aleph (except for 2., that's reserved for Aleph): it makes the "v" sound and when charged with an "o" or "u" vowel or in foreign words (because in most texts there are no marked vowels) it makes the "o" or "u" sound. More about that in the next section.

Vowels
How do we know if Vav makes the "v", "o" or "u" sound? Two niqqud signs are there to help us:

Ħolam
The ħolam is the dot above the Vav.

It produces the "o" sound (IPA: /o/, "o" as in "gore"). It can appear as a dot in the top of the space between two letters (xx) and then it's called Ħolam Ħaser ("empty ħolam") or on a Vav, and then it is called Ħolam Malei ("full ħolam"). In modern Israeli Hebrew there is no distinction between the two save spelling.

Shuruq
The shuruq is the dot to the left of the Vav.

It produces the "u" sound (IPA: /u/, "u" as in "flu"). When charged by any other vowel Vav is pronounced as a "v".

Connection Vav - Vav Haħibur
You remember the Definite He? We learned then that while in English the definite article exists as a separate word ("the"), in Hebrew it exists as an affix, namely the letter He. So if bat means "a daughter", habat means "the daughter".

The same is true for the conjunction "and". While, in English, "and" is a separate word, in Hebrew it appears as an affix, a letter that you add to the beginning of any word and functions as a separate word. For example:

av father em mother av va’em father and mother

Words
shalom peace (masculine, singular), hello, goodbye bul postal stamp (masculine, singular), bull's-eye, spot on! shen tooth (feminine, singular) matanah gift, present (feminine, singular) malon hotel (masculine, singular) milah word, circumcision (feminine, singular) ot letter (alphabet), sign (feminine, singular)

Summary
In this lesson, you have learned: Practice what you've learned in the exercises.
 * The letters Lamed and Vav.
 * The niqqud symbols Ħolam (ֹ) and Shuruq (ּ).
 * The words and.
 * The conjunction "and" in Hebrew - Vav Haħibur.

Next lesson: Aleph-Bet 5 >>>

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Hebrew/Aleph-Bet/4


text:
User:Mikec~enwikibooks

Review Lessons for The History of Quebec and Canada course/

Module 1: The French Empire in North America

Unit 1: Occupation of the Territory

Topic 1: Reasons for Exploration Topic 2: Cartier's Voyages Topic 3: Geographic Conditions

Unit 2: Amerindian Civilization

Topic 1: Sociocultural Organization Topic 2: Mutual Influences

Unit 3: The Fur Trade

Topic 1: Concepts of Colonization Topic 2: Mercantilism Topic 3: Territorial and Military Consequences

title: User:Mikec~enwikibooks


text:
User:Xixtas

My name is Randy Wilson. I am a computer networking and security consultant. I have two absolutely wonderful sons Noah and Liam. My work on Wikijunior is for them.

Work in Progress

 * My Sandbox
 * New Book Visual Math
 * New Book How Many?
 * New Book Counting Baby Animals

Things to Read

 * Questions on the Wikijunior Website
 * Discussion at the staff lounge on Wikijunior.org

Links that I use

 * Wikijunior Recent Changes
 * Wikijunior Talk Recent Changes
 * Random Wikijunior Page

title: User:Xixtas


text:
Written Chinese/Lesson 1

Overview
Before learning the language, it must be noted that the Chinese language is completely different from English, or most of the languages in the world. It is not an alphabetic language. Its characters/words are not strung up in any linear way in any alphabets. Instead, each character takes its own form, and consists of various strokes. Yet there is still a system in the characters as well as language, however different from Western writing systems.

The grammar of Chinese is also quite distinct from European languages. It is important not to attempt to use European ideas to analyse the language lest misconceptions will form. Some linguists had tried to use European linguistics to analyse the Chinese language, only to result in unnecessary complications (e.g. there is no tense in Chinese) and awkward results when viewed by a native Chinese speaker.

Likewise, some courses teaching Chinese had attempted to teach only the romanized versions. This might be easier to learners as the language now becomes an alphabetical one, yet this is strongly not recommended. Although the Chinese government had introduced a system of romanizing the Mandarin by its pronunciation (pīn yīn), it is impractical to know only this system. In China, the pīn yīn is used only as a reference of pronunciation - the same relationship between the English language and the IPA. Just like you won't write /ðɪs ɪz æn ˈæ.pl̩/ instead of "This is an apple" in English, nor do Chinese people write their language in pīn yīn (however, certain Chinese scholars, writers and politicians have from time to time advocated a move away from Chinese characters to the Latin alphabet for Chinese native speakers).

Overview
Chinese characters are often described as "pictographs", as each character can be rhetorically described as "pictures" denoting the meaning of that particular "picture" (more technically, characters can be termed "ideographs" or "sinograms"). This can be correct in some sense, and each character has its own unique appearance, pronunciation, meaning, and even its own story. Learners are advised to read this article in the appendix in order to have a general idea of the origin of Chinese characters, which can help systematizing the vast unique Chinese characters.

Despite the uniqueness of every Chinese character, you will find that the characters do share common parts. For example, after learning the character 口 (mouth) and 馬 (horse), you will find that learning the character 嗎 (question marker) becomes very easy as you only need to combine your previous-learned materials together. It is, thus, important to train yourself to remember Chinese characters by their parts, not stroke by stroke, or you might find the need of learning every single character with great effort.

Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese
Contemporary Chinese is written in either traditional or simplified characters. Character simplification has been a process in the evolution of the written language, and the current set of simplified characters was introduced in 1956. It is in use in mainland China, Singapore, and Malaysia, while the traditional characters are widely used in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Strictly speaking, even in the areas using the traditional characters, people do make use of a number of simplified characters in their writings, particularly in ad-hoc handwritten signs, or notes taken during classes.

However, we're going to cover the Traditional Chinese characters in this course. Although the Simplified Chinese system is easier to write and widely-used, it sacrifices many elements of the original Chinese characters. You are recommended to study the few "rules" used for the simplification process after you have familiarized yourself with the Chinese language, and know Simplified Chinese as a reference. Nevertheless, if you want to convert Traditional Chinese characters to Simplified ones, or vice versa, this converter could help you.

title: Written Chinese/Lesson 1


text:
Music Theory/The Physics of Music

Western music theory is based mostly on the findings of the ancient Greek philosopher.

Waves
Almost all instruments that contribute to western music either generate sound through the vibration of strings or through the vibration of air in a column. Both of these form regular, recurrent disturbances in the air which reach our ears and are processed as sound by the brain. These recurrent disturbances are known as waves due to their similiarity to disturbances in bodies of water.

All waves have a frequency, which is how often the air molecules go from being compressed to being stretched out to being compressed again. Frequency is measured in Hertz (abbreviated Hz), which is the number of compressions and stretches which happen every second. For example, the standard by which a majority of Western music is tuned puts the note A4 at exactly 440 Hz, and tunes everything else relative to that note. Waves also have an amplitude, which is how much the air compresses or stretches in every repetition, or how loud the wave will sound.

Harmonics
The fundamental frequency is the base frequency at which a string or air column vibrates. The purest kind of wave is a sine wave because it only contains the fundamental frequency and nothing else. A sine wave can be visualized by graphing the function $$f(x) = a \sin(h \pi x)$$ where $$a$$ is the amplitude and $$h$$ is the frequency in Hertz. High points and low points in the graph represent compressions and stretches in the air.

Most instruments, however, do not produce a pure sine wave, because strings and air columns don't tend toward the fundamental frequency only. They also tend to produce additional tones called overtones or harmonics, which have frequencies at integer multiples of the fundamental; that is, they have two times the fundamental frequency, three times the fundamental frequency, four times, five times, six times, and so on. These overtones collectively make up the overtone series; including the fundamental frequency, they make up the harmonic series. Generally, the higher the harmonic, the exponentially smaller the amplitude, but any harmonic can occur at any amplitude depending on the string, air column, resonating chamber, among other factors; this is the reason different instruments have different, or sound different. In fact, by using harmonics at different amplitudes, any sound or wave can be recreated.

It is relationships within the harmonic series that dictate what will sound objectively consonant or dissonant. For instance, almost all cultures utilize some form of the octave in their music because it is the relationship between the fundamental frequency and the first overtone, or between the first harmonic (same thing as the fundamental) and the second harmonic. One might also say these frequencies have a 2:1 ratio. Many cultures also value the fifth because it is the relationship between the second and third harmonics, or have a 3:2 frequency ratio. The simpler the ratio, the more consonant the interval.

For this reason, intervals like seconds, thirds, sixths, and sevenths are considered consonant: And intervals like the unison, fourth, fifth, and octave are considered almost fundamental consonances:
 * the major second is a 9:8 ratio
 * the minor third is a 6:5 ratio
 * the major third is a 5:4 ratio
 * the minor sixth is a 8:5 ratio
 * the major sixth is a 5:3 ratio
 * the minor seventh is a 16:9 ratio
 * the major seventh is a 15:8 ratio
 * the perfect unison is a 1:1 ratio
 * the perfect fourth is a 4:3 ratio
 * the perfect fifth is a 3:2 ratio
 * the perfect octave is a 2:1 ratio

The major triad can be expressed as the relationship between three harmonics, as a 4:5:6 ratio between three tones. With this, it is even possible to construct a full major scale using relationships in the major triad.

Tuning
However, the music we listen to is not actually tuned exactly to the intervals found in the harmonic series, for various practical reasons.

Just Intonation
Let's suppose a world in which everyone did tune according to the harmonic series. This sort of practice is known as just intonation, the natural way all things "should" be tuned.

Let us now inspect the tuning in a snippet of music by sixteenth-century mathematician :

Assuming the key of G, we can start by taking the first G3 in the bass clef as the base frequency, from which we will tune everything else. In terms of ratios, this G has a 1:1 ratio with itself. The D4 in the treble clef above should have a ratio of 3:2, since it is exactly a perfect fifth above the initial G. The G4 above that, then, has a ratio of 2:1, since it is exactly an octave above the initial G.

In the next beat, the A4 in the treble clef should have a ratio of 9:4, since it is a 3:2 fifth above the preceding D, and $${\frac{3}{2}}\times{\frac{3}{2}}={\frac{9}{4}}$$.

In the third beat, we leave the original G and D, and move to two new notes. Since these notes are played with a suspended A in the treble clef, these notes should be tuned relative to that A, instead of to the previous G and D. So here, the E4 in the treble clef is a fourth below the 9:4 A. $${\frac{9}{4}}\div{\frac{4}{3}}={\frac{27}{16}}$$, so the new E should be a 27:16 ratio. The C4 in the bass clef should be tuned a 5:4 major third below that C; since $${\frac{27}{16}}\div{\frac{5}{4}}={\frac{27}{20}}$$, the C should be tuned at 27:20.

In the final beat, the G4 comes back in the treble clef. This should be tuned a 3:2 fifth above the C being held in the bass clef. $${\frac{27}{20}}\times{\frac{3}{2}}={\frac{81}{40}}$$, so this G is now tuned at 81:40.

If we repeat the phrase, the starting G3 must be tuned a 2:1 octave below the final G, which results in a final ratio of 81:80 because $${\frac{81}{40}}\div{\frac{2}{1}}={\frac{81}{80}}$$. This, of course, is slightly higher than the G we started with.

The reason just intonation doesn't work is because it gets unwieldy very quickly, as we saw. Chord progressions like this snippet can cause the pitch to drift by very slight intervals. In this instance, the pitch slid up by a 81:80 ratio, known as the. In the diatonic scale mentioned earlier, the ratio between the major second and the major sixth is a perfect fifth off by a syntonic comma.

Needless to say, as music grew more complex, a less unwieldy, more practical tuning standard had to be developed.

title: Music Theory/The Physics of Music


text:
Written Chinese/Calligraphy

Strokes
Chinese characters are made up of strokes, in the same way that English words are made up of letters. These strokes are easily learned but not easily mastered; Chinese Calligraphy is an art in Chinese culture. The image below shows all strokes that all Chinese characters are made up of, and how they look in two different writing media: the strokes on the left are written with an ink brush, and the strokes on the right are written with an ordinary ball-point pen.

The following diagram shows you how to write these strokes. It's quite straight-forward: just start at the red dot, and trace the strokes as shown with your pen. Repeat this until you can write these strokes at ease, with the exact shape as shown.

Character formations
The Chinese characters should be written at the correct scale; doing otherwise results in characters that are not only imprecise but incorrect. Chinese characters are just like English letters in this respect: the vertical line in the English letter "d", for example, would never be three times the height of the circle.

Chinese characters can be thought of as contained in invisible blocks, and further divided in several ways in proportion to these blocks. Look at the following diagram for details.

These formations can be in any proportion, depending on the complexity and amount of strokes in different places in the characters. Be aware of this feature, for scale is one of the keys to writing nice Chinese characters. The following diagram illustrates some of the examples.

These formations can also be included in one another to form other characters. The following diagram illustrates this feature with the same set of characters.

title: Written Chinese/Calligraphy


text:
Template:Sexual Health

Sexual Health Reproductive Anatomy — Sex Cells — Sexuality — Sexual Touching — Sex — Pregnancy — Sexually Transmitted Diseases — Abstinence — Barrier Birth Control — Hormonal Contraceptives — Other Birth Control — Fertility and Infertility — Sexual Dysfunction — Cancer — Sexual Harassment — Rape — Incest — References

title: Template:Sexual Health


text:
Ukrainian Dancing/Index

#
1-2-3 (Hutzul style, travelling) 1-2-3 (stationary) 1-2-3 (travelling) 1-2-Front 1-2-side

B
Back-kick Back-step Basic Step (stationary) Basic Step (travelling) Bihunets Bihunets (Hutzul)

C
Clicks Cross-kick

D
Dorizhka Dorizhka-nazad Dorizhka v Povoroti (quarter turns)

F
Figure Fours

H
Half Turns Heels Holubchyks Holubtsi Hops Hutzul 1-2-3 Hutzul Bihunets

K
Kicks (standing) Knee-kick Kolommyikovyi Pidskok

L
Little Step

M
Merezhka

N
Nacok-Kabluk

0
Oberty, see Half Turns
 * Dorizhka v Povoroti (quarter turns)
 * Hops (in a turn)
 * Kolommyikovyi Pidskok (in a turn)
 * Quarter Turns (Central Region)
 * Toe-Heel - turning

P
Pereminniy Krok Plain Step (stationary) Plain Step (travelling) Pletenna Pokhid Skladniy Pokhid Skladniy (travelling) Pokhid Tankoviy Skladaniy Pokhid Tankoviy Skladniy Potriinyi Prytup Potriyniy Krok Prepadanya Prysyadka-Heels Prysyadka Na Kabluky Prysyadka Roznizhka Prysyadka with leg bent in front Prysyadka Zvychayna Prytup

Q
Quarter Turns

S
Side-step Stamp Stamp-Kick Stationary Steps, see
 * 1-2-Front
 * Back-kick
 * Back-step
 * Clicks<
 * Cross-kick
 * Dorizhka-nazad
 * Holubtsi
 * Hops
 * Kicks
 * Knee-kick
 * Kolommyikovyi Pidskok
 * Merezhka
 * Pletenna
 * Pokhid Skladniy
 * Potriinyi Prytup
 * Prytup
 * Stamp
 * Quarter Turns
 * Toe-Heel
 * Stamp-Kick
 * Triple Stamp
 * Triple Step
 * Prysyadka-Heels
 * Prysyadka Roznizhka
 * Prysyadka with leg bent in front
 * Prysyadka Zvychayna
 * Touch-Point
 * Tynok
 * Uhynannya
 * Vidryvanka Zvychaina
 * Viryovochka
 * Vykhyliasnyk
 * Vypad

T
Toe-Heel Toe-Heel - turning Touch-Point Travelling Steps, see Triple Stamp Triple Step (stationary) Triple Step (travelling) Touch-Point Turns, see Tynok
 * 1-2-Front
 * Back-step
 * Bihunets
 * Bihunets (Hutzul)
 * Clicks
 * Dorizhka
 * Dorizhka-nazad
 * Holubtsi
 * Hops
 * Kicks (standing)
 * Kolommyikovyi Pidskok
 * Little Step
 * Pletenna
 * Prepadanya
 * Side-step
 * Stamp-Kick
 * Triple Step
 * Touch-Point
 * Tynok
 * Vidryvanka Zvychaina
 * Viryovochka
 * Vypad
 * Dorizhka v Povoroti (quarter turns)
 * Hops (in a turn)
 * Half Turns
 * Kolommyikovyi Pidskok (in a turn)
 * Quarter Turns (Central Region)
 * Toe-Heel - turning

U
Uhynannya

V
Vidryvanka Zvychaina Viryovochka Vykhyliasnyk Vypad

title: Ukrainian Dancing/Index


text:
Korean/Principles of Orthography

Introduction
The Korean writing system (Hangeul) has some basic principles that are easy to master.

Consonants
When writing Korean consonants (자음, jaeum), the general rule is to start at the top left corner and work down to the bottom right. The topmost horizontal stroke is usually first, followed by any vertical strokes. The images below show the generally accepted stroke order:

For double characters, such as ㅃ and ㅉ, simply write the corresponding single character twice, close together, using the same stroke order. Once proficiency in writing has been developed, one may develop shortcuts or different forms of short-hand or cursive, for personal use. For example, ㄹ is often written similar to a backwards S as one stroke.

Vowels
With vowels (모음, moeum), the general rule is to move from left to right and top to bottom. If the character is a digraph with both horizontal and vertical components, the horizontal vowel is written first, followed by the appending vertical vowel to the right:

Syllables
In Hangeul, words are divided into blocks of characters, each block representing one syllable. For example, the word for the Korean dietary staple, kimchi, has two syllables and is thus divided into two blocks of hangul characters:

In modern Korean, no jamo may stand alone. Instead, they are grouped into syllables, each with an initial consonant cluster (초성), a medial vowel or diphthong (중성), and optionally a final consonant cluster (종성).

The placement or "stacking" of jamo in the block follows set patterns based on the shape of the medial.
 * The components of complex jamo such as ㅄ or ㅝ are written left to right.
 * Medials are written under the initial, to the right, or wrap around the initial from bottom to right, depending on their shape: If the medial has a horizontal axis like ㅡ eu, then it is written under the initial; if it has a vertical axis like ㅣ i, then it is written to the right of the initial; and if it combines both orientations, like ㅢ ui, then it wraps around the initial from the bottom to the right:

 * A final jamo, if there is one, is always written at the bottom, under the medial:

Blocks are always written in phonetic order, initial-medial-final. The direction of the medial (horizontal or vertical) governs the placement of the initial. These are the basic rules:

 * Syllables with a horizontal medial are written downward: 읍
 * Syllables with a vertical medial and simple final are written clockwise: 쌍
 * Syllables with a wrapping medial switch direction (down-right-down): 된
 * Syllables with a complex final are written left to right at the bottom: 밟

Initial consonant placeholder
When a syllable has no actual initial consonant, the null initial ㅇ (called 이응, ieung) is used as a placeholder. (No placeholder is needed when there is no final.)

Examples:
 * 오이 (oi, "cucumber")
 * 왕 (wang, "king")

Horizontal medials
In a syllable with a horizontal medial (ㅛ, ㅗ, ㅡ, ㅜ, or ㅠ), the initial is written first, followed by the medial below it. With ㄱ, the vowels look like this: 교, 고, 그, 구, 규. Any other consonant behaves the same: 표, 소, 드, 부, 류. Notice how the protruding lines in each vowel nestle into any empty spaces in the consonant above it, particularly with ㄱ and ㅅ.

Vertical medials
In a syllable with a vertical medial (ㅑ, ㅏ, ㅕ, ㅓ, ㅣ, ㅐ, ㅔ, ㅒ, or ㅖ), the initial is written to the left of the vowel. With ㄱ, the vowels look like this: 갸, 가, 겨, 거, 기.

Wrapping medials
If the vowel is a wrapping medial (i.e. written with the digraphs ㅘ, ㅝ, ㅚ, ㅟ, ㅢ, ㅙ, or ㅞ), the initial is always in the top-left area, with the diphthong surrounding the consonant on the bottom and right sides. With ㄱ, the vowels look like this: 과, 궈, 괴, 귀, 긔, 괘, 궤. Notice how ㅗ fits into spaces of the consonant above it. 안녕하세요(annyeonghaseyo)/(hello)

Finals
In a syllable with a final (받침, batchim), the initial and medial are written in the top of the block, as described above, and the final is written below them. In few cases, a syllable will contain two finals. Then, the final written below is simply the two characters next to each other.

Practice 1
Combine the following jamo into Korean characters. Click "Show" to check your answers:

Practice 2
Write the following Korean words:

Practice 3
Write the following Korean words:

Practice 4
Write the following Korean words:

Compounds of 2
Complete this table. Or if you feel you are proficient enough, you can complete it until satisfied. Who's gonna know?

Compounds of 3

/Orthography

title: Korean/Principles of Orthography


text:
Talk:Physics Study Guide/Standing waves

188.149.51.129 (discuss) 13:17, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Physics Study Guide/Standing waves


text:
Talk:Korean/Principles of Orthography

Untitled
Hello,

It's nice to see that somebody is working on improving the Korean lessons now. Thank you! I wonder whether it would be possible to make a step-by-step introduction to the Korean script, as is being done with Modern Greek. I believe that this method works much better than just listing all the consonants and vowels. The basis for the Greek writing lessons was an effort to think up a lot of words and (place) names that sound similar in Greek and English. See Modern Greek/Writing lessons plan. Armed with such a list, it's possible to find an order for the introduction of letters that does not introduce more than one letter at a time except at the very beginning. I'd be glad to help you if you'd like to develop something similar for Korean, however I don't speak any Korean, I can just read the script fairly well. I'd like to learn how to speak Korean, but I haven't yet found a good course. I know the very extensive free online course offered by the university of Sogang, but I haven't been able to study with it because the dialogues are spoken too quickly and I'm unable to distinguish the words and sounds as well as I expect to. Anyway, thank you for your efforts!

Junesun 07:42, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Not in this section, probably in another one, though. The truth is, Hangul is best represented by tables for consonants, but I could see your point if we consider vowels, because they are more patterned. I'll try to think of something, and any layout ideas would be helpful - Iamgravity 06:17, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Testing an image
Now testing an image, will later post everything in gallery mode. Any comments or suggestions welcome! - Iamgravity 04:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:Korean/Principles of Orthography


text:
Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Magic/Blood-Sucking Bugbear

Overview
A Blood-Sucking Bugbear is noted in passing in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Hagrid mentions that his roosters are being killed by "either foxes, or a Blood-Suckin' Bugbear", and needs to ask the Headmaster for permission to put a charm around the henhouse.

Analysis
As a plot element, it is quite possible that this is only mentioned in order to point up the fact that roosters are being killed. The killing of the roosters is a clue to the nature of the occupant of the Chamber of Secrets. As story-telling, mentioning blood-sucking bugbears as well as foxes adds an element of grimness to the atmosphere of the story, and contributes to the reader's sense that the magical world and ordinary world intersect at Hogwarts.

Greater Picture
In fact, it is Ginny Weasley who is killing the roosters, under the orders of Tom Riddle, acting through his diary. This is because a Basilisk can be destroyed by the rooster's crow; if all the roosters have been killed, the Basilisk occupying the Chamber of Secrets will have a longer time when it can be allowed out to roam and hunt.

Again, it is this antipathy to roosters which is meant to give the reader an idea of what Hermione is looking for in the library, when it dawns on her what the monster in the Chamber must be.


text:
Taxation in the United Kingdom/Income tax

In the personal income taxation computations, one counts all the income of individuals from different sources, and then subtracts the allowable deduction from that (those which are allowed by the H.M.R.C.) In the United Kingdom, the income sources are classified into three: Non-Savings Income, Savings Income & U.K. Dividend. For all three there are three bands suggested to divide/classify the levels of income, on which tax is liable to U.K. Government (of course we must take into account that taxation is one of the major sources of income for any government). These bands are Starting Band, Basic Band and Higher Band.

Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax rates

2006/07        2005/06                                      £               £ Starting rate on first              2,150           2,090 Basic rate on next                31,150          30,310 Higher rate on taxable income over 33,300         32,400

General  Savings   Dividend

Starting                  10%       10%       10% Basic                     22%       20%       10% Higher                    40%       40%       32.5%


text: Category:Book:English Grammar

title: Category:Book:English Grammar


text: Category:Book:Ukrainian Dancing

title: Category:Book:Ukrainian Dancing


text: Category:Book:Korean/Orthography

title: Category:Book:Korean/Orthography


text:
The Information Age

Table of Contents

 * /Preface/
 * /Introduction/
 * /The Digital and ICT Revolutions/
 * /Information Knowledge and the New Economy/
 * /New Work/
 * /The Information Society/
 * /Globalization/
 * /The Digital Divide/
 * /The Challenge Ahead/
 * /Notes/
 * /Further Reading/
 * /Contributors/
 * /Acknowledgements/

Information
This book is donated by UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) to the community. The original publication by:

Authors: Emmanuel C. Lallana and Margaret N. Uy

© UNDP-APDIP, 2003, 46 pages

is located at http://www.apdip.net/publications/iespprimers/eprimer-infoage.pdf

This wikibook is available under the terms off GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons Attribution License 2.5

title: The Information Age


text:
The Information Age/Preface

Preface to the First Edition
One of the many challenges facing the countries in the Asia-Pacific today is preparing their societies and governments for globalization and the information and communication revolution. Policy-makers, business executives, NGO activists, academics, and ordinary citizens are increasingly concerned with the need to make their societies competitive in the emergent information economy.

The e-ASEAN Task Force and the UNDP Asia Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) share the belief that with enabling information and communication technologies (ICTs), countries can face the challenge of the information age. With ICTs they can leap forth to higher levels of social, economic and political development. We hope that in making this leap, policy and decision-makers, planners, researchers, development practitioners, opinion-makers, and others will find this series of e-primers on the information economy, society, and polity useful.

The e-primers aim to provide readers with a clear understanding of the various terminologies, definitions, trends, and issues associated with the information age. The primers are written in simple, easy-to-understand language. They provide examples, case studies, lessons learned, and best practices that will help planners and decision makers in addressing pertinent issues and crafting policies and strategies appropriate for the information economy.

The present series of e-primers includes the following titles:

 * 1) The Information Age
 * 2) Nets, Webs and the Information Infrastructure
 * 3) e-Commerce and e-Business
 * 4) Legal and Regulatory Issues for the Information Economy
 * 5) e-Government;
 * 6) ICT and Education
 * 7) Genes, Technology and Policy: An Introduction to Biotechnology

These e-primers are also available online at http://www.eprimers.org. and http://www.apdip.net.

The primers are brought to you by UNDP- APDIP, which seeks to create an ICT enabling environment through advocacy and policy reform in the Asia-Pacific region, and the e-ASEAN Task Force, an ICT for development initiative of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. We welcome your views on new topics and issues on which the e-primers may be useful.

Finally, we thank all who have been involved with this series of e-primers-writers, researchers, peer reviewers and the production team.

title: The Information Age/Preface


text:
The Information Age/Introduction

Imagining the future is always a chancy proposition. For the future almost always turns out differently from how it was imagined. Just think of all the movies made about the present 20 or even 10 years ago. They hardly got it right.

The reason we fail to anticipate the future is simple enough—the many variables that affect the unfolding of history are never fully captured by analysts, activists, artists and scientists.

Yet, we persist in imagining the future. We persist because we are motivated by what could be as much as by what has been. We persist because we have a stake in the future—we intend to live in it.

Imagining a future is affirming a particular account of it. We imagine a future we want to live in. In looking at trends, in extrapolating, we make choices. Even when we take into account all variables, we give some variables more weight than others. Even when all outcomes are anticipated, we deem some outcomes more likely than others. This is not intellectual dishonesty. It is simply how things are. (To say otherwise is to be dishonest.)

This primer on the information age, as well as the other primers in this series on the Information Economy, Society and Polity, is an act of imagination and affirmation of a future that is being shaped by information and communication technologies (ICTs).

This particular primer begins with a review of the digital and the ICT revolutions and how these profound technological transformations are changing the economy, business, and the workplace. The primer also outlines the impact of the pervasiveness of ICTs on the individual, the family and society. The effects of technological change on the global order—the nation-state system and governance—are likewise considered. Finally, the primer charts the challenges arising from the widening divide between those who have access to ICT and those who do not.

Ultimately, we imagine the information age in order that we can affect its becoming.

title: The Information Age/Introduction


text:
The Information Age/The Digital and ICT Revolutions

What is the digital revolution?
Technological breakthroughs have revolutionized communications and the spread of information. In 1875, for example, the invention of the telephone breached distance through sound. Between 1910 and 1920, the first AM radio stations began to broadcast sound. By the 1940s television was broadcasting both sound and visuals to a vast public. In 1943, the worlds first electronic computer was created. However, it was only with the invention of the microprocessor in the 1970s that computers became accessible to the public. In the 1990s, the Internet migrated from universities and research institutions to corporate headquarters and homes.

All of these technologies deal with information storage and transmission. However, the one characteristic of computer technology that sets it apart from earlier analog technologies is that it is digital. Analog technologies incorporate a combination of light and sound waves to get messages across, while digital technology, with its system of discontinuous data or events, creates a universal model? to represent information that is expressed by almost anything using light and sound waves.

To use an analogy, a digital world is a world united by one language, a world where people from across continents share ideas with one another and work together to build projects and ideas. More voluminous and accurate information is accumulated and generated, and distributed in a twinkling to an audience that understands exactly what is said. This in turn allows the recipients of the information to use it for their own purposes, to create ideas and to redistribute more ideas. The result is progress. Take this scenario to a technological level all kinds of computers, equipment and appliances interconnected and functioning as one unit. Even today, we see telephones exchanging information with computers, and computers playing compressed audio data files or live audio data streams that play music over the Internet like radios. Computers can play movies and tune in to television. Some modern homes allow a person to control central lighting and air-conditioning through computers. These are just some of the features of a digital world.

 * Box 1. Wearable Computer Systems

 * Source: MIT Media Lab Affective Computing Research Group, Wearable Computer Systems for Affective Computing� [home page on-line]; available from http://affect.media.mit.edu/AC_research/wearables.html; accessed 28 August 2002.

What is ICT?
ICT is short for information and communications technology. It refers to a broad field encompassing computers, communications equipment and the services associated with them. It includes the telephone, cellular networks, satellite communication, broadcasting media and other forms of communication.

What is the relationship between the digital revolution and the ICT revolution?
The digital and ICT revolutions are twin revolutions. To understand their relationship, let us look at the history of voice telephony. According to Robert W. Lucky, The crux of [Alexander Graham] Bells invention of the telephone in 1875 was the use of analog transmission—the voltage impressed on the line was proportional to the sound pressure at the microphone. The growth of the telephone was relatively slow; it was not until the 1920s that a national telephone network was established in the US. In the late 1940s, an alternative to analog transmission of voice was considered with pulse-code modulation (an encoded signal of pulses). This marked the start of digitization in telecommunications.

However, it was only in 1961 that the first digital carrier system was installed. Digitization meant the widespread replacement of telephone operators with digital switches. In 1971 the first fiber optic cables suitable for communications were made, leading to efforts to send communications signals via light waves. (Light wave transmission systems are inherently digital.) By about 1989, ones and zeros had become the language of telephone networks in the US. Digitization was a critical development because with digital transmission noise and distortion were not allowed to accumulate, since the ones and zeros could be regularly restored (i.e., regenerated) by a succession of repeater sites along the transmission line. The outcome was clearer communications over longer distances at lower costs.

Today, voice is translated into data packets, sent over networks to remote locations, sometimes thousands of kilometers away, and, upon receipt, translated back to voice. Even television is not immune to digitization. In the near future, television signals and television sets will be digital. It will also be possible to use the television to surf the Internet. The digital TV will allow people from different locations to chat with each other while watching a program. With everything becoming digital, television, voice telephony, and the Internet can use similar networks. The transmission of hitherto different services (telephony, television, internet) via the same digital network is also known as convergence.

Cairncross observes that once the infrastructure and the hardware, be it a computer or a telephone or another device, have been set in place, the cost of communications and information exchange will be virtually zero. Distance will no longer decide the cost of communicating electronically. This explains why, for example, a three-minute transatlantic call that costs $0.84 today would probably have cost nearly $800 in todays money 50 years ago!

 * Box 2. Enter the Communication Satellite

 * Source: Walter LaFeber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (New York: Norton & Company, 1999), 69-71.

What are the main characteristics of digital technology?

 * Media Integrity: Data stored in analog formats cannot be reproduced without degradation. The more copies made, the worse the copies get. Digital data, on the other hand, do not suffer such deterioration with reproduction. For instance, movies, videos, music and audio files in digital format can be copied and distributed with a quality that is as good as the original.

 * Media Integration: One of the major limitations of many conventional technologies is their inability to combine media types. Telephones, for example, can send and receive only sound. Similarly, you can watch television and expect a character to answer a question you pose. However, with digital data, it is easy to combine media. Thus, phones with video, or interactive sound with pictures, become possible. Hence the term multimedia.

 * Flexible Interaction: The digital domain supports a great variety of interactions, including one-on-one conferences, one-to-many broadcasts, and everything in between. In addition, these interactions can be synchronous and in real time.

 * Transactions: The ability to combine the transactional capability of computers and computer networks with digital media is another interactive advantage of the digital domain. Placing an order and finalizing a transaction becomes as easy as filling in an electronic form and clicking a button. Movies-on-demand (where you pay for movies that you choose to watch on your TV screen) is just around the corner.

 * Tailoring: Software developed for digital communications and interaction is designed so that users may tailor their use of the tool and the media in a manner not possible with conventional analog technologies.

 * Editing: The conventional alternatives for manipulating text, sound, images, and video are almost always more cumbersome or limited than the new digital tools. Years ago, Francis Ford Coppola said that the day would come when his young daughter will take a home video camera and make films that would win film awards. Coppola’s prediction is fast becoming a reality. Computers with the right software and minimal hardware can do today what thousands of dollars worth of film and video editing equipment did in the past decades.

What is the Internet?
The Internet is a network of networks. It is a global set of connections of computers that enables the exchange of data, news and opinion. Aside from being a communications medium, the Internet has become a platform for new ways of doing business, a better way for governments to deliver public services and an enabler of lifelong learning.

Unlike the telephone, radio or television, the Internet is a many-to-many communication medium. John Gage argues that—

 * The Internet is not a thing, a place, a single technology, or a mode of governance: it is an agreement. In the language of those who build it, it is a protocol, a way of behaving. What is startling the world is the dramatic spread of this agreement, sweeping across all areas of commerce, communications, governance that rely on the exchange of symbols.

The Internet has become the fastest growing mass medium. In only four years the number of Internet users has reached 50 million. In contrast, it took radio 38 years, television 13 years and the PC 16 years to reach the same milestone. Despite its explosive growth, however, less than 10% of the global population is online.

Why is the Internet important?
The Internet, according to Lawrence Lessig, is an innovation commons, a shared resource that enables the creation of new and/or innovative goods and services.

The Internet can be likened to designer clay; its use is limited only by the imagination and skill of the designer. This unique characteristic is due to the fact that the Internet is designed using the end-to-end (e2e) principle. That is, the intelligence in the network is at the ends, and the main task of the network is to transmit data efficiently and flexibly between these ends.

Lessig identifies at least three important consequences of an e2e network on innovation. First, because applications run on computers at the edge of the network, innovators with new applications need only to connect their computers to the network to let their applications run. Second, because the design is not optimized for any particular existing application, the network is open to innovation not originally imagined. Third, because the design has a neutral platform - in the sense that the network owner cannot discriminate against some packets and favor others - the network cannot discriminate against a new innovator design.

The Internet as an innovation commons has made the transformation to the information age possible. As Christopher Coward notes,

 * Because of end-to-end, the Internet acts as a force for individual empowerment. It fosters entrepreneurship. And, as long as end-to-end is not violated, it is democratizing in the sense that it redistributes power from central authorities (governments and companies) to individuals. In the Internet Age, everyone can be a producer of content, create a new software application, or engage in global activities without the permission of a higher authority.

 * Box 3. The Earth Will Don an Electronic Skin

What is Moores Law? Metcalfes Law? Internet time?
Moores Law and Metcalfes Law are insightful observations into the power of the personal computer and the Internet.

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, the chip making company, postulated that the computing power of a microchip doubles every 18 months. This means that the power of the computer chip keeps growing as its size shrinks. As the chip becomes smaller and more powerful without significant price increases, so does the personal computer. Many associate Moore’s Law with the widespread availability of powerful PCs at constant (if not lower) prices. It was used as an explanation for the rapid changes in the PC industry, which in turn affected the whole economy.

Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of the Ethernet, the local area networking (LAN) technology, observed that a network’s value grows proportionately with the number of users.

Internet time refers to the fact that with the Internet, more intensive activities are possible. Indeed, in business Internet time can be the source of competitiveness.

Moore’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law and Internet time are pithy ways of expressing the dynamism that characterizes developments in the ICT sector and in the areas being transformed by ICT. Ed Lozowska best puts the rapid changes in the ICT sector in perspective:

 * If, over the past 30 years, transportation technology had improved at the same rate as information technology with respect to size, cost, performance, and energy efficiency, then an automobile would be the size of a toaster, cost $200, go 100,000 miles per hour, travel 150,000 miles on a gallon of fuel.

Why are these technological revolutions important?
New technologies transform our lives “by inventing new, undreamed of things and making them in new, undreamed of ways�?, says the economist Richard Lipsey.

Imagine what will happen when the cost of a long distance telephone call becomes as low as the cost of a local call? Or, when you can get a driving license at a time and place of your own choosing? Or, when you can bank from the comfort of your own living room? In some countries, ICT is already making these happen. Many believe that the current technological revolution may in time exceed the Industrial Revolution in terms of social significance.

Lipsey, who studies the relationship between technological change and economic development, suggests that the introduction of new technologies can have the following effects on society:

 * Initial productivity slowdown and delayed productivity payoff from the new technologies
 * Destruction of human capital (as many old skills are no longer wanted)
 * Technological unemployment (temporary but serious)
 * Widening disparities in the distribution of income, which tends to be temporary until the supply of labor catches up to the new mix of skill requirements
 * Big changes in regional patterns of industrial location (globalization)
 * Big changes in required education
 * Big changes in infrastructure (e.g., the information highway)
 * Big changes in rules and regulations (intellectual property, antimonopoly, etc.)
 * Big changes in the way we live and interact with each other

What are some of the consequences of the digital and ICT revolutions?
First, let us look at the effects of the digital revolution. James Beniger explains:

 * The progressive digitization of mass media and telecommunications content begins to blur earlier distinctions between the communication of information and its processing…, as well as between people and machines. Digitization makes communications from persons to machines, between machines, and even from machines to persons as easy as it is between persons. Also blurred are the distinctions among information types: numbers, words, pictures, and sounds, and eventually tastes, odors, and possibly even sensations, all might one day be stored, processed, and communicated in the same digital format.

On a societal level, the digital and ICT revolutions make possible better and cheaper access to knowledge and information. This speeds up transactions and processes and reduces their cost, which in turn benefit citizens and consumers.

The ability of ICTs to traverse time and distance allows human beings to interact with each other in new ways. Distance is no longer a consideration. As Giddens observes,

 * With the advent of the communications revolution, distance has a different relationship to self-immediacy and experience than it used to have. Distance isn’t simply wiped out, but when you have a world where the value of the money in your pocket is affected immediately by ongoing electronic transactions happening many miles away it’s simply a different situation from how the world was in the past.

Put another way, so what if two people are located in different time zones? They can still talk, negotiate, and make deals as though they were face to face. As the sociologist Manuel Castells has noted, “Technological revolutions are all characterized by their pervasiveness, that is by their penetration of all domains of human activity, not as an exogenous source of impact, but as the fabric in which such activity is woven.�? What else can go wrong???

Will all countries and peoples be swept up in the technological revolution?
The revolution will affect some countries earlier than it will others. For ICT to weave its magic, it must find a hospitable social and political environment. New technologies threaten existing power and economic relationships, and those that benefit from these old relationships put up barriers to the spread of the new technologies. Note, for example, how the music industry has resisted digital audio tapes and Napster. Moreover, laws can deter (or encourage) the spread of new technologies. For example, the lack of legal recognition for digital contracts and digital signatures is holding back electronic commerce.

Debora Spar states that “life along the technological frontier moves through four distinct phases: innovation, commercialization, creative anarchy, and rules.�? While individualism and the absence of government are characteristics of the first three stages, government—with its rule making and enforcing capability—is a key player in the fourth stage. This is because

 * The establishment of property rights is one of the most crucial events along the technological frontier. It allows the market to unfold in a predictable way, and gives pioneers a hefty dose of ownership and security. Most important, perhaps, the creation of property rights also marks the difference between pioneers and pirates, between those whose claim on the new technology is legitimate and those whose claim is not.

It is important to remember that technology is shaped by society as much as it shapes society. Thus, those interested in harnessing the power of new technologies should help create the right environment for it to flourish.


text: Category:Book:The Information Age

title: Category:Book:The Information Age


text:
The Information Age/Information Knowledge and the New Economy

What is the information economy?
An information economy is where the productivity and competitiveness of units or agents in the economy (be they firms, regions or nations) depend mainly on their capacity to generate, process, and apply efficiently knowledge-based information. It is also described as an economy where information is both the currency and the product.

While we have always relied on information exchange to do our jobs and run our lives, the information economy is different in that it can collect more relevant information at the appropriate time. Consequently, production in the information economy can be fine tuned in ways heretofore undreamed of. What makes information plentiful in this economy is the pervasive use of information and communications technology.

 * Box 4. Banking Without Boundaries

 * Source: Lloyd Darlington “Banking Without Boundaries: How the banking industry is transforming itself for the digital age” in Don Tapscott, Alex Lowy and David Ticoll (eds.), Blueprint for the Digital Economy: Creating Wealth in the Era of e-Business (New York: McGraw Hill), 115.

What are the main features of the information economy?
The information economy is global. A historically new reality, the global economy has the capacity to work as a unit in real time on a planetary scale. Corporations and firms now have a worldwide base for skilled labor to tap. Capital flows freely between countries, and countries can utilize this capital in real time.

However, some critics claim that a true global economy has yet to be achieved. Stephen Cohen observes that the mobility of labor is undermined by people’s xenophobia and stricter immigration laws. Multinational corporations still maintain their assets and strategic command centers in their home nations, and capital is still limited by banking and finance laws.

Castells, however, argues that even if globalization has not yet been fully realized, it will only be a matter of time before this happens. Globalization will be affected by government regulations and policies, which will affect international boundaries and the structure of the global economy.

A second characteristic of the information economy is that it is highly productive. William Nordhaus of the US National Bureau of Economic Research states that:

 * Productivity growth in the new economy sectors has made a significant contribution to economy-wide productivity growth. In the business sector (between 1999 and 2001), labor-productivity growth excluding the new economy sectors was 2.24 percent per year as compared to 3.19 percent per year including the new economy. Of the 1.82 percentage point increase in labor-productivity growth in the last three years relative to the earlier period, 0.65 percentage point was due to the new economy sectors. The contribution of the new economy was slightly larger for well-measured output because that sector is smaller than the business economy.

Some critics argue that there is no relationship between profitability and investment in ICT. Castells looks into the history of productivity growth in advanced market economies and observes a downward trend of productivity growth starting roughly around the time that the information technology revolution was taking shape in the early 1970s. According to him, this decline was particularly marked in all countries for serviced activities, where new information-processing devices could be thought to have increased productivity. However, manufacturing productivity presents a different picture. Manufacturing productivity in the US and Japan increased dramatically in 1988-1989 by an annual average of 3% and 4.1% respectively, and productivity increased at a faster pace than during the 1990s. Castells concludes that economic statistics do not adequately capture the movements of the new information economy, precisely because of the broad scope of transformation under the impact of information technology and related organizational change. There may be a diffusion from information technology, manufacturing, telecommunications, and financial services into manufacturing services at large, and then into business services.

A third characteristic of the information economy is the change in the manner of obtaining profits. Robert Reich observes that profits in the old economy came from economies of scale—long runs of more or less identical products. Thus, we had factories, assembly lines, and industries. Now profits come from speed of innovation and the ability to attract and keep customers. Where before the winners were big corporations, now the winners are small, highly flexible groups that devise great ideas, develop trustworthy branding for themselves and their products, and market these effectively. The winning competitors are those who are first at providing lower prices and higher value through intermediaries of trustworthy brands. But the winning is temporary, and the race is never over. Those in the lead cannot stop innovating lest they fall behind the competition.

Is the information economy different from the “knowledge economy”, the “new economy”, or the “network economy”?
All these terms are used interchangeably, although the various concepts tend to emphasize different aspects of the phenomenon—like “knowledge” instead of “information” or “network” as opposed to “new”. Peter Drucker describes the information revolution as a knowledge revolution. The key, he says, is not electronics but cognitive science. The software used for computers merely reorganizes traditional work, which had been based on experience. This is done through the application of knowledge, in particular systematic, logical analysis. Setting up an IT structure is not enough. To maintain leadership in the new economy, the social position of knowledge professionals and the social acceptance of their values should be guaranteed.

The knowledge economy is also a networked economy. The concept stresses the important role of links among individuals, groups and corporations in the new economy. It has been argued that networks have always been an ideal organizing tool due to their inherent flexibility and adaptability. However, traditional networks were not designed to coordinate functions beyond a certain size and complexity. This early limitation has been overcome with the introduction of ICTs, particularly the Internet, where the flexibility and adaptability of networks are brought to the fore, and their evolutionary nature is asserted.

What is Coase Law? And how is it related to the ICT revolution and the information economy?
Nobel Laureate for Economics Ronald Coase noted that a firm tends to expand until “the costs of organizing an extra transaction within the firm become equal to the costs of carrying out the same transaction on the open market.” Coase also believed that the law of diminishing returns applies to firm size: Big firms are complicated and they find it hard to manage resources efficiently. Small companies often do things more cheaply than big ones. Therefore, if it’s cheaper to perform a transaction within a firm, it usually stays there. However, if it’s cheaper to go to the marketplace, then firms go to external suppliers. Thus, a car maker (like Toyota) will buy car batteries from a supplier rather than manufacture batteries in-house if it is easier to do so.

ICT reduces transaction costs significantly. Large and diverse groups of people can now more easily and more cheaply gain near real-time access to the information they need to make sound decisions and to coordinate complex activities. Firms can now downsize to the point of producing their main competence and purchasing everything else they need from outside. Thus, instead of massive corporations, what are emerging are small highly focused corporations that farm out production to their allies. This is also known as network production.

 * Box 5. Furiously Fast Fashions (excerpts)

 * Source: Joanne Lee-Young and Megan Barnett, “ Furiously Fast Fashions,” in The Software and Information Industry Association Trends Report 2001 [home page on-line]; available from http://www.trendsreport.net/software/young.html; accessed 28 August 2002.

What is e-commerce?
The ICT revolution has transformed not only how (and where) goods are produced but also how commodities are exchanged. E-commerce is buying and selling over the Internet or any transaction concluded through an information network involving the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods or services. More precisely, it includes all business transactions that use electronic communications and digital information processing technology to create, transform and redefine relationships for value creation between organizations, and between organizations and individuals.

The different types of e-commerce are: business-to-business (B2B); business-to-consumer (B2C); business-to-government (B2G); consumer-to-consumer (C2C); and mobile commerce (m-commerce).

What will happen to agriculture in the information economy?
Like the production and exchange of commodities, agriculture will also be transformed by ICT. ICTs will allow farmers to have more accurate information on the factors that are needed to increase crop yield. “Precision farming” or farm management using ICTs will become the norm rather than the exception.

We can also expect better crops and livestock as a result of agricultural biotechnology. The term “biotechnology” broadly includes “any technique that uses living organisms, or parts of such organisms, to make or modify products, to improve plants or animals, or to develop microorganisms for specific use.”

The potential applications of modern biotechnology in agriculture are varied and promising. These include:
 * (a) improved yield from crops;
 * (b) reduced vulnerability of crops to environmental stresses;
 * (c) increased nutritional qualities of food crops;
 * (d) improved taste, texture or appearance of food;
 * (e) reduced dependence on fertilizers, pesticides and other agrochemicals;
 * (f) production of novel substances in crop plants.

 * Box 6. Farming Goes Into Space

 * Source: Craig Sutton and John Deere, “Farming Goes Into Space,” in The Software and Information Industry Association Trends Report 2001 [home page on-line]; available from http://www.trendsreport.net/software/deere.html; accessed 28 August 2002.

Did the information economy end with the dot-com crash?
Not at all. If we look at the history of technology and development, we will see that the dot-com bust is part of the normal pattern of events in any technological revolution.

The economist Joseph Schumpeter suggests that a technology revolution starts with the introduction of one or more technologies that enables the new cluster.

The new technology cluster, at first little noticed, achieves successes in early demonstrations. Technical people start small companies based on the new ideas. These new companies compete intensely in this early turbulent phase, when government regulation is largely absent, and as successes mount in a technical free-for-all environment. The promise of extraordinary profit looms. The public begins to speculate.

The middle phase sees a sustained build out or golden age of the technology, during which the technology becomes the engine of growth for the economy. Large companies and oligopolies reign, and the period is one of confidence and prosperity.

In the last phase, the technology matures. Technological possibilities are saturated, production moves to places on the periphery, and complacency sets in. Profits at home are low, and entrepreneurs start scouting for new opportunities. The economy becomes ripe for the next revolution.

It was not the information economy that died with the dot-com crash. Only the hype died. The downturn in ICTs and the dot-com crash simply ended the first phase. We are now just entering the middle phase, the “sustained build out or golden age of the technology”.


text:
The Information Age/New Work

Will the widespread introduction of ICT lead to mass unemployment?
Jeremy Rifkin suggests that the rise of productivity as a consequence of ICT deployment affects the amount of time worked in two ways. First, labor and time saving technologies have allowed companies to eliminate and dismiss workers en masse. Second, those who manage to hold their jobs are made to work longer hours. For firms a smaller workforce means saving on the cost of providing benefits such as health care.

But the history of the industrial revolution suggests that workers will not disappear; only particular kinds of workers will. Peter Drucker gives us a clue on what kinds of work will disappear. According to Drucker, “the Information Revolution has routinized traditional processes in an untold number of areas.” Just as the industrial revolution mechanized weaving, the information revolution will replace what has been automated by robots. The scenario is not much different from what transpired in previous eras and technology revolutions.

There will always be room for workers, but the areas or fields of demand will change.

What kind of workers will be needed?
The breadth of new work in the information age is immense. New workers can be seen in traditional industries (old workers renewed), in new ICT-related services and content provision (the information workers), in infrastructure development and maintenance of the information economy (information managers and entrepreneurs) and in a host of related areas.

Among the most in demand and sought after workers are information technology (IT) professionals. According to a 1999 US Commerce Department study: “For more than 15 years, employment in the core IT occupations—computer scientists, computer engineers, system analysts and computer programmers—has grown at an astounding pace. The growth rate for computer scientists and system analysts has even accelerated in recent years.” The recent downturn has not changed this trend; it has only slowed down the demand.

But it is not only IT professionals who will thrive. What Robert Reich calls “symbolic analysts”—engineers, attorneys, scientists, professors, executives, journalists, consultants and other “mind workers” who engage in processing information and symbols for a living—will occupy a privileged position in that they can sell their services in the global economy. In an economy where information is critical, symbolic analysts or “knowledge workers” will constitute an elite group.

 * Box 7. The New Workforce (excerpts)

 * Source: “The Next Society: A Survey of the Near Future,” The Economist (November 3, 2001), 8-11.

What are attention givers?
Another category of workers that will emerge are attention-givers—people who care for, tend to, or oversee children, the elderly, the disabled, the depressed and anxious, as well as more or less healthy adults who want more attention for themselves and are able and willing to pay for it.

Two reasons account for the growth of the attention industry. First is the increasing number of people who work harder and subcontract family responsibilities, many of which involve giving attention. Second, with the growing productivity of machines (computerized machine tools and robots inside factories, and, in the service economy, automated bank tellers, automated gas pumps, voice activated telephone answering systems, and digital devices), they will soon be capable of doing just about everything. Everything, that is, except personal attention. So those with jobs that have been replaced by highly productive machines sell personal attention instead, and this trend will continue as the years pass.

Will there still be farmers in the future?
The information revolution will not eliminate farmers, just as the industrial revolution did not eliminate them. But farming methods will change yet again. More information will help farmers to irrigate only those areas that need water and provide for more effective use of fertilizers, among others. In addition, agricultural biotechnology genetically modifies plants and food sources to maximize their reproduction and nutritional value.

Aside from increased yield, faster communications and transactions and lower transportation costs also ensure more efficient delivery of farm inputs that lead to lower prices and better inventory.

What about entrepreneurs? What role do they have in the new economy?
It has been suggested that the Internet is a natural environment for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are innovators who implement change within markets through the introduction of new goods, new methods of production or new markets. Gregory K. Ericksen believes that enterpreneurs will flourish in the new Internet society:

 * …the Internet world calls for a personality portfolio that comes naturally to entrepreneurs. It demands a willingness to take risks, a whole-hearted commitment to the enterprise, a sense of timing, and a readiness to act fast. The challenge of the Internet is not technology, whish is the enabler. The challenges and the opportunities are based on problem solving and innovations that deliver true value. Ideas that make a difference can and must be put into action quickly.

How do we nurture entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurs flourish in an environment that allows the free flow of ideas, encourages risk taking and accepts failure as a necessary part of doing business. Creating entrepreneurs is also linked to an environment of lifelong learning. The European Commission defines lifelong learning as “all learning activity undertaken throughout life, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competence, within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective.” Lifelong learning involves acquiring and updating all kinds of abilities, interests, knowledge and qualifications to enable citizens to adapt to the information age. If designed and implemented properly, ICT use in education can promote the acquisition of the knowledge and skills that will empower students for lifelong learning in the 21st century.

 * Box 9. Educating Entrepreneurs

 * Source: Cathy Ashmore, “Five Stages of Lifelong Learning,” in The Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education [home page on-line]; available from http://www.entre-ed.org/_entre/5-stages.htm; accessed 29 August 2002.

title: The Information Age/New Work


text:
The Information Age/The Information Society

How will the Internet affect the individual?
The Internet and the ICT revolution have created “sovereign individuals”— individuals who are empowered because they have access to new learning opportunities; are able to sell their own ideas, services or products directly to others; and can access medical information to make their own choices about health care. These sovereign individuals also have reliable and up-to-date information about government policies and programs that allows them to become better citizens.

Moreover, the convenience and the anonymity provided by the Internet have led some people to turn to the Internet for emotional and psychological needs. The Net has become a means and method not only for doing business, but also for reaching people on a social and personal level. The latter has elicited some concern in the field of psychiatry. The Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto now accepts Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) as a real problem. Internet junkies, as those with IAD are called, interact more with their PCs than with real people. Psychiatrists consider this not just addiction but dependence, which is characterized by obsessiveness, a loss of control, and an inability to stop even if the person wants to and understands the dangers.

Given its negative effects on individuals, shouldn’t the Internet simply be banned?
Technology is not sole the culprit. Robert Putnam has documented a decline in civic engagement and social participation in the US in the past 35 years, resulting in major consequences on both the societal and the individual level. This is a major concern. As Putnam writes,

 * the quality of governance [is] determined by longstanding traditions of civic engagement (or its absence). Voter turnout, newspaper readership, membership in choral societies and football clubs… [are] the hallmarks of a successful region. In fact, historical analysis suggested that these networks of organized reciprocity and civic solidarity, far from being an epiphenomenon of socioeconomic modernization, were a precondition for it.

Technology, particularly the Internet, is definitely helping change social relations, but not in ways that its critics suggest. Castells describes the impact of the Internet as people organize themselves into a social network. “Networked individualism,” as he describes it, “is a social pattern, not a collection of isolated individuals.” Individuals will build networks, both on-line and off-line, based on their interests, values, affinities, and projects. Because of the capabilities of the Internet for communication, people will build virtual communities that are different from physical communities. These communities, however, are not necessarily less intense or less effective in binding and mobilizing people. Furthermore, a communication hybrid is now developing in our societies, bringing together both the physical and the virtual space as the material support of networked individualism.

How will the Internet affect the family? Technology allows families living in different locations to stay in touch with each other. We are now able to send text messages to relatives all over the world. Those who are working overseas are able to keep in touch with their families back home via the Internet. Children are able to learn more about their parents’ home country via the Internet.

But it also cannot be denied that in recent years people have been spending less time with their families because of information and work overload. Work takes more and more time, and even when a family member is physically present, work is intrusive, preoccupying and unpredictable. Reich believes that the new family now requires a complex set of logistical arrangements for the various members to respond to the economy’s new demands.

Changes in family structure and family attitudes are directly parallel to changes in the economic system that began in the 1970s. In the old system of large-scale production, most men had steady jobs and solid wages, while women had fewer job opportunities. However, in the new system of continuous innovation, we see less predictable earnings and wider disparities in earnings. This induces harder work in terms of time and emotional energy.

Nevertheless, although the emerging economy is more stressful, it generates more opportunities to earn more money for talented men and women alike. Almost all women now have the option of having a job and need not be entirely dependent on a male breadwinner. Gender and racial issues in employment may soon be a thing of the past. Talent is what matters most.

What is the impact of ICTs on communities?
ICTs make possible communities not bound by space. In these “communities of choice” proximity is not a factor for intimacy. Examples of communities of choice are Web forums, newsgroups and mailing lists, which are generally organized topically. Strangers who have similar interests are encouraged to read each other’s messages and communicate, giving each other advice, information and updates. Forums for all fields of interest or concerns and issues exist online, and a person can find others similarly situated with whom to form possible friendships based on common interests, or support groups if suffering from afflictions rare or otherwise.

For this reason, Castells tends to disagree that Internet use lowers social interaction and causes greater social isolation. He does agree that in certain circumstances, perhaps for individuals suffering from addiction or dependence, Internet use tends to become a substitute for other social activities.

 * Box 10. Asháninka@the Peruvian Amazon (excerpts)

 * Source: Keane Shore, “Asháninka@the Peruvian Amazon,” in Reports: Science from the Developing World, Interna-tional Development Research Centre [home page on-line]; available from http://www.idrc.ca/reports/ read_article_english.cfm?article_num=837; accessed 28 August 2002.

Do other communication technologies affect societies the way the Internet does?
A mode of communication that is more prevalent in the developing world than the computer-based Internet is the mobile phone. In most of Asia the mobile phone has become a familiar gadget. Interestingly, mobile phones are not used only for making voice calls but also for short messaging. It is believed that in the developing world more people will access the Internet via mobile phones than computers.

Castells observes that “cell-telephony” also fits a social pattern organized around communities of choice and individualized interaction based on the selection of time, place, and partners of the interaction. In addition, the development of wireless Internet increases the possibility of personalized networking to a broader range of social situations. This enhances the capacity of individuals to rebuild structures of sociability from the bottom up.

Kraut and Lundmark of the Human Interaction Institute of the Carnegie Mellon University issue a cautionary note. Based on their studies, they conclude that the Internet is not a substitute for real human interaction as a means for emotional and social fulfillment. The use of the Internet can be both highly entertaining and useful, but if it causes too much disengagement from real life, it can also be harmful. Until the technology evolves to be more beneficial, people should moderate their use of the Internet and monitor the uses to which they put it. While there are clear benefits to virtual communities formed around infocommunication networks, a balance should be maintained and social isolation minimized.


text:
The Information Age/Globalization

What is globalization and how is it related to the ICT revolution?
Technological development, from better transportation and carrier services to the telephone and mass media, has created a smaller, more integrated world. Now, the ICT revolution is making the world even smaller and more integrated. Communications, trade and employment, personal and political transactions are now occurring on a global scale, in real time, ignoring boundaries between states.

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz defines globalization as

 * …the closer integration of the countries and peoples of the world which has been brought about by the enormous reduction of costs of transportation and communication, and the breaking down of artificial barriers to the flows of goods, services, capital, knowledge, and (to a lesser extent) people across borders.

It is important to underscore that globalization is not just an economic phenomenon. It affects all aspects of life.

At least four factors have contributed to globalization: (1) technological change, particularly the ICT revolution; (2) the spread of market-based systems; (3) domestic politics—pro-globalization forces are more politically significant; and (4) inter-state rivalries.

How will globalization affect the nation-state?
Anthony Giddens suggests that globalization affects the nation-state in three ways. First, globalization, especially the global marketplace, takes certain powers away from the nation-state. Nation-states are not as in command of their economic futures as they used to be. The best example of this is the increasing inability of governments to control their currencies. Exchange rates are now determined by other people’s assessment of a country’s economic well-being.

At the same time, says Giddens, globalization creates new possibilities and motivations for local cultural autonomy and identities. This “push down effect” of globalization is the reason for the revival of local nationalism and local forms of cultural identity in all parts of the world. It may seem strange but the more we globalize, the more we localize.

The third effect of globalization is that it also pushes sideways. This is best seen in the emergence of regional groupings, which Keniche Ohmae calls “regional states”. Both Giddens and Ohmae give as an example the area of Catalonia around Barcelona in northern Spain: Catalonia overlaps with southern France, but it is linked to the Spanish economy.

Clearly globalization is a complex set of partly contradictory forces. It is not, as globalization critics suggest, a single force pulling in a single direction.

How do the Internet and the ICT revolution affect governance?
Governance can be simply defined as “organizing collective action”. It implies the organization of rules that allows, prescribes and prohibits certain actions. A narrower definition of governance relates it to government or the decision-making processes in the administration of a state. ICT has a major effect on governance in both its broad and narrow sense. The Institute of Governance (Canada) believes that ICTs:

 * … create new expectations among citizens about how governments should interact with them, and how services should be delivered. Internet technology and recent advances in applied genetics are significantly redefining the boundaries of personal choice and private influence, and of collective decision-making on matters of public importance.

At one level, governments that use ICT will be better able to govern. E-government, or the use of ICT to enhance the access and delivery of government services to benefit citizens, is a necessary element in the government’s drive for good governance. E-government promises not only a more efficient and effective government but a more transparent one as well.

How does ICT transform international politics?
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Jr reject the view that the information age will radically transform relations between nations. Their position is based on their belief that countries are already embedded in patterns of complex interdependence where “security and force matter less and countries are connected by multiple social and political relationships.” However, they judge that

 * The information revolution alters patterns of complex interdependence by exponentially increasing the number of channels of communications in world politics—between individuals in networks, not just individuals within bureaucracies. But it exists in the context of an existing political structure, and its effects on the flows of different types of information vary vastly.

They also agree that in the 21st century, “information technology, broadly defined, is likely to be the most important power resource.”

Other scholars have proposed the concept of noopolitik,whichrefers to a dimension of international relations that is related to the formation of a ‘noosphere’ or a global information environment. Noopolitik is projected as an alternative to realpolitik, the latter being the traditional approach to fostering the power of the state in the international arena, by negotiation, force, or the potential use of force. In a world characterized by globalization and shaped by information and communication, the ability to act on information flows, and on media messages, becomes an essential tool for fostering a political agenda.

With noopolitik, diplomacy will now include not only governments but also the societies they represent. This new diplomacy may prevent confrontation, increase the opportunity for alliances, and foster cultural and political hegemony. Embedded in this new diplomacy is the capacity to intervene in the process of mental representation underlying public opinion and collective political behavior at the national level.

What is cyberwar? Is it the same as information war and cyberterrorism?
Cyberwar, according to James Dunnigan, is the use of “electronic networks, and information, …as part of a weapon system”. It includes warplanes using electronic devices to jam enemy radars to elude their missiles as well as hacking into the enemies’ bank accounts and/or their servers and information networks. He distinguishes cyberwar from “information war”, which is using information and news as weapon. Information war or propaganda war, claims Dunnigan, has been around for thousands of years. Cyberterrorism is a narrower concept, and is defined as “the premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer programs, and data which result in violence against noncombatant targets by sub national groups or clandestine agents.”

The emergence of these terms is related to the fact that more and more governments and businesses are becoming dependent on computers and information systems. Databases of highly sensitive and confidential information are stored on computer systems. Air traffic control, banking and finance accounts, water utilities and other public utilities are assisted by computer programs and networks as well. Thus, these systems become targets of those who wish to threaten the government or the economy.

What is cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity is about combating threats and crimes in cyberspace. It includes passing appropriate laws and policies, as well as developing capabilities and institutions to prevent fraud and fight threats.

At the national level, government cybersecurity efforts have focused on creating the appropriate policy and legal environment, protecting critical infrastructure against cyber attacks and improving the security of the national information system. At the global level, various efforts are now underway to create a harmonized policy infrastructure to enable a robust and globally integrated system capable of responding to cyber threats in a coordinated and timely manner. In December 2002, the UNGA adopted resolution 57/239 calling for a “global culture of security”. In the Asia-Pacific, APEC Leaders have issued a “Statement on Fighting Terrorism and Promoting Growth” which includes an APEC Cybersecurity Strategy to protect communications and information systems. In their statement APEC leaders have announced their intention to: (1) enact cybersecurity laws that are consistent with international norms; (2) identify national cybercrime units; and (3) establish institutions that exchange threats and vulnerabilities (such as computer emergency response teams or CERTs).

While a focus on cybersecurity is important, analysts believe that cyber terrorist threats to computer structures are implausible. This is because terrorism is like lightning, taking the path of least resistance. Moreover, currently it is easier to blow something up than to figure out how to damage it by hacking into and manipulating a computer system.

title: The Information Age/Globalization