The magnitudes in the paper suggest that applying existing sales taxes to Internet commerce might reduce the number of online buyers by up to 24 percent. I. INTRODUCTION The extraordinary growth of the Internet in the last few years has led some to speak of the birth of a world without borders, a place where free communication, competitive markets, and extensive comparison shopping are a matter of course (see The Economist [1997a] and Hof [1998]). This apparent lack of geography in cyberspace, however, has raised some diflScult problems regarding government policy, especially tax policy, toward the "new" economy. Although online transactions currently make up only a very small fraction of total retail sales, predictions of astounding future growth have caused state policy makers to become highly concerned about the fact that most online transactions pay no sales or use tax.i Since the sales tax makes up the largest single component of state tax revenue, the growth of Internet commerce * I wish to thank Shane Greenstein, David Gross, James Hines, Peter Klenow, Steven Levitt, Charles McLure, James Poterha, Joel Slemrod, Michelle White, Alwyn Young, Jonathan Zittrain,
Explain how technological innovations have contributed to a ‘shrinking world’ for many people (10 marks) Advancements in technology have essentially reduced the amount of time it takes to contact someone on the other side of the world. An example of this is the introduction of the world wide web/internet, where emails allowed people to almost instantly contact people who may be Australia. The introduction of emails in 1989 allowed people to contact others wirelessly and not have to be within a certain physical distance, making it an incredibly efficient system. Furthermore, viewing TV on the news has led to some sort of time – space compression for many people, in the sense that again, we do not have to be within a certain physical distance in order to experience how a certain culture may be or to gain updates on world activities almost instantly. This inter – connectivity has led to some people arguing that this has led to a shrinking world through communication.
Week 1: Chapter 1 Introduction Media Convergence in the Digital Era A Critical Approach A key reason for the recent rise of partisanship in today’s news media is economics. Newspapers and TV news have lost a lot of their audience to smartphones, social networks and the internet. Media must target smaller groups with shared interests (liberals, shopaholics, history buffs etc) to find an audience and advertisers economic incentives encourage the partisan divide (problems) to keep audiences attention and high ratings and viewers. More ads sell. this makes us question how trustable are news media really if all they want is ad money?
These are available to anyone and provide different service plans ranging from 10gb/month to unlimited usage. They provide wireless and wired connections and the speeds vary depending on your location. There are many different web hosting service some of them are paid such as fast hosts and some are free such as google sites. This will let put your web site online and also help you create them with custom templates for the less experienced user. Google Sites for example will only has 100MB of storage for free users this will therefore limit you of what you can have on your website, there are also very few templates what you can use so your site will not be unique to you or your business.
Amazon Evolution Amazon, the largest online retailer, has annual sales in excess of $10 billion but investors have not seen the consistent profit growth they expected (Rainer & Turban, 2008). Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com in 1995 by selling books because he believed that only the Internet could offer customers the convenience of browsing a selection of millions of book titles in a single sitting (Small Business Notes, 2009). According to Small Business Notes (n.d.), “Since 1995, Amazon.com has significantly expanded its product offering, international sites, and worldwide network of fulfillment and customer service centers.” Amazon continues to grow and evolve as an excellent e-commerce platform by giving customers more of what they want such as low prices, vast selection, and convenience (Small Business Notes, 2009). However, many analysts wonder if Amazon will ever fulfill its original promise to revolutionize retailing (Rainer & Turban, 2008). According to Rainer & Turban (2008), “By 2007, Amazon had spent 12 years and some $2 billion building the infrastructure of its online store, which is among the biggest and most reliable in the world.” However, Amazon does not use but a small amount of its processing capacity at any one-time so the company decided to provide a series of computing, storage, and other services that make its infrastructure available to companies and individuals to help them run the technical and logistical parts of their businesses (Rainer & Turban, 2008).
As the debate grew more heated over the past month, it occurred to me that this debate could be viewed in terms of innovation. Is the iPad a sustaining or disruptive innovation? In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen describes some of the characteristics of a disruptive innovation: It initially costs more than the item it is initially seen as replacing, for example, the initial 5 inch hard disk drives cost more on a per megabyte basis than the 8 inch drives they were seen as replacing. It doesn’t perform as well as similar previous devices; doing the same task, the new innovation is not quite as good as the existing innovation. Customers and market research did not show a great desire for the new innovation or device, e.g.
But all this convenience, at what cost? We spend less time conversing and more and more time texting and tweeting. Our reliance on technology and “social” media has thrown our social skills out the window and society is suffering because of it. One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by non-verbal cues. Cues and gestures unseen through a cell phone screen.
It’s all about the bottom line. How can a company prosper if the employees are wasting hours using the INTERNET for personal use? Sure they might have intended to only surf the web for a quick minute, but that’s not how the INTERNET works. People can get caught up very quickly and that one minute can easily turn into three hours. If an employee decides to use the INTERNET it should be on their own time.
In the 1980’s who would have thought of having personal computers or being able to log on the Internet. Our quality and standard of life has improved. It’s not that we work harder but we are paid more for the jobs we do. Which jobs have disappeared; In this technological age, computers have made many changes in our society. A number of jobs are now obsolete.
Write a paragraph that describes this difference to a person who is not familiar with either business or Internet technologies. Answer: The Internet technologies used in the first wave, especially in B2C commerce, were slow and inexpensive. Most consumers connected to the Internet using dial-up modems. The increase in broadband connections in homes is a key element in the second wave. Although these connections are more expensive, they are up to 20 times faster and can alter the way people use the Web.