Essay 6

The United States of America has a hugely important foundation in trade.  It was one of the reasons our country was settled, and it is one of the reasons our country has thrived.  Although trade has evolved over the years (Boston Tea Party anyone??), the fact still remains that trading is a key element to American life and American traditions.  Free trade took over mercantilism with the American Revolution and the free trade policies that our country still follows today resemble the policies that began to take hold back then.

Doing a google search of free trade led me to the following definition: free trade is a policy in international markets in which governments do not restrict imports or exports.  Some governments however do use the practice of protectionism with the intent of promoting local employment.  I am in favor of free trade with minimal protectionism which to me is just another way that we can be forced to follow the rules and regulations.  And I rebel against all the rules and regulations!!!  I love all things foreign, so I don't understand how anyone could NOT want the entire world practicing free and open trade every day!  I think free trade is important because it drives competition.  Without free trade and without competition I could see us becoming lazy and complacent.

In order to continue to compete in this ever increasingly flat world you have to have the skills of what Friedman refers to as "The New Middlers".  These are the new middle class jobs in which you will need certain skills that are suited to the flat world.  Among those skills are playing well with others, you have to be able to communicate well and collaborate well with people of all different cultures and backgrounds, in addition to being able to adapt to change easily.  In this digital world where sometimes it seems like great change occurs just overnight, it will not benefit you if you are inflexible and incapable of adapting to change.  Also on Friedman's list were synthesizers, leveragers, explainers, orchestrators and passionate personalizers, and of course all of these skills must be displayed while being green.  We have learned nothing if we have not learned by now the importance of sustaining our planet!

This brings us now to CQ+PQ>IQ.  Directly translated that means: Curiosity Quotient plus Passion Quotient is greater than Intelligence Quotient.  On this I could not agree more with Friedman.  Passion has the capability of being infectious and motivating.  What easier way to make yourself marketable than if you were working in a field in which you felt passionate about?  I recently got a job at a plasma donation center and I could not for the life of me figure out why my husband was being so negative about my new position as a phlebotomist.  He kept saying things that indicated he did not expect me to last for more than a week.  Finally it hit me: it was because HE could NEVER do the job of a phlebotomist, so in his mind he didn't see how anybody could!  Fortunately for me the human body is one of my PASSIONS and something I have a great CURIOSITY about, so I felt incredibly LUCKY to have this job offered to me! I couldn't wait to start digging around in people's veins!  And because of that I have been enjoying every minute of my new position, looking forward to moving up and progressing within the company.  Living in a world where there are so many educational tools right at our fingertips, curiosity is an increasingly valuable trait to have.

Essay 6

Module 5 Essay

Living in the age of technology which increases in leaps and bounds with every passing year I often think to myself: how on earth did we survive without this!?  With the mention of airline traveling in our text let's use that as an example.  Think of buying an airline ticket before the internet and computers.  You probably had to travel to the airport first of all just in order to make a reservation!  The triple convergence took all the latest and greatest technological advances of our time and combined them together to create more convenience, more productivity, and even more innovation, or as the book states "multiple forms of collaboration".  Education is at the fingertips of computer owners across the world, research too.  Entertainment is supplied very easily to bored housewives all across America because of the convergence of media and technology.  But I sometimes wonder, is all this increasing dependence on technology hurting us?  The more we use the computers for every little thing in our day to day lives, the less human interaction we have.  And the less human interaction we have the less likely we are to make meaningful connections with actual people and the more likely we are to become more and more dependent on our laptops and tablets.  I can't help but wonder: is that maybe harmful for the future of humanity?  Wait a minute...are we slowly being conditioned to become robots!??? I'm kidding, I'm kidding (kind of!).

In the whole India/Indiana debacle all I left with was a reinforced hatred of politicians!  What a travesty it was to let stupid politics get in the way of a venture that was to be beneficial to both the tax paying residents of Indiana and the hard working citizens of struggling India.  In regards to that I would say that both India and Indiana were exploited, and they were exploited by the politicians who used the situation to gain support for their own shady agendas. I do not see or understand the problem of outsourcing and saving 8 million dollars of tax payer money?  Why shouldn't the Indians be rewarded for their hard work in getting the best education available to them and trying hard to provide for their families?  Why shouldn't the best value be applied and why should the tax payers be forced to apply more funds for the exact same type of work, but done by only Americans?  It is ridiculous and bad business practice.   

Intellectual property is exactly what it sounds like: ideas.  Just like you would patent an idea or invention, the issue of ownership is arising for your innovative technological ideas.  Advances in technology are being counterfeited and ideas are being stolen.  So, with more and more innovation emerging from open-source collaborations and communities, intellectual property law has to adjust-or else we as a society will not get the benefits or be protected from the drawbacks of a flat world.

Essay 4

These days you can barely even swing your Fendi purse without knocking over ten computer nerds, so fortunately completing the homework for your Digital Society class is a breeze!  I reached out to my younger brother, Stuart Jakins, who has worked at a company called SecurityMetrics as a Technical Support Specialist for the past five years.

According to Wikipedia, SecurityMetrics is "a multinational merchant data security and compliance company headquartered in Orem, Utah" that fields "over 132,000 calls a month and employs nearly 400 employees".  The company is a Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) vendor that also qualifies as a PCI Forensic Investigator, which I thought was quite interesting.  If I had to work there that is the department that I would request!

Stuart spends his shift on the computer as well as on the phone with customers who are typically business owners and merchants.  Technical support includes and covers the set up of firewalls and security for the computer networks that run the business.  Storage of credit card numbers on the merchant's computers requires documentation of the processing and due to the sensitive and private information, proof of antivirus software and firewalls is a necessity.  Also, if a merchant is trying to process credit cards through an IP address or a website, then SecurityMetrics first scans the IP address and website to verify the safety and security.  Stuart summarized his job detail as explaining security measures to merchants and business owners to ensure their compliance with the standards that the credit card companies enforce.

Hmm...sounds quite boring and confusing to me!  After further reading online about SecurityMetrics I learned that it was started in 2000 by a man named Brad Caldwell.  The goal of the company was to test website security, soon becoming officially certified as a security assessor for the four major credit cards in the United States: Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express.  Okay so now it made a bit more sense to me: a security assessor.  After reading that I understood more completely than I did from interviewing my brother. (Sorry Stu!)