Africa Essay -- essays research papers

The combination of individual and national power and the need to find a safe route to the trade markets of the Indian Ocean led the Europeans to the continent of Africa in the late 1400’s. They would soon discover the abundance of its natural resources and in the next four centuries would systematically trigger the breakdown African societies. These acts would lead the Africans to be integrated into an exploited and racially dominated labor structures that would spread throughout the world.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It began with the exploration of the Portuguese in and around western Africa in the late 1400’s to gain access to the Akan goldfields of West Africa. Once they gained access to these fields it helped finance future exploration round the southern tip of Africa and reach the trade markets of the Indian Ocean. They purchased silk, spices, perfumes and other goods, return it to Europe and sold it for a profit. They built the fort of Elmina in West Africa to protect their interests from other European countries who were also seeking fortune in Africa. When they reached the eastern coast of Africa it was amazed by the wealth of the Swahili States comprised of Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombassa and Sofala, they wanted to seize them. They first sailed into the important towns and demanded the rulers to become Portuguese subjects and pay them tributes. When the rulers refused the Portuguese would raid the towns until they gave into them. They built a fortress called fort Jes ... Africa Essay -- essays research papers The combination of individual and national power and the need to find a safe route to the trade markets of the Indian Ocean led the Europeans to the continent of Africa in the late 1400’s. They would soon discover the abundance of its natural resources and in the next four centuries would systematically trigger the breakdown African societies. These acts would lead the Africans to be integrated into an exploited and racially dominated labor structures that would spread throughout the world.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It began with the exploration of the Portuguese in and around western Africa in the late 1400’s to gain access to the Akan goldfields of West Africa. Once they gained access to these fields it helped finance future exploration round the southern tip of Africa and reach the trade markets of the Indian Ocean. They purchased silk, spices, perfumes and other goods, return it to Europe and sold it for a profit. They built the fort of Elmina in West Africa to protect their interests from other European countries who were also seeking fortune in Africa. When they reached the eastern coast of Africa it was amazed by the wealth of the Swahili States comprised of Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombassa and Sofala, they wanted to seize them. They first sailed into the important towns and demanded the rulers to become Portuguese subjects and pay them tributes. When the rulers refused the Portuguese would raid the towns until they gave into them. They built a fortress called fort Jes ...

Crash Course :: Essays Papers

Crash Course Ever since I was young, I have had a fascination with bikes and motorcycles. I enjoyed reading and learning about them. As an adolescent riding my bike was a sort of nirvana for me. Interestingly enough, I was never very skilled at the art of bicycle riding. True, I did find it interesting and exciting, among other things, but I just wasn't any good at it. I would be willing to venture that the number of accidents I had on my bike would rival the totals of some race riders, although I was never that daring. Consequently, I walked away (most of the time) from those accidents with quite a few scars and just as many stories. My first accident happened not long after my maiden voyage. In fact it happened on my maiden voyage. I lived in a small, Leave it to Beaver type town (with more dirt and more hoodlums), all the kids on the street were skilled bike riders, and "riding bikes" was the most frequent use of playtime. At nine or ten years old, I was suffering from distinct feelings of inferiority because there were kindergartners on my block who could ride their bikes when I hadn't yet learned. To this day I haven't been able to decide what kept me from learning for so long. Being the only kid on the block who has to ride with training wheels is not a distinction most ten-year-olds would want to call their own. And I was no different. I hated feeling like a baby. In the summer of my tenth year I decided that I would put an end to this feeling of inferiority once and for all. I had it all planned out. While I was spending a week at my grandparents house, I would teach myself to ride a two-wheeler. I would go away a chump and come back a champ: the ultimate "Rags to Riches" story, at least that is what it would be to my ten-year-old mind. I got to work on my mission as soon as I arrived. I went to my grandparents shed behind their house and opened it, stepping into the sun-baked shed and smelling the familiar warm musty odor that I had expected. Then I saw it: the old copper finish sparkling where some rays of sunshine snuck in the door to help me find it. It was old, most likely older than I was.

An Ethical Theory Applied to Business Organizations Essay -- Business

The object of this essay is to establish whether there is an ethical theory that can be successfully applied to business organizations. In order to answer this question, it is necessary first to define the major ethical theories, which are utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics, before determining whether there are any other options. After that, the ethical needs, problems and limitations of work organizations will have to be examined so that the different theories can be evaluated in this context. It will also be important to draw a distinction between the terms â€Å"accurate† and â€Å"useful† as these actually result in two different questions the answer to which need not necessarily be the same. Another essential part of this discussion is the more general question why there should be ethics in work organizations in the first place, and to what extent ethical behavior is feasible in the business world. Hopefully this will provide a framework within which the answer to the essay question can be included. To begin with, the â€Å"traditional† approaches to solving moral problems will be defined, namely those of act-utilitarianism and deontology. These are traditional not because they have existed longer than virtue ethics, but because for a long time they have been the approaches most commonly used as a basis for trying to solve ethical problems. After looking at these two moral theories, the approach of virtue ethics regarding moral dilemmas will be investigated in order to compare differences and advantages as well as problems. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. It adopts the consequentialist view that it must be right to make the world a better place and therefore the right action is the one that produces the best consequences. Utilitarianism takes this one step further and defines the action that will produce the best consequences as the one that produces the most happiness. Act-utilitarianism holds that each case should be judged separately in terms of which possible action would maximise happiness; this means that there are no rules to follow, but the theory seems to provide a decision-procedure to act upon in that one acts upon a principle of justice. Intuitively this seems to be an appealing solution to ethical dilemmas. To maximise happiness makes utilitarianism a noble ideal. Furthermore... ...usiness Ethics, Vol.19, No.3, April II 1999 Cicero: Selected Works. Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth - England 1971 Donaldson, D. and Davis, E.: ‘Business Ethics? Yes, But What Can it Do for the Bottom Line?’ Management Decision, Vol 28, 6, 1990 Legge, K.: ‘Is HRM ethical? Can HRM be ethical?’ in Parker, M. (ed.): Ethics and Organisations. Sage Publications - London 1998 Madsen and Shafritz Essentials of Business Ethics. Penguin Books 1990 McDonald, G.: ‘Business Ethics: Practical Proposals for Organisations.’ in Journal of Business Ethics, Vol.19, No.2, April I 1999 McNamara, C.: ‘Complete Guide to Ethics Management: An Ethics Toolkit for Managers.’ The Management Assistance Program for Nonprofits 1999 (http://www.mapnp.org/library/ethics/ethxgde.htm) McNaughton, D.: Moral Vision. Blackwell - Oxford 1988 Norman, R.: The Moral Philosophers. Clarendon Press - Oxford 1983 Pearson, G.: Integrity in Organisations. McGraw-Hill Book Company - London 1995 Richards, R.: ‘Cicero and the ethics of honest business dealings.’ The Online Journal of Ethics 1997 Townley, P.: ‘Business Ethics: Commitment to Tough Decisions.’ Vital Speeches, pp. 208-211, 1992 (Jan)

Market mix Essay

REPORT Table of content Identify key characteristics of the product. Review pricing policy Analyse the impact and importance 1. Promotional method 2. Channel of distribution 3. Level of customer service provided Establish the components of the marketing mix. Identify external environment factors Identify consumer priorities Assess the marketing mix Introduction Braaap began with the vision of making motorcycling more enjoyable and more accessible, enabling more people to experience what we love about motorcycling. Plan from the beginning was to build a World-Class Motorcycle that could compete with the custom built American race bikes, whilst still being affordable to the masses. With a dream of building a niche motorcycle brand, braaap founder Brad Smith set out to find manufacturing partners that could build the ultimate motorcycle with him. As an eighteen year old kid with nothing to offer but a vision, he and an interpreter visited over 50 motorcycle manufacturing plants; one by one getting laughed out of their offices. Finally he found manufacturing partners that believed in his vision, believed in the brand. We now have what we believe is the best motorcycle range of its type in the world. We are the only motorcycle brand on the planet with a lifetime warranty, and we are the only production bike to win back to back world championship s for our genre of the sport. Characteristics Braaap Motorcycles are the only Australian motorcycle company and the only dirt bike on the planet to offer a life time warranty and customised dirt bikes. With the option of over 1000 colour and sticker kit combinations there’s no wonder braaap are the category leader. 1. Braaap Pro 50cc The braaap PRO 50cc Is the Ultimate Kids bike! Designed in Australia and Backed by Lifetime Warranty the braaap Pro 50cc is Loaded with safety features and top level specs including disk brakes, category leading suspension, restrict-able throttle and electric start. 2. Braaap Pro 88cc – Youth Edition The kids 88cc braaap features all world class componentry as the adults 88cc but features a cut down seat to suit kids. The braaap 88cc is a perfect match for someone learning to ride, with a 4 speed semi centrifugal gear box this bike is packed with fun! 3. Braaap Street Superlite 125cc The Street Superlite is an exciting addition to the Australian designed braaap range. With a mission to take everything braaap represents and bring it to your daily commute. The street legal braaap SS 125cc is a superlight street legal motorcycle suited for the daily commuter or weekend riding with a power to weight ratio make every ride awesome. 4. Braaap Pro Factory 190cc The braaap Factory â€Å"RACE† Bike. Our â€Å"braaap factory 190cc† is the Ultimate Power house, race bread SUPERLITE machine. Featuring the Japanese Daytona Anima 190cc engine, French Frame, European Exhaust and Canadian Suspension the power to weight ratio will blow your mind! If you want to go fast and roost ya mates this is the bike for you. Marketing mix The largest moto fashion retrailer in AUS is the slogan of Braaap. The market mix strategies used at Braaap to become a successful company in business of dirt bike, pit bike and mini bike. Pricing, Promotion, Products, Channels of distribution and Customer Serviced are the key ingredients at Braaap. Pit bike, Dirt Bike, Mini Bike and their parts and accessories are available to shop online and in store. Braaap offers their own brand name bike or other major brands including: ProTaper, Renthal, Daytona, Elka and Castrol. Braaap refers their bike as the best dirt bike of its type in the world. It is assembled by Braaap’s mechanics base in Australia. There are 4 superstores branches around Australia. Not only bikes are the products at Braaap, other fashion accessories are the main products too. Action sports equipments, for example, helmets, riding gear, T-shirt, shoes, jeans and spare parts of bikes are available to shop. Pricing Policy and Customers Pricing At Braaap, the price of products is various. For the price of accessories and spare parts is divided into 4 ranges * $0 – $24.99 * $25 – $49.99 * $50 – $249.99 * and over $250 Objectives The main objective of the organisation is to make their products affordable for people for this reason, Braaap also offers the payment plan for those who cannot afford a bike with $3 a day for a bike. The law of demands is often referred as Consumer wants to buy more of a product at a low price and less of a product at a high price. This inversion of demand and price shows that the higher price of products the less willing to buy. However, there are amount of people who purchase a higher price product because they believe a product is better in quality. At Braaap, they offer the products to attach customers at different level. The main customer of Braaap is a young-adult who has a passion in this sport.

Brief History of Computer by Ajiboye Daud

LITERATURE REVIEW OF COMPUTER HARDWARE Computers have evolved from the fundamental principles of mathematical calculation and language processing. The computing systems of today are an outcome of the efforts and intellect of mathematicians, logicians, linguists and technologists from all over the world. Computer history comprises the evolutionary journey of computing systems, the timeline of operating systems as well as the history behind the development of a wide variety of computer software and hardware. Bellow is the computer history in brief and the evolution of computers. How did the different types of computers evolve? Here is a brief overview of the progress of computing technology from calculators of the 18th century right up to the modern-day digital portable computers. Year| Technology Used| Before 1801| Calculators were the earliest computing devices. They were the only computation tools for long years before the creation of computers. | 1801| The years that followed were dominated by the use of punched cards for computing. The users used to submit programming assignments to a computer centre using stacks of cards. The programs used to be queued for processing and execution. | 1930 – 1960| Desktop mechanical calculators were built during the 1930s. During the 1950s and the '60s, electronic desktop calculators came up. Analog computational technologies predominated this period. | 1940 – 1960| This span of time witnessed the emergence of the digital computing technology. Zuse Z3, ENIAC and EDSAC were some of the early digital computers. * First-generation computers were based on the von Neumann architecture. * The second generation computers were characterized by the replacement of vacuum tube by bipolar transistors. They were composed of printed circuit boards. | After 1960| These years witnessed the development of the third generation computers. They were based on integrated circuits. Computer systems of this period had large storage capacities and high processing powers. Multi-core CPUs became available in the 21st century. Laptops, palmtops, handheld PCs, notebook computers and tablet PCs are popular today. Computer development still continues. | Let us now look at the history and timeline of computing systems. Before moving ahead, it will be interesting to know when was the first computer made! Year| Event| 2400 BC| Abacus, the first known calculator was invented in Babylonia. It was a major step towards the era of computing that was to follow. 500 BC| Panini, an ancient Indian Sanskrit grammarian came up with the predecessor of the modern formal language theory. | 300 BC| Pingala invented the binary number system that serves as the foundation of computing systems the world over. | 1614| John Napier designed the system of movable rods, which used algorithms to perform the basic mathematical operations. | 1622| William Oug htred invented slide rules. | 1822| Charles Babbage devised the first mechanical computer. | 1937| John V. Atanasoff devised the first digital electronic computer| 1939| Atanasoff and Clifford Berry came up with the ABC prototype. 1941| The electromechanical Z machines by Konrad Zuse proved being an important step in the evolution of computers. | 1943| Colossus, which was able to decode German messages, was designed at Bletchley Park in Britain. | 1944| Harvard Mark I, a computer with lesser programmability was designed. | 1945| John von Neumann described a stored program architecture, for the first time ever. This architecture was the heart of the computer systems developed thereafter. This architecture, which came to be known as the von Neumann architecture is a part of every computer till today. 1946| The Ballistics Research Laboratory of the United States came up with the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC). It was the first general purpose electronic computer; but had an inflexible architecture. | 1950| The US National Bureau of Standards came up with the Standards Electronic/Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC). It was the first computer using diodes for handling logic. | 1951| Lynos Electronic Office (LEO), the first business computer was developed by John Simmons and T. Raymond Thompson. UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer was designed in the United States by John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly. EDVAC, the electronic discrete variable automatic computer was introduced. | 1955| Bell Labs introduced its first transistor computer. Transistors made computers energy-efficient. | 1958| Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was formed. This year also witnessed the making of the first silicon chip by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. | 1968| DEC launched the first mini computer known as PDP-8| 1969| The US Department of Defense founded the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). It was established with intent to develop a computer network and is the predecessor of the Internet. 1971| Microcomputers came up with microprocessors and Ted Hoff at Intel, introduced 4-bit 4004. | 1972| This year witnessed the creation of 8080 microprocessors by Intel. | 1973| A minicomputer that was called Xerox Alto was developed during this year. It was an important milestone in the development of personal computers. | 1974| Researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center came up with Alto, which was the first workstation with an inbuilt mouse. It had a fair amount of storage capacity and offered menus and icons. It could also connect to a network. 1975| Altair came up with the first portable computer. The foundation of the present-day relationship between portability and computing was laid way back in 1975! Tandem computers, the first computers with online transaction processing capacities were born during this period. | 1979| By 1979, more than half a million computers were in use in the United States. This number crossed 10 million by 1983. | 1981| The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) was founded. It was during the same year that the first 32-bit chip was introduced by Hewlett-Packard. | 1982| Intel announced the 80286 processor. 1983| In this year, the Time magazine nominated personal computer for the title ‘machine of the year'. | 1985| Intel introduced the 80386 processor that consists of a 16MHz processor. | 1990| The World Wide Web was born. Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, developed HTML. He came up with specifications such as URL and HTTP. He based the World Wide Web on enquiry-based system that used hypertext and enabled people to collaborate over a network. His first web server and browser became available to the public. | Till date| The development of newer versions of computer systems continues. | An operating system is that software component of a computer system, which deals with the management of the different computer processes and the sharing of computer resources. It hosts computer applications and handles computer hardware. Take a look at the major events in the history of operating systems. Before going ahead, you might like to take a quick look at the different types of operating systems. Year| Event| 1954| MIT came up with their operating system for UNIVAC 1103. | 1964| Dartmouth timesharing operating system was developed. | 1965| Multics was announced. However, it was opened for paying customers in October 1969. 1966| DOS/360 of IBM came up. | 1969| This year witnessed the development of the Unix operating system by AT;T. | 1976| CP/M was developed during this year. | 1980| OS-9 came up in 1980. | 1981| This year can be considered fortunate to have witnessed the development of MS-DOS. IBM had hired Paul Allen and Bill Gates to create an operating system in 1980. The y used the operating system manufactured by the Seattle Computer Products as a template to develop DOS. | 1984| Macintosh operating system came up in this year. | 1987| It was during this year that MINIX, BSD2000 and OS/2 were developed. 1988| RISC iX, LynxOS and Macintosh OS (System 6) came up during this year. | 1989| This was the time when the RISC operating system was developed. | 1991| It was in 1991 that Linux came up. It is a Unix-like operating system, which is a free software. It was during this year that Minix 1. 5 was developed and Macintosh came up with System 7. | 1992| Solaris, the successor of Sun OS 4. X came up during this year. | 1993| Plan 9, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Windows NT 3. 1 came up during 1993. | 1995| OpenBSD and Microsoft Windows 95 came up during 1995 | 1996| Windows NT 4. 0 hit the computing market in 1996. | 998| 1998 witnessed the release of Windows 98 as well of Solaris 7. | 2000| Windows 2000, which hit the markets in 2000, was the first Windows server operating system to drop the ‘NT' suffixed to its name. Windows ME, which was sold during this year, was the last operating system in the Windows 9x line. Red Hat Linux 6. 2E also came up during 2000. | 2001| Windows XP was launched and soon gained a wide popularity. Windows XP 64-bit edition followed in 2002. | 2002| Windows XP Service Pack 1 was released in 2002. | 2003| 2003 witnessed the launch of the Windows 2003 Server as also the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. 2004| Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released in 2004. | 2006| Windows Vista hit the markets| 2008| Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 came up in 2008. It was also during this very year that Windows XP Service Pack 3 was released. | Computers have always been the most efficient computational devices. They have high processing powers and are able to run and execute large programs. Programming languages serve as the means to write programs on computer systems. Thus, it is important to look at the timeline of the development of some of the major programming languages. Following is an overview of the important events in the history of computer languages. Year| Programming Language Developed| Before 1950| The ENIAC coding system was primarily used in computing| 1954-54| Fortran â€Å"0† was designed by a team at IBM. Fortran Implementation was developed by John Backus at IBM in 1957. | 1956-58| John McCarthy came up with the concept of LISP. | 1959| COBOL concept came up followed by its implementation that was developed by the Codasyl Committee in 1960. The LISP implementation was developed in 1959. LISP's successor, Common LISP, came up later in 1984. 1964| IBM came up with PL/I concept. PL/M followed years later in 1972. 1964 also saw the development of BASIC by Kemeny and Kurtz. | 1969| Ken Thompson developed the B language. | 1970| This was when Pascal was developed. | 1972| It was during 1972 that Smalltalk and Prolog were developed. One of the most important events in the history of computing was the development of C language. It was de veloped by Dennis Ritchie in 1972. | 1975| Scheme, the successor of LISP came up in 1975 as also Modula, the successor of Pascal. | 1978| SQL was developed at IBM in 1978. | 1979| REXX and AWK came up in 1979. 1980-83| C with classes was developed in 1980. Objective-C came up in 1982. 1983 witnessed the development of C++, one of the very popular languages till date. | 1985| PostScript and Object Pascal belong to 1985. | 1987| Perl that derives some of its features from C, as also from AWK, sed and sh evolved in 1987. | 1991| Van Rossum came up with Python. Visual Basic, developed by Alan Cooper, came up in the same year. | 1993| Ruby, which is considered a successor of Smalltalk and Perl, came up in 1993. | 1994| PHP was born in 1994. | 1995| ColdFusion belongs to 1995. It was during this year that James Gosling at Sun Microsystems came up with Java. | 1996| Javascript was born in this year. ECMAScript, its successor came up in 1997. | 1999| XSLT, a language based on XML by the W3C and the Game Maker Language by Mark Overmars were born in 1999. | 2000| The D language and C# came up in 2000. | 2006| The development of Windows PowerShell by Microsoft was one of the significant events in computing that took place in 2006. | Looking at the speedily advancing computing technology, we can surely say that the future of computers is going to be as glorious as their history.

Public Relation Core Values Essay

Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has extremely important core ethical values that include advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty, and fairness. All of which will help further a public relations practitioner in their career. Every practitioner handles every job differently, in a way thats going to benefit both the company they are working for as well as the public. Honesty should be the most important core value for every practitioner. Not only should it be the most important core value in the work field, it should also be the most important core value in everyones life as well. On the other hand, practitioners tend to ignore their core values while working. One of the biggest values they tend to ignore or overlook is fairness. Mark Twain once said, â€Å"Honesty is the best policy; when there is money in it. This quote should be every public relations practitioner motto because being honest will always lead you to conducting better business with clients. Clients want honest individuals working for them because the company expects the practitioner to represent the company in a way thats going to gain the publics trust. When the public has your trust, they are going to shop at your company rather than one who puts out false advertisement and has a poor look in the publics eyes. Not only does the quotes speak for itself, but honesty is simply the best way to conduct business. Some practitioners try their hardest to provide equally fair service to every client. Fairness is a core value that all practitioners respect but is hard to do at times. When dealing with clients, employers, peers,vendors, competitors, and most important the public, its hard to keep everyone happy. Lets say a practitioner is dealing directly with a company for the release of a new product. The company producing the item may not want competitors knowing about it so they can keep the technological edge on its competitors but also at the same time they want the public to hear about what’s new. Since they manage what information the public hears, its essential what they say. No matter what they say or don’t say, someones always going to want more. With that being said, someone’s not going to be happy. Life in general isn’t always fair, so when faced with a situation that can cause grey areas with others, do what you ethically think is the right thing.

Inventions Are Not Just Scientific Advancement but Also Cultural Practices

Technological inventions are not just scientific advancement but also cultural practices The paper is to explain Hugh Mackay’s arguments regarding how technology is always â€Å"cultural through and through†. In relation to his conceptions, cassette-based Walkman, Discman and iPod are used as examples to illustrate how technological inventions are not just scientific advancement but also cultural practices. In the book Consumption and Everyday Life published in 1997, Hugh Mackay argued that â€Å"technology is cultural through and through†, stating that every technological artifacts is totally related with and influenced by culture.The argument can be analyzed in more details by applying the case of portable music players (PMPs) to the Circuit of Culture. The Circuit consists of five major cultural processes, which are production, regulation, representation and consumption and identity of certain artifacts. The Circuit can start at any point, and one must go thro ugh every process when studying each case completely. As all parts are connected with each other, it may appear again in other parts (Martin, 2003). To begin with, the process of production is organized culturally. In the past, Sony did not intend to do market research until the Walkman is introduced.Now every companies recognize the importance of market research (will be discussed later). Besides, Sony designers enjoy great functional and occupational status that motivate their work (du Gay, P. , 1997, p. 58-59, 62-63). As the Walkman and hence Sony becomes so successful, designers and programmers in technological artifacts producers like Microsoft and Apple are highly valued. Similarly, one of the reasons that why iPod becomes popular is that Apple performs excellent market researches and provides a comfortable working environment for its designers.Representation of PMPs refers to how they are imaged and defined. Since the Walkman was initially designed for young music-listeners, its advertisements often focus on the technical qualities of the Walkman: small but with high sound quality, which is unbelievable at that time (du Gay, P. , 1997, p. 26). But then the market research shows that not only youngsters but also those who participate in outdoor activities consume the Walkman. Therefore Sony started to customize the Walkman to satisfy different markets in Japan and all over the world.For example, solar-powered, water proof and other special designs for outdoor activities are then developed for hikers and divers (du Gay, P. , 1997, p. 65-68). This not only shows that how advertising can shape a product and open new market, but also how important market research is: knowing what consumers want is the key to produce a popular product. Furthermore, although the Walkman was originally decided for portable music, but as times goes and technology advances, different consumers now use PMPs for different purposes.For example, most teenagers may use it to listen to their own music. For clergies and pious believers, they may be used to listen to the scripture or sermon. For hardworking learners, they may keep learning when they are travelling by listening to â€Å"talking-books†. Sometimes even museum or gallery visitors help themselves to focus on their trip or enhance their imagination by listening to some â€Å"scenery music†. In fact, how PMPs were consumed can show its identity. PMPs associate different people and groups with the environment differently.According to Sony’s own market research into the Walkman usage, it can be divided to two parts, namely â€Å"escape† and â€Å"enhancement†. The former one refers to the most common usage: listening to music or talking-books by PMPs while travelling, which usually provide an opportunity for one to enjoy his or her â€Å"small world†, but disconnect one from the surrounding â€Å"background music† and hence the society temporarily. The latter one refers to using PMPs to focus on one’s work or just relax, which actually help one to strengthen one’s connection to the environment or the productivity in workplace (du Gay, P. 1997, p. 92-94). While radio and television encouraging home-based consumption, PMPs has introduced a new culture of consumption and the way of listening to music: â€Å"private listening at public place†, which has blurred the difference of public and private place. In the past, it was widely accepted that â€Å"public place† refer to space shared by everyone in the community, while â€Å"private place† refer to space owned by particular person or group, say, one’s home (du Gay, P. , 1997, p. 113-114). But now, everyone with a PMP can enjoy his or her own music or channels in public place.If one plays his or her PMSs too loudly, it may disturb the one around him or her. Therefore, in some place, for example the London Underground, there exist regulations limiti ng the maximum volume of PMPs (du Gay, P. , 1997, p. 117). And in Hong Kong, there are several â€Å"quite carriages† in former KCR discouraging people from making noise in the carriages. Apart from the Circuit of Culture, the transformation from cassette-based Walkman and the Discman to iPod (and smart phone) is cultural, too.Firstly, the size of PMPs is getting smaller so that it is easier to carry in today’s busy and crowded cities. Secondly, the mode of playing and selecting music has changed, too. Using the Walkman and the Discman, one could only forward or backward the content linearly, or else one may need to make his or her own cassette or CD. But nowadays one may set up his or her own playlist by using iTunes to combine one’s favourite songs from different albums easily instead of bringing portable hardware like cassettes and CDs out.Last but not least, iPod has much more functions than the Walkman and the Discman, such as photo viewer, calendar, stopwa tch and many games. All these changes are responding the modern culture: advocating for convenience, freedom and individualism. To conclude, the production of a product is closely related with its consumption, and market research is the bridge between the two that helps customize the identity of the product and hence helps the company to represent it by advertisement.The invention of PMPs has developed a new culture of listening to music, which is a reflection of our modern culture but for the good of the community, its usage needs to be regulated so as to protect the right of every users and non-users nearby. Finally, it shows us that these technological inventions are not just scientific advancement but also about cultural practices all the time. Reference: du Gay, P. , Hall, S. , James, N. , Mackay, H. and Negus, K. 1997: Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, London: Sage Martin, F. (ed. ) 2003: Interpreting Everyday Culture, London: Arnold. 176-178