Fashion and Consumer Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Fashion and Consumer Culture - Essay Example The essay "Fashion and Consumer Culture" concerns the consumerism and fashion. Factors include religion, beliefs, climate, gender, and economic and cultural situation, among others. Though fashion may change as dictated by society, clothes are more than just about warmth and protection. In fact, clothes have become a representation of particular cultures that create them. Clothes are considered consumer goods. But then again, more than being consumer goods, it defines the cultural class that wears them. It is one of those consumer goods that are being used as tools for social mobility as stated in the ‘Conspicuous Consumption’ theory by 19th Century economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen. In his book ‘The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions, he says that luxury goods are tools to display economic power, and that such display of discretionary economic power is a means of attaining or maintaining a particular social sta tus. Moreover, as an elaboration, these consumer goods have become tools to provoke envy from other people. Ultimately, consumer goods, and fashion is one of them, is a means of displaying a buyer’s superior socio-economic status. In the article ‘Consumption and the Consumer Society’, it says that the average United States resident consumes 275 lbs. of meat, uses 635 lbs. of paper and uses energy equivalent to 7.8 metrics tons of oil. Forty-five years ago consumption was about half of current statistics. In the U.S. there are 2 persons.

Sun and Stone Fountain Essay Example for Free

Sun and Stone Fountain Essay ‘Another typical day,’ I said to myself when I woke up this morning; but I could never have been so wrong in my entire life! It was a Tuesday morning and the moon was still out. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I bathed and got ready to get out my house since my bus was due in 10mins. As soon as I got out the moon became the colour of pure red blood. It intrigued me. So I got on the yellow knocked up bus and got out my little ‘Blue Note’ and started surfing the web and finding information and jotting down ideas about ‘The Blood Moon,’ or so it was called according to the web, but there was no information I could attain. I looked out the stained window on my right and I saw a red bright beam of light coming from the graveyard. I found it intriguing, so I got off and went to where my curiosity had led me – the darkest corner of the graveyard. And there it was†¦ â€Å"Is what I see before me actually there or is it a hallucination of what I desire? † I whispered to myself with caution. I got closer and closer to the shimmering light and when I got to the source of the light, there was a stone fountain with a ruby in the center of it, with some hieroglyphics carved on the edges of the circle shaped stone. What do these ancient letters mean? The colour of the ruby was the same colour as the Blood Mo † I said out before I got disturbed by a voice from the shadows. â€Å"Yes laddie well spotted son the colour of the ruby is exactly the same as Blood Moon! † Said a Scottish accent coming from the bushes. â€Å"Who goes there? Why are you lurking behind the bushes? † I questioned the man! As he stepped out the shadows, breaking branches every step he takes, first thing I noticed was the black glistening shoes and the fresh dry cleaned suite. My name is Scott Lander. I’m an archaeologist, I Specialize in Egyptian hieroglyphics. † He said mysteriously. â€Å"Well then Lander since you Specialize in hieroglyphics. Then translate what’s on the stone fountain? † â€Å"When the ruby lusters red as blood, the moon will fall, the sun will rise, and like the story of the phoenix rising from the ashes, when the dawn is near, the world will burn in flames, but it will not seek to rise. He said getting quitter and quitter till there was nothing left to say. We looked at each other and Lander and I knew that there was nothing we could do to stop the havoc that was to fall upon us. He took a bottle of whisky out his blue timeworn bag then brought to glasses out and filled a quarter of the glass. At that point the sun was about to rise the sky was turning bright orange so we sat on the fountain and clinked our glasses as we watched the world end before our eyes.

Comparative Analysis of Rank Techniques

Comparative Analysis of Rank Techniques Abstract There is paramount web data available in the form of web pages on the World Wide Web (WWW). So whenever a user makes a query, a lot of search results having different web links corresponding to a user’s query are generated. Out of which only some are relevant while the rest are irrelevant. The relevancy of a web page is calculated by search engines using page ranking algorithms. Most of the page ranking algorithm use web structure mining and web content mining to calculate the relevancy of a web page. Most of the ranking algorithms which are given in the literature are either link or content oriented which do not consider user usage trends. The Algorithm called Page Rank Algorithm was introduced by Google in beginning. It was considered a standard page rank because as no other algorithm of page rank was in existence. Later extensions of page rank algorithm were incorporated along with different variations like considering weights as well as visits of links. This paper presents the comparison among original page rank algorithm as well as its various variations. Keywords: inlinks, outlinks, search engine, web mining, World Wide Web (WWW), PageRank, Weighted page rank, VOL I. Introduction World Wide Web is a vast resource of hyperlinked and a variety of information including text, image, audio, video and metadata. It is anticipated that WWW has expanded by about 2000% since its progression and is doubling in magnitude with a gap of six to ten months. With the swift expansion of information on the WWW and mounting requirements of users, it is becoming complicated to manage web information and comply with the user needs. So users have to employ some information retrieval techniques to find, extract, filter and order the desired information. The technique used filters the web page according to query generated by the user and create an index. This indexing is related to the rank of web page. Lower the index value, higher will be the rank of the web page. 1. Data Mining over Web 1.1 Web Mining Data mining, which facilitates the knowledge discovery from large data sets by extracting potentially new useful patterns in the form of human understandable knowledge and structuring the same, can also be applied over the web. The application being named Web Mining thus becomes a technique for extracting useful information from a large, unstructured, heterogeneous data store. Web mining is quite a immense area with dozens of developments and technological enhancements. 1.2. Web Mining Categories According to literature, there are three categories of web mining: Web Content Mining (WCM), Web Structure Mining (WSM) and Web Usage Mining (WUM) WCM includes the web page information. In it, the actual content pages whether semi structured hypertext or multimedia information are used for searching purposes. WSM uses the central part linkage that flows through the entire web. The linkage of web content is called hyperlink. This hyperlinked structure is used for ranking the retrieved web pages on the basis of query generated by the user. WUM returns the dynamic results with respect to users’ navigation. This methodology uses the server logs ( the logs that are created during user navigation via searching. WUM is also called as Web Log Mining because it extracts knowledge from usage logs. 1.2 Page Rank Algorithm (By Google) This is the original PageRank algorithm. It was postulated by Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin. The formula is: where is the PageRank of page A is the PageRank of pages Ti which link to page A is the number of outbound links on page Ti d is a damping factor having value between 0 and 1. The PageRank algorithm is used to determine the rank of a web page individually. This algorithm is not meant to rank a web site. Moreover, the PageRank of a page say A, is recursively defined by the PageRanks of those pages which link to page A. The PageRank of pages which link to page A does not influence the PageRank of page A consistently. In PageRank algorithm, the PageRank of a page T is always weighted by the number of outbound links C(T) on page T. It means, more outbound links a page T has, the less will page A benefit from a link to it on page T. The weighted PageRank of pages Ti is then added up. But an additional inbound link for page A will always increase page As PageRank. In the end, the sum of the weighted PageRanks of all pages is multiplied with a damping factor d which can be set between 0 and 1. Thus, the extend of PageRank benefit for a page by another page linking to it is reduced. They deem PageRank as a genre of user behaviour, where a surfer clicks on links at random irrespective of content. The random surfer visits a web page with a certain probability which is solely given by the number of links on that page. Thus, one pages PageRank is not completely passed on to a page it links to, but is divided by the number of links on the page. So, the probability for the random surfer reaching one page is the sum of probabilities for the random surfer following links to this page. Now, this probability is diminish by the damping factor d. Sometimes, user doesnot move straight to the links of a page, instead the user jumps to some other page randomly. This probability for the random surfer is calculated by the damping factor d (also called as degree of probability having value between 0 and 1). Regardless of inbound links, the probability for the random surfer jumping to a page is always (1-d), so a page has always a minimum PageRank. A revised version of the PageRank Algorithm is given by Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin. In this algorithm, the PageRank of page A is given as where N is the total number of all pages on the web. This revised version of the algorithm is basically equivalent the original one. Regarding the Random Surfer Model, this version is the actual probability for a surfer reaching that page after clicking on many links. The sum of all page ranks of all pages will be one by calculating the probability distribution of all web pages. But, these versions of the algorithm do not differ fundamentally from each other. A PageRank which has been calculated by using the second version of the algorithm has to be multiplied by the total number of web pages to get the according PageRank that would have been calculated by using the first version. 1.3 Dangling Nodes A node is called a dangling node if it does not contain any out-going link, i.e., if the out-degree is zero. The hypothetical web graph taken in this paper is having a dangling node i.e. Node D. II Research background Brin and Page (Algorithm: Google Page Rank) The authors came up with an idea to use link structure of the web to calculate rank of web pages. This algorithm is used by Google based on the results produced by keyword based search. It works on the principle that if a web page has significant links towards it, then the links of this page to other pages are also considered imperative. Thus, it depends on the backlinks to calculate the rank of web pages. The page rank is calculated by the formula given in equation 1. (1) Where u represents a web page and represents the page rank of web pages u and v respectively is the set of web pages pointing to u represents the total numbers of outlinks of web page v and c is a factor used for normalization Original PageRank algorithm was modified considering that all users donot follow direct links on web data. Thus, the modified formula for calculating page rank is given in equation 2. (2) Where d is a dampening factor which represent the probability of user using direct links and it can be set between 0 and 1. Wenpu Xing and Ali Ghorbani (Algorithm: Weighted Page Rank) The authors gave this method by extending standard PageRank. It works on the theory that if a page is vital, it has many inlinks and outlinks. Unlike standard PageRank, it does not equally distribute the page rank of a page among its outgoing linked pages. The page rank of a web page is divided among its outgoing linked pages in proportional to the importance or popularity (its number of inlinks and outlinks). , the popularity from the number of inlinks, is calculated based on the number of inlinks of page u and the number of inlinks of all reference pages of page v as given in equation 3. (3) Where and are the number of inlinks of page u and p respectively represents the set of web pages pointed by v. , the popularity from the number of outlinks, is calculated based on the number of outlinks of page u and the number of outlinks of all reference pages of page v as given in equation. 4. (4) Where and are the number of outlinks of page u and p respectively represents the set of web pages pointed by v. The page rank using Weighted PageRank algorithm is calculated by the formula as given in equation 5. (5) Gyanendra Kumar et. al. (Algorithm : Page Rank with Visits of Links (VOL)) This methodology includes the browsing behavior of the user. The prior algorithms were either based on WSM or WCM. But it incluses Page Ranking based on Visits of Links (VOL). It modifies the basic page ranking algorithm by considering the number of visits of inbound links of web pages. It assists to prioritize the web pages on the basis of user’s browsing behavior. Also, the rank values are assigned in proportional to the number of visits of links in this algorithm. The more rank value is assigned to the link which is most visited by user. The Page Ranking based on Visits of Links (VOL) can be calculated by the formula given in equation 6. (6) Where and represent page rank of web pages u and v respectively d is dampening factor B(u) is the set of web pages pointing to u Lu is number of visits of links pointing from v to u TL(v) is the total number of visits of all links from v. Neelam Tyagi and Simple Sharma (Algorithm: Weighted Page Rank Algorithm Based on Number of Visits of Links of Web Page) The authors incorporate Weighted PageRank algorithm and the number of visits of links (VOL). This algorithm consigns more rank to the outgoing links having high VOL. It is based on the inlink popularity ignoring the outlink popularity. In this algorithm, number of visits of inbound links of web pages are taken into consideration in addition the weights of page. The rank of web page using this algorithm can be calculated as given in equation 7. (7) Where represent page rank of web page u and v respectively d is the dampening factor B(u) is the set of web pages pointing to u Lu is number of visits of links pointing from v to u is the total number of visits of all links from v represents the popularity from the number of inlinks of u. Sonal Tuteja (Algorithm: Enhancement in Weighted Page Rank Using Visits of Link (VOL)) The author incorporated i.e. the weight of link(v,u) and calculated based on the number of visits of inlinks of page u. the popularity from the number of visits of outlinks are used to calculate the value of page rank. is the weight of link(v, u) which is calculated based on the number of visits of inlinks of page u and the number of visits of inlinks of all reference pages of page v as given in equation 8. (8) Where and represents the incoming visits of links of page u and p respectively R(v) represents the set of reference pages of page v. is the weight of link(v, u) which is calculated based on the number of visits of outlinks of page u and the number of visits of outlinks of all reference pages of page v as given in equation 9. (9) Where and represents the outgoing visits of links of page u and v respectively R(v) represents the set of reference pages of page v. Now these values are used to calculate page rank using equation (10) (10) Where d is a dampening factor B(u) is the set of pages that point to u WPRVOL (u) and WPRVOL(v) are the rank scores of page u and v respectively represents the popularity from the number of visits of inlinks represents the popularity from the number of visits of outlinks III Numerical analysis of various page rank algorithms To demonstrate the working of page rank, consider a hypothetical web structure as shown below: Figure showing a web graph having three web pages i.e. A, B, C, D Page Rank (By Brin Page) Using equation 2, the ranks for pages A, B, C are calculated as follows: (1) (2) (3) (4) Having value d=0.25, 0.5, 0.85, the page ranks of pages A, B and C become: Dampening Factor PR(A) PR(B) PR(C) PR(D) 0.25 0.9 0.975 1.22 0.99 0.5 0.8 0.9 1.35 0.95 0.85 0.85 0.829 1.53 0.357 From the results, it is concluded that PR(C)> PR(D)> PR(B)> PR(A) 2. Iterative Method of Page Rank It is easy to solve the equation system, to determine page rank values, for a small set of pages, but the web consists of billions of documents and it is not possible to find a solution by inspection method. In iterative calculation, each page is assigned a starting page rank value of 1 as shown in table 1 below. These rank values are iteratively substituted in page rank equations to find the final values. In general, many iterations could be followed to normalize the page ranks. d=0.25 d=0.5 d=0.85 Iteration PR(A) PR(B) PR(C) PR(D) PR(A) PR(B) PR(C) PR(D) PR(A) PR(B) PR(C) PR(D) 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.25 1 1 1 1.5 1 1 0.5 1.425 0.575 2 0.875 0.97 1.21 0.99 0.875 0.94 1.44 0.97 0.75 0.788 1.46 0.82 3 0.90 0.975 1.22 0.99 0.86 0.93 1.4 0.965 0.77 0.80 1.48 0.83 †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. From the results, it is concluded that PR(C)> PR(D)> PR(B)> PR(A) 3. Page Rank with Visits of Links (VOL) (Gyanendra Kumar) Using equation 6, the ranks for pages A, B, C are calculated as follows: (A)=(1-d)+d((1) (B)=(1-d)+d((2) (C)=(1-d)+d(+(3) (D)=(1-d)+d((4) The intermediate values can be calculated as: Similarly other values after calculation are: 2/3 Having value d=0.25,0.5, 0.85 the page ranks of pages A, B and C become: Dampening Factor PR(A) PR(B) PR(C) PR(D) 0.25 0.83 0.82 1.23 0.818 0.5 0.635 0.606 0.808 0.6 0.85 0.2478 0.22 0.3449 0.1123 From the results, it is concluded that PR(C)> PR(A)> PR(B)> PR(D) 4. Weighted Page Rank (Wenpu Xing and Ali Ghorbani) Using equation 3, the ranks for pages A, B, C are calculated as follows: (C,A).(1) (2) (3) (4) The weights of incoming as well as well as outgoing links can be calculated as: (C,A)= IA/IA+IC = 1/ 1+2 = 1/3 =OA/OA=1 Having value d=0.5, the page ranks of pages A, B and C become: Dampening Factor PR(A) PR(B) PR(C) PR(D) 0.25 0.8526 0.8210 1.2315 0.75 0.5 0.7059 0.6176 1.235 0.5 0.85 0.3380 0.2458 0.6636 0.15 From the results, it is concluded that PR(C)> PR(A)> PR(B)> PR(D) 5. Weighted Page Rank Based on Visits of Link (VOL) (Neelam Tyagi and Simple Sharma) Using equation 7, the ranks for pages A, B, C are calculated as follows: )(1) )(2) (3) (4) The weights of incoming, number of visits of link as well as total number of visits of all links can be calculated as Having value d=0.25, 0.5 0.85, the page ranks of pages A, B and C become: Dampening Factor PR(A) PR(B) PR(C) PR(D) 0.25 0.8061 0.7836 1.015 0.8153 0.5 05981 0.5498 0.8825 0.5916 0.85 0.1734 0.1735 0.3469 0.1994 From the results, it is concluded that PR(C)> PR(D)> PR(A)> PR(B) 5. Enhancement in Weighted Page Rank Using Visits of Link (VOL) (Sonal Tuteja) Using equation 10, the ranks for pages A, B, C are calculated as follows: (1) (2) (3) Intermediate values can be calculated as follows: =IA/IA=1 =OA/OA=1 Having value d=0.25, 0.5, 0.85 the page ranks of pages A, B and C become: Dampening Factor PR(A) PR(B) PR(C) PR(D) 0.25 0.7226 0.7951 1.029 0.75 0.5 0.9557 0.6195 0.9115 0.5 0.85 1.911 0.5561 1.116 0.15 From the results, it is concluded that PR(C)> PR(B)> PR(D)> PR(A) Comparison chart of various Ranking Algorithms Algorithm Page Rank Page Rank with VOL Weighted Page rank WPRV EWPRV

Sticking To The Weights :: essays research papers

1†¦2†¦3†¦4†¦5. I had to get stronger before the next basketball season at La Puente High School. I was pushing myself hard when it came to lifting weights and running. I thought I could catch up with all the time I missed during the last six weeks of last year. I was out of the end of the season last year from a torn muscle in my hip. I knew I was weak and out of shape compared to the other players that were going to be on the team next season. I pushed myself very hard for the first couple of weeks. Because I worked myself so hard I began to slowly push it away from my to do list.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I started to set my sets and repetitions lower and lower till I just wasn’t doing it anymore. I had that whole summer that I was really looking forward to. I wanted to come back the next season and be in better shape then I’ve ever been. I also wanted to show my coach that I never quit not even in my off-season. That wasn’t the way it went though. I wasted time and a lot of it. I wasted time with weight lifting and also a jumping program that I got that guaranteed a 10-12 inch gain in my vertical jump. The last few weeks of the summer my friend invited me to lift with him. He had put together a weight program that we did the rest of the summer.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Just those last few weeks of the summer my friend and I were really seeing how we were getting stronger. That really inspired us to keep working hard. The first day of school, our coach saw the changes in the both of us. He new we had been working hard and he admired that. I started to think of how I would feel if I had been working as hard as I was then, the whole summer. I started to get mad at myself for not doing what I should have been instead of sitting around all summer playing video games. After that moment I promised myself that I wouldn’t stop lifting weights. That I would always work hard. So far I’m doing really well, I haven’t stopped since I started in the summer and I’m really glad that I didn’t. That was like six weeks ago and I’m still working hard.

Castles In The Air

Man is a pleasure loving animal. He wants diversity of enjoyments. His intelligence has certainly enabled to get a much greater variety of enjoyment that is open to animals. Music. poetry and science, football and baseball and alcohol and cigarettes are some from which people of different temperaments and mental make-up derive pleasure. There are still others who undertake hazardous journeys on the uncharted ocean. Some of foolishly expose themselves to frost-bite and other inclemencies of weather simply to be called conquerors of snowy peaks but the thrill-which these practical men get fails to stir their soul.Even if they simply profess, it transports them to some ethereal pleasure, no sensible person who experienced the vast range of vicarious pleasures would believe them. In fact he who knows how to build castles in the airknow what the secret of perennial pleasure is, and which never gives one a feeling of satiety or frustration Much has been said in praise of the warriors who b y their barbarian exploits conquered their so-called invincible enemies. But is it not a fact that these conquerors could never lead a life free from the fear of being over-run by some braver and more crafty warrior or soldier.And this imaginary' fear drove them from one inhuman act to another? Did not Aurangzeb subject his father and brothers to most inhuman treatment simply to become the unchallenged emperor of India? Also they had cared to know how unconquerable is the person who handles sword in his dreamland where no blood issued and where forces fall as easily a butterflies in a young boy's net. Had they been contended with such conquests they might have not got a few pages in history read by bespectacled scholars, they would have, at least, remained unchallengeable masters of their domains.After all what does it matter to a person whether people talk well or bad of him after he is dead Then why expose ourselves to the smoky hazardous battle-field? Is not our unconquerable for t which is not to be defended by death dealing weapons better, it is in this world that intrigues find little head way. No doubt achievements give us a sense of fulfillment and a feeling of joy. But this joy is seldom or never in proportion to our efforts. Naturally all our plans and the pains taken in executing them head to insignificant pleasure, Not only that, This pleasure is not lasting.It is bound to result in frustration if success in one achievement is not followed by another. A part from that we may think that we have done something remarkable but others might not. This will prick the bubble of our pride and pleasure; the appreciation is whole hearted it might be only of section of people whose opinions we value the least, Then the fear of not being up to the mark also dissipate the pleasure we are likely to get from doing something concrete. And the period preceding our success is a period of great tension.In fact what we do by building casdes on the earth is not to please overselves but to please others. We work as salves and not as masters of our souls. If still some think that there is no pleaSure in idle dreams let them think so, It is a matter of opinion, and if we claim to be civilize we should not grudge them the right to entertain worn ideas. Above all pleasure is completely a personal affair. When it becomes a community affair, as the pleasure from concrete achievement is, we may call it anything else, but to call it pleasure would be misnomer.Nevertheless they who are earthy are contemptuous of day dreamers. The who ‘late and soon getting and spending law waste their powers and little see in nature that is ours are prone to have such feelings for those who make plans and entertain hopes that can never be realised. But is the dreams of such dreams to whom we owe much of colour and joy in the world. They make our drab )world permeate with whose who make life worth living. They wipe tears off every eye.They are the angles who do not fear to tread or even to rush, whatever the attitude of the down-to-the dearth people may be. It is a fact that in all ages such dreamers have been dubbed cranks. Nevertheless, it is the cranks of one age who dream of a world different from the one in which they lived that mankind have, though at a slow pace, become different from what other species are. The discontent of such dreamers with the present make them to visualise a world where mankind would enjoy the ‘sweetness and light' they unconsciously had been instruments.Day dreamers have super-human power of withdrawing themselves from the tedium of boring routine. They by virtue of sanguine optimism have the capacity to neutralize the blind darkness of the realist. The hopes they entertain never meet with frustration, and they with unheated zeal go ahead from one pleasure to another. This pleasure is rather unknown to those who cannot abandon themselves completely. An egoist who is ambitious to become supreme lord of a cherish ed domain cannot known this pleasure.Only the meet enter this kingdom. Obviously of all sorts of material gains which yelled nothing but disappointment, with a pipe in his mouth and a vacant glance in its eyes our dreamer is transported to that region where hatred ignoble reclaims give rise to love, humanism, broad mindedness and internationalism. And the picture of the world that emerges from such thinking is a thrilling and colourful pictures as are seen through a kaleidescope by a boy.

The Internet Economy Essays - Digital Technology, Media Technology

The Internet Economy Essays - Digital Technology, Media Technology The Internet Economy T he internet, the world wide data connection that has caught on like a wild fire sweeping through a parched California forest, has wide ranging implications on our world economy. Locally, we have witnessed staggering swings of fortune in more dot-com firms than any other form of business in American history. The old adage of that American Dream - starting a business in the garage to see it one day be listed on the stock exchange is truer now than at any other time in our short history as well. While many still feel that the internet is simply a fad that will fade out as consumers tire of on-line shopping, most are resigned to the fact that the computer age is finally found a foothold into the masses a true consumer product as inseparable in the modern household as the television and telephone. The fact that it isnt being called the telenet may be more a matter of poor timing than a marketing gaffe. As the data-stream (bandwidth in internet parlance) becomes more efficient read that as fast, other uses of the internet will boom. No longer will the internet be just for buying and selling merchandise, chatting with friends and family, or gaining insight into the latest sexual technique, but will become a truly real-time and practical multi-media tool. Video data, currently suited only for the occasional voyeuristic views with choppy, grainy images reminiscent of our parents/grandparents 8mm movies, will one day (soon, I predict) become a window to the world. The video phone a product most of us in my age group thought would have become reality long before now - will finally become commonplace. With video, audio and other input devices at ones disposal, doctors will again make house calls, and visits to far off friends and relatives will nearly suffice for the real thing (a rekindling of the infamous smell-o-vision system to transmit the aroma of Grandmas fresh apple pie baking in the oven, perhaps?). The uses are nearly as endless as ones imagination, and is a field where current state-of-the-art has only touched the surface of what can and will be achieved over a very short period of time. So what does all this high tech wizardry have to do with the economy? Just about everything, actually. Already governments across the globe are clamoring to be the first to find a practical method of taxation into this new world wide interchange system. Hopefully, the Genie has long since been out of the bottle on that one Shopping malls, already feeling the effects of internet commerce, may be forced to radically change their business structure or face certain failure. The parcel delivery systems are feeling the effects as well as a dramatic increase of flow is being realized directly through internet sales. As fuel prices continue to climb, video conferencing, once reserved for the well-healed companies will make sense for even the smallest of companies. The ramifications of the internet are wide ranging and will certainly impact nearly every human being on the face of this planet. What a marvelous time to be living in to see one of the single biggest technological advances come to fruition. While the telephone made the world a much smaller place to live in, the internet has taken the meaning of distance out of the equation completely. The economy? Its the internet, stupid Bibliography businessweek.com/1999/99_40/b3649001.htm