Internet and E-commerce

In a not so long future that will come, e-commerce would undoubtedly be one of the most significant factors in the global economy. The e-commerce technology has made this kind of industry progress at such a fast pace and such an unstable environment. These technologies that will bring the e-commerce industry into a greater space will continue to bring transformation to personal communication and conducting global business world wide. Though the global economy may falter at times or in the past years of crisis, but the advances of the e-commerce would surely be able to help the global market to get back on its track and do well or even greatly. These advances are also significantly related to bringing the whole world online. Its advantages offered will attract lots of newbie or non-newbie on conducting business or just simple transaction online. According to NUA Internet Surveys (http://nua.ie./surveys/), over 620 million people worldwide are linked to the internet or are getting used to the World Wide Web (WWW). And experts predict that the global Internet usage will be growing more and more for the next succeeding years. By 2009, it was even estimated that 47 percent of all business-to-business (B2B) commerce will be done online already.

The rapid growth of the Internet also attracts the increase of organizations opting to use the World Wide Web in conducting business at a greater speed, access and efficiency. This shift is very common in business-to-business (B2B) commerce and trade. Companies now adapt to a system called e-procurement that offers and uses different B2B protocols for interaction with seller system. Examples are Ariba, Commerce One, and mySAP. Many others participate as buyers in e-marketplaces, such as Commerce One MarketSet, Ariba Hosted Market Place, and IBM’s Web Sphere Commerce Suite, Marketplace Edition (WCS MPE, or MPE for short), among others. Many other protocols for B2B methods, many proprietary to procurement and other systems, and others custom-made for specific partners are being defined and implemented. In addition to the procurement systems that usually reside in the firewall of the buying organizations, marketplaces are being situated on the Internet through which buyers can access a large number of suppliers, typically for specific industry divisions. Several of these marketplaces use the same or similar technology to connect to procurement and supplier systems and offer buyers at small and medium-sized businesses access to suppliers.

E-commerce technology will not only become smarter and faster but it can also cast a wider net for companies and organizations globally and renovate their methods of dealing with internal information, customer service and other important business transactions in a whole lot better way. Internet technology has also been used not just for business them selves to cater their business transaction needs but there are also internet portals that provide service for those who do e-commerce, another facet of business-to-business commerce. Some of which are domain name service which includes simple transactions in a business namely, transfer, agreement, domain forwarding and e-mail forwarding. There are also other website services provided like online shopping, website packages, web page, web store, custom design and also other promotion services. These internet technologies that are employed would surely help business get better and for those who are just thinking of transforming theirs to an e-business. An e-commerce business solution can provide an organization’s customers with detailed information of their products and services a year for a fraction of the cost just like having an international sales staff that is really efficient and always available as what is offered in Web Sphere commerce Suite, an IBM’s award winning e-commerce software. The solutions they offer comes in both a B2C and a B2B likes and allowing them to strengthen their relationship with their valued customers by cross selling and up selling products and services, streaming inventory management, returns and refunds, providing live help and online collaboration with suppliers and customers.

E-commerce technology could surely increase one’s company by boosting beyond their physical locations, culture, and time zones. Affordability, scalability, and profitability are a very important terms for e-businesses and they should make sure they could be able to offer these such importance and advances. One of advantage of an internet technology that could offer to any businesses or organizations is that it could bridge the problem of those companies in having limited resources, limited skills and as well as limited budget that growing a business as well as transforming a growing one into an e-business is very daunting. So getting connected to the internet would really help you in building a business and make it grow more by initially building a virtual storefront and creating a global Web presence for the online audience who would be the probable online customers. With e-commerce technology, finding solutions to problems that organizations get to face everyday like customer retention and increasing supply costs are few to mention and with this, a B2B e-commerce could never be that hard as it was and to make an e-business faster and cost efficient with just the appropriate solutions to be implemented.

There are also other suggested ideas to make e-business a success. New features are already starting to emerge from years after years that could bring several technologies apart that could be later on used in e-commerce extensively. A) Collaboration Key - companies set up smart hubs that are not only used by their own customers, but also interact with other companies' sites. Particularly on the business-to-business (B2B) side, this innovation could change the way companies do business with one another, according to Mark Byrd, senior vice president of product management at VerticalNet. B) Breaking Barriers - breaking down barriers between different departments and companies to achieve potential ‘real-time’ future, allowing constant updates of information related to inventory, product availability and shipping status. C) Supercharged Kiosks - consumers could have more direct contact with the next generation of e-commerce technology. Such kiosks will see increased use for actual purchases and financial transactions. D) IM's New Role - transforming instant messaging (IM) from a chat enabler into a serious e-commerce asset. Enable companies more easily create communities of like-minded customers, and will offer more secure ways to vouch for information that is sent back and forth over a network. E) Speeding Things Up - the real-time aspect of future e-commerce technologies will allow users to engage in "threaded discussions" as they negotiate contracts and share data. F) On the Same Page - smart interactive portals, accessible from wired or wireless locations, are the best way to consolidate information in a single place, separate mission-critical functions from other operations and control that has access to specific data.

Although the technology that has been incorporated now in doing e-commerce could provide lots of advances to those who opt to employ them, it is very important for these businesses to be very prepared in engaging to an e-business world. This kind of economy as is situated in the virtual world is running in a fast pace and catching up is one thing that one should never neglect or else. Technology could just be that useless despite its advances offered if one doesn’t know how to be a good player in such an economy.

The dynamic nature of the kind of new economy calls for new challenges to industry and the policymakers, although the internet promises great features for such businesses. The decision makers involved are entitled to develop procedures that would motivate growth and press on consumer interests. To craft groundwork for the fast paced growth of e-commerce appropriately, enterprises must learn to adopt effective e-commerce technology policies and strategies. These strategies involve strong intellectual property protection, online trust, free and open international trade and investing in an e-commerce technology infrastructure. Strong intellectual property protection refers to strong copyrights, patent, rewarding creativity to foster innovation and other forms of intellectual property protection to strengthen the economy. Of course online trust involves the ever important security and privacy, which without consumer’s confidence in security and privacy of their information could mean less growth and weaker e-commerce. So protecting information and interactions on the internet is a total key to ensure success. Closed markets and inequitable management is not very good for e-business. It is said that it should be realized that only in an open and free market will the Internet’s potential be realized. Investing in an e-commerce technology is a very good step and very vital to stimulate technological growth. The future of electronic delivery demands a dramatic evolution of the telecommunications infrastructure in every part of the world. Also, the digital divide is a major concern for organizations who have worked independently to increase access to computer technologies in under served regions. They distinguished that a global e-commerce technology future depends on extensive access to new technologies, mainly by individuals who have accordingly far failed to share in many of the communications and productivity benefits that technology offers. For all these motives, many e-commerce organizations support policies to support broadband deployment in a way that will augment widespread access to technology and, in so doing, lessen or even close the digital divide.

E-commerce and trust

With the e-commerce world, trust is indeed a very critical element that each e-commerce players should be looking forward to. Every organization, online shoppers and the sort would really be concerned about this issue to whether they are really protected by venturing in such kind of commerce. Trust issues with e-commerce is viewed by others as how protected they truly are with their privacy of information and how they are really defended accompanied with certain rights in times of problems in trading and other transactions they do. There are actually different views on trust depending on the state of an individual and it is becoming different as it travels around the web. According to an article posted over the net by Yinan Yang and colleagues, trust can be viewed as a counter measure for al uncertainties in an E-commerce perspective. E-Commerce trust can be defined as subjective of the web communities and the perception and exception of honesty and law equity by others. It is certainly hard to trust in such an environment where you do everything virtually and you never really get to see or touch elbows with those whom you do businesses with. The increase of Internet users has also increased the internet frauds, hackers and all sorts that contributing to the anti-trust issues and such crimes and this proportionally increased the entire web user’s awareness with the trust issues as being faced by the e-commerce now. The issue of complete trust is becoming a very big problem to both web users and as well as consumer service providers or those businesses that duly engaged their selves with e-commerce. So the big challenge is truly given to those consumer service providers or other businesses venturing in e-commerce to establish their selves as truly worth of the trust that the entire web users can give. We can never really define to which extent a trust of one user or consumer is strongly established in doing e-commerce transactions. These trusts would definitely rely on users experience in using the internet. It was said internet users would opt to indulge themselves in E-commerce after 4 to 5 years of being an Internet user. Surveys even showed that around one third of the chosen respondents were unwilling to engage in e-commerce or purchase an item for one reason of being reluctant is that they worry that they can be exposed to misuse of information. According to a post by Susan Kuchinskas in Small business computing.com, “Thanks to constant phishing expeditions in which evil-doers spoof the e-commerce sites of major retailers, consumers have become much more aware about the dangers of offering up personal information online. That's a good thing for consumers, but it may be bad for online merchants, especially those who haven't become household words.” It seems that consumers are becoming smart and more aware of the risks they could be taking in engaging in e-commerce stuffs but that would really be a bad news for the business ventures as well as in the economic industry.

That is not really an easy task since the trust relationship we are referring to is just merely based with consumers and providers identify each other only with their Websites, email addresses and some electronic mediums like public key or with the digital certificates. Sad to say that this kind of array has brought some changes and as well as a set of new electronic threats and risks like deceptions or frauds, mishandling of personal data (credit card information), intentional misinformation posted on web documents, copy legal businesses as to get over with the consumer’s personal information like their credit card numbers, spying and more negation. These set of threats and risks add up more to the burden of the E-commerce environment in dealing with the trust uncertainty. And to which they are the main stakeholders to receive the negative effects such as, primarily, financial losses and the likes. I don’t’ think that they will surely never let it get to them and start to think counter measures to limit or lessen these kind of uncertainties and further losses for them. To counter these threats they have now established TRUST as their primary element in E-commerce, with which is the most to be prioritized on the first hand. There are already mechanisms done to establish initial trust over the web such as a number of Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) which can identify business parties but these were said to be not enough trust models since there is still a lack of logical assessment of Trust in Web Commerce. There could also be certain ways to which a business could establish their selves with to start gaining every consumer trust.

1.Identify yourself properly

Businesses must appropriately identify or introduce their selves on their site since this is one good preliminary step to create trust relationship with their customers. They must post their complete company name, address and as well as their contact numbers to which they could give their users details and assurance that consumers would have their ways to contact a certain company whenever they want to. It is really important that consumer service providers’ show how trustworthy they could be at first hand or how could they sell their selves as a trust worthy business everyone could surely rely on. Legal companies should always be transparent with the transactions they do in a way that they are doing the right thing, or they are really doing the right ways in the personal data of their customers and that their strategies are always taken care of.

2. Respond to consumer

For instance where transaction is being done or your consumer is just starting to view your site to buy something that interests them, it is normal for a consumer to have many or different additional inquiries. So it would be better to respond to consumers in a short span of time. This way could greatly affect a consumer’s trust. Responding to them right away would make them feel that they are really given a proper service and that you are really doing business seriously. On the other hand, late responses would test consumer’s patience of which are not usually that long and that could give you a very bad impression and another customer loss.

3.Inform Consumers properly

Personal information from consumers is required when a transaction is being done. Consumers find it very fun and convenient to do their shopping online but oblivious to many is the risks they are being faced as their personal information might go to risks as well. Consumers have to become smarter now to avoid themselves with different threats. In asking off personal data from your consumers, you must clearly explain to them why would you ask for such requirements and what are you going to do with those data. In this way, consumer wouldn’t be ignorant to such protocols and that they would still be in the know about their personal data.
In times of delay, businesses have to duly inform their end consumers on what causes the delay and that what would their customers should expect from their orders. Never give them false hopes as to which this could really destroy your image for breaking trusts.

4. Structure website with security

Every player in the E-commerce World should assess the amount of trust present. It is said that one preliminary technique in gaining trust from end consumers is the way their websites are constructed. In establishing their websites, businesses have to see to it that their web contents are 100 % Web trustworthy or there is expected 0% fraud probability present. They must make sure that there website is protected from expected harms and they have to be always on guard. They must always inculcate in their minds that the information they handle in their websites are from their consumers and they are the ones reliable to protect it as strongly as they could. And this method should always be re-assessed to ensure complete security. Also they have to make proper navigation with their sites as well as the web objects they placed as their web contents. Poor downloading for example and poor display could lessen the interest of the end consumers for your services.

5.Always improve service

Businesses must always see to it that they are giving 100% satisfaction service to their end consumers. This could always be the best way wherein they could establish their trust relationship with the consumers they provide with. Good service could always refer to how fast they process everything from the start of the transaction till the end and still providing the security measures appropriate in each process undergone. It is a really good impression that you could give the proper service without any compromised personal data from your end consumers. Also businesses must establish return policies that in times customers have dissatisfaction with their product delivered, they have to stick to policies that gives the consumers right to accommodate the service they really want to have.

Also, businesses have to establish a sense of security among their consumers by allowing them to select the mode of payment they want to choose and the software they are using must verify their consumer’s ability to pay of which of course involves credit cards, electronic cash or purchase orders. The business could also use customer information as a part of their e-commerce operation. More refined packaging retains a great deal of customer information, including where users go in a site, and make this information available in the form of analytical reports.

6. Be always true to what you sell

Different strategies are thought of by these several businesses to sell their selves off over the net particularly their goods and services. This is a very important step they should do to ensure that they gain something after their big investments on such business. They would give off the most indulging messages to attract customer to avail of their service. But they should never forget to only display the messages or information that is really incorporated with them. For instance, a company tells the web users over the web that their product is something so good but is really not and when an end consumer gets fooled but realizes in the end that the product they ordered is really substantial, the business is faced more trouble that they could handle and that puts their business into its image risk and wearing off the trust of their consumers and non-consumers who might have heard their scheme. Also sell your goods and services appropriately.

7. Strictly imposed policy rules

The E-commerce laws have set our rules in which every business should be strictly imposing alongside their business goals and objectives. This method could not only establish their selves with end consumer trust but it could also protect them from oblivious actions inside their premises that could hinder progress and destroy their company name.

I have really understood that trust is a thing that you should always get to be serious with and it should not be one of the things you could just neglect. Especially with the businesses wherein there profits and brand are at stake of taking care with their privacy issues. Along side with the e-commerce law, they should work hand in hand to lessen internet crimes and fraud that just slows down the e-commerce industry. Since the legislation, particularly in our country is not yet that reliable, we should start to make it one. We need more advocates to establish a stronger law incorporated with e -commerce. E-commerce is really a good way of employing ICT with the business industry as its offer many advantages and results to more progress, so let us not be the hinder to this progress but instead help it to become more productive as it would contribute much to our industry. And that is to make everyone believe that only the absence of misuse of personal information of others and other internet crimes could be the way to make the e-commerce industry bloom more and that would eventually lead for more economic progress.

tech vs. nature

There have been indeed numerous books wherein authors have exerted their much effort in trying to convey an environmental message, not just a mere message but a very significant message that all of us should hear of. Or they have interestingly perceived the future destructions we might be all facing in the very near future. We could either be very alarmed upon hearing such message or just keep our ears and eyes, as well as our mouths closed as if we did not come to perceive such things. Not only books but also movies have been used as a medium to let us hear the most important message that we all should be hearing and that message would be the message of global destruction. Global destruction is such a totally major word and for me, hearing the term ‘global’ would also totally mean big time, and incorporating this big time word with the term ‘destruction’ is very disturbing and frightening since I’m one of the big-time-word’s inhabitant. Destruction to our earth would surely mean destruction of mankind. Obviously, immense actions should now be at mobile to counter act the damages done and prevent further spoiling of our environment. I don’t think I had already read a book that tells about global destruction and the like where the future is the setting but I already have seen a bunch of movies about it, though I guess those movies are still based from published books. The Day after tomorrow, Wall-E, Back to the future, Water world, Ultraviolet and Time Machine are few to mention. As far as I can remember in the movie Time Machine, when the lead actor travelled into the future, there was a scene wherein the moon was gradually tearing into pieces and seems to be falling off from the sky. And another man was shouting something about the plant earth will surely be next. The moon has already been inhabited by the humans, where they locked up prisoners, causing imbalance in the environment of the moon and it started to get destroyed. Since each bodies of the universe are interrelated, the destruction of the moon would surely affect the planet earth as well as other planetary bodies in the outer space. From that instance, the future seems to be nothing but a damaged world. And those damages seem to only source from us. It just appears that every step we make to bring us to the future would also be a step for greater obliteration.

I am only a typical student of one of the known college in the metropolis of Davao and I have my own plate of concerns to attend to as being an Information Technology student. I am already aware that technology is indeed one of the major contributors of environmental problems. Although I am a person I the technology field, I can’t give my side to technology and all I can do is give the help I can to lessen what these technologies has done. These are the little things or ideas I could think of for now as a small and concerned citizen who greatly wants to save our mother earth in an Information technology student way:

1. Yes to Obama’s move

I read over the internet in the BBC news website that the newly elected United States of the America president, Barack Hussein Obama II has assigned his new Department of Energy Secretary Mr. Chu which is a Nobel Prize Award winner for knowing how atoms are trapped or the like. The president wants to give up the addiction of the world or particularly the Americans for gasoline or oil since this is one cause of the environmental problems. He wants to greatly focus, in his term, in taking care of our earth. In line with this, I would really be an advocate to his actions and beliefs. About the oil issue addiction, I really admire him for somehow letting go to the bond of trading oil which is some kind of purposely active for bigger profits in countries. Even our own country, Philippines couldn’t seem to let go of that trade even a Filipino citizen has found a very great solution to lessen pollution and made water as gasoline. If I had a car, I would really opt to use the ‘water gasoline’ than use the typical one everyone uses and flaunt to everyone how I would add up to the pollution day to day. To motorists, they should regulate their use of their cars like if possible they could just find time to walk than use their car; they might as well do that.

2. I am a Green campus Computing advocate

Green Campus Computing is one of the recently formed advocacies in our school particularly by my schoolmates, also Information Technology students. Green Campus Computing yearns to call upon every student, with University of Southeastern Philippines students initially, to reduce technological effects to our nature in our own ways. It wants us to conserve electricity and regulate the use of technological devices that usage of such mostly contributes to radiation emission and some sort. So whenever you don’t use your personal computer at home or even at school, in computer laboratories, might as well just shut it down or turn the power off. That is also the same with conserving electricity at school, at home or wherever we maybe. This advocate has been formed by my schoolmates spear headed by one of the professors we look up to, to inculcate in our minds as Information technology students, that technology is damaging what has to be really taken care of always by us and we must do something to counter these acts and let others know that we are not in this field to contribute more to the damage done but to be a pro-earth despite of the field we are in. I really think that this is a very good advocacy and I really hope that it would reach more schools locally and nationally or even as well as in global terms. Mobiles are not exclusion to this matter and the same with everyone I am a mobile user. Mobiles also emit radiation that is actually bad for our health as well as to the environment too. I am not really sure how exactly it contributes to the damaging of nature but actually it is. Mobile use regulation is completely as hard as telling someone not to breathe specially in a country like ours which has been called as the text capital where millions of text messages are sent a day. But I just hope that we should do something regarding this device usage to somehow lessen its damaging contribution.

3. Pro – Earth Blogger

I am not really a good writer but I think everyone could understand what I would try to convey. I have been a blogger for a year I guess and the realization of what blogging could do has already crept into me. Blog posts can be viewed by the whole world via Internet and your message could be read globally in just an hour I think. It could either make a positive or negative impact, but nevertheless, your message could still be sent out. As an information technology student, I would start to use my personal page of letting everyone be a mother earth hero or heroine. Through my blog posts, hopefully I could influence everyone or make them realize the global problem we are actually facing now and also motivate them to participate in any environment saving activities there are. A result of one or two influenced reader would really mean a lot for me at least someone has actually believed my beliefs and advocacy. I would really want to use this method to reach the whole world in becoming one to make a difference about the global crisis. Although I didn’t have any pro-earth posts on my blog yet, this item would surly be the first. And I would invite every bloggers in the cyber world to do the same.

4. An environmental Org member

I have been a member of the Junior Ecologists Movement (JEM) way back in high school and I am quite sad for the thought that I am not a member of it anymore and I am not currently in an environmental club though I really want to. Looking back with the activities we have done in JEM, I am proud of myself that I did such things. I learned to change my attitude in throwing trash anywhere and had tried to influence others to do the same thing too. I had actually planted a tree or a plant four or five times already in our several escapades. I have read in Global issues about the method being planned to use “Carbon Sink” to drench all the carbon dioxide. And that is to do reforestation or planting of new forests. Planting trees would really help reduce carbon dioxide emissions so it would be really nice and helpful if we could have mini ecosystems in our own homes or even in schools. And what I’m most proud of is when I joined a river trekking once as a charitable act to save the Tamugan watershed in Baguio District somewhere in the ends of Calinan. We trekked over 3 kilometers and met stumbles and other small accidents along the way. My face was really sun burnt and my body is aching all over but it was all nothing compared to the experience that I had actually survived it in the name of saving nature. I had heard of Green Peace which is a global organization, I guess, for pro-environmentalists and I really want to join

5. Regulate businesses with the nature issue

I read from an article in Global Issues site posted by Anup Shah that the first world countries, or particularly United States of America and other few countries are indeed one of the major contributors of global warming as they continued industrializing and giving off the climate change gases around so well. Large corporations within these countries have been always against climate change settlements because they fear the economical effect and to their profits if they would do substantial changes inclined to such settlements and also the fear that they would realize that their means have been contributors of the said problem. Although most of the large and influential corporations have continually destabilize this issue that they are greatly involved, others were good enough to embrace the settlement and involve their company to reversing global warming. I think that is what every companies as well as governments should be doing right now.

Another thing is that impact or the effect emitted by large corporations in first world countries is greatly felt by poor countries. I think that they should stop being so self-centered as to getting focused only in worrying about making their profits bigger. They could just be left out if they really don’t want to join the pro-earth club but the thing is they are greatly affecting others with their methods. What’s good for them is to actively participate in World Conventions about climate change or other protocols organized by some concerned ones and start doing emission reductions.

6. Go with good innovations

We are the makers of technology and obviously we are the main culprit of what we are faced right now. Although technology has really brought us much convenience it has also brought us another side of its effect that we really don’t like and the big one is still to come or actually it is already on its way to us. Putting myself to the makers of technology, or those technological devices, I really could not relate that much yet, but if I were one, I would really opt to make a technology that will have less negative impact to contribute again to the global dilemma or if possible, no negative effect at all. I could not still fathom on how those developers think, why they would neglect the side effects of their technological creations to the real world and just seem to be focused in breaking innovations or making profit. But I guess it is related to the norm of humans that we have still many things to learn and that is hopefully to innovate and climb each level to maximum technology without ever disturbing the natural ecosystem as what has been conceived and placed by God. Would that be even possible? I do really hope so.

Well, those are my ideas and proposal to everyone who wants to get involved but whether you like it or not, as long as you’re an earthling, you are undoubtedly involved, I just came to realize now that the fear I have of technology becoming so advance, that we might get ruled over by it rather us ruling over it, is just a part of what we all should be realizing. That technology would be a way to destroy the world we are living in and would totally change the way of living that we all got used to and loved as humans. I don’t think we will be called as humans then for that matter. All I can say is we need to badly participate in saving the environment and not just pretend to be blind, be deaf or be mute. Our little actions put together would be really powerful against global warming. I know there are already in the move to the saving plan but it seems that it is still not enough and this global problem needs global counteract. And let us change the image of technology that has been established as the destroyer of the environment and make it the technology that is on the environmental side.

Are we e-safe?

Legislation of e-commerce has been employed so as to protect every aspects or elements that may be included in the e-commerce environment, the consumer and producers as well as any data security and integrity. Every area of businesses nowadays is surrounded with circles of boundaries composed of appropriate rules and regulations. These legislations serve as the transparency of every transaction that is done online or any transactions involved in the e-commerce ‘world’. So that every actions done between any processes or between customers and businesses, shall be appropriately guided and make sure every step will be done accordingly, starting from the consumer moving through the internet into a merchant’s website and see a prospect product to finally exchange of electronic cash for payments. Also will make the players of the e-commerce environment be legal in their every ways and these laws should always be observed and complied.

The Philippine government became the third country in Southeast Asia with legislation to promote and protect electronic transactions when Former Pres. Joseph Estrada signed the e-commerce law and was ratified on June 14, 2000, called as the Philippine Electronic Commerce Act (Republic Act 8792) (Lallana, E. & Quimbo, R., April 2008). This would cover any individual in the Philippines that also includes electronic transactions. The Philippine e-commerce act is based on UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law). The UNCITRAL is a UN organ tasked to plan model laws wherein the member nations may adopt this for them to employ for themselves organized legal administration for businesses and trading, and this was gradually embraced by the Philippine government.

With all these precautions, a set of rules and regulations were laid upon the course and boundaries of e-commerce, national or international, we may all be just relax and believe the rest is assured and we could all just be sound. As for the issue brought up that questions the legislation of satisfying the demands of both the government and consumers, although every defense has already been built-up, there could also be room for breach or area for any not-so-secured transactions and anything could be just as subjective for compromise. With the Internet having the power of reaching across the world, it is inevitable that legal issues would be involved that involves intellectual properties, copyright, trademark, privacy and the like relatively predominantly on the business side. Our technology today is so fast paced, and everyone becomes the player. And the population of these players is really hard to control. A very challenging task is posed for the authorities or for these laws to fully control the e-commerce or harmonize everything as it should be. Even laws that do not concern the e-commerce world even experience breaches and loss of assurance. With regards to the state of our country solely, that we are just starting to adopt these technology, and everyone is not yet acquainted to it, it seems that there’s more to this that we, Filipinos, should understand still. As everything goes entirely electronic, we can’t stop questioning on how such laws could be fully applied to the world of cyberspace. It seems very hard to fathom thinking that cyberspace or the Internet is such another big world that we humans have still yet to learn more, wherein everything seems to be done so freely. For example, purchasing hardware locally could give you bigger chances of retaining your right if ever the hardware does not function well, you could just go to the store where you bought that stuff and complain or charge them. But in the case of purchasing it online, you may have bought it from the other part of the world, and in times of problems that what you bought was defective, you really have little chance to fight for your rights.

I have read many counteracts or precautions taken to ensure the ‘safety’ of all that is involved in the digital world and I hope that these could be taken as universal as in everything is standardized entirely for the whole world so securing might be more efficient as soon as possible. The legal issues imposed could be handled easier in the nearest time we could have. That these governing rules and regulations would be as fast paced as technology is, and that human can still control the ‘wire-ness’ were becoming. And that we could prove that we still have control over the technology and not let it become a tool for more crimes and anomalies but just room for more developments for our kind. To sum all the situation up, the legislation could not yet somehow satisfy the needs of the government because, even the authorities are still having a hard time, incorporating such laws and how it could be applied. It seems that we still need more understanding of applying a ‘cyber law’ to a ‘cyber world’. To my view, although e-commerce or digital cash seems to be already an old stuff, mastering to play in this kind of industry wherein everything would be fully regulated and taken under control, is still needed very essentially knowing that everything is not constant and unpredictable. So for short, we should make everything predictable and keep up with whatever is happening inside the digital world. It would just be a matter of taking control of the things, I mean; we already have other laws aside from these e-commerce laws and we managed to control things with these laws, so it would not be that impossible to also incorporate ourselves with the cyber laws.

Society and Innovation

The needs of the people are the creation of a new technology or of a new innovation. Several decades or centuries have passed us and we can obviously see the big changes that happened over the technologies or with the things we find useful in our daily lives. The history of mankind has taken its shape along the years that has passed and innovation was always constant, was always there. Countless technologies have been thought of, created, invented and that was all because of the needs of the society that urges them to make something out of things and improve something as well as to improve our lifestyle. I agree with the statement that one of the reasons why we embrace technology that much in our lives is the environment; the people are greatly affected by what the nature would throw at us or shall I say what the environment would exchange us. Since it is not, yet, in our hands the control of Mother Nature or of the environmental turns, we inclined ourselves with the other side of things that would still help us ease with the way we live and in defense or counter of what the environment brings to us.

The significant event I had chosen to be an example of this assignment is the World War II (WWII), wherein no one can deny the events that occurred at that time were indeed unforgettable and we wish would always remain a history. And related to this very significant event was the formulation of a very interesting yet also destructive, the nuclear weapon or the atomic bomb where the nuclear age had seems to start of the use of atomic weapons in wars. The United States of America, together with United Kingdom and Canada, in their secret projects in designing and building the first atomic bomb ever under the so called Manhattan Project, had plotted a plan to make an end to their dispute with Japan. The bombs were named “Little Boy” and “Fat man”, the former was a gun-type bomb made with uranium-25 and which was the one dropped in Hiroshima, and the latter was a synthetic-element made with plutonium-239 that was dropped in Nagasaki on August 6 and followed on August 9 way back 1945.

One instance that I could also cite in relation to this topic, although I’m not really quite sure, was about the creation of the ‘yo-yo’. I heard several years before that yo-yo was conceived by the people during the Great Depression. If I’m right and my memory is still good, it was in a certain TV station or channel that this story was part of their commercial. The Great Depression was an economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world.Even yo-yo was existing during 500 BC, the birth of the modern yo-yo was initiated by Mr. Donald Duncan at the depression era in the United States. It was stated that the investment of the said person was a good one since the modern yo-yo became popular in the said country probably because of the negative state they were in and that they really needed something to relieve the circumstances they were entailed.

My own Innovation

If finally I could see myself as an IT Professional, that is the probability is really unknown, I would want to dwell in busying myself with the innovations or technologies about the biotechnology specifically on medicine. Technologies that are more focused on saving or extending lives of every human. Like creating something that is a sure breakthrough in the word of medicine and IT both. Death shouldn’t be feared as they say because it is inevitable. But I think it is really good to be developing something innovative in taking care of every human’s health. I am not a doctor or an expert of this field as I hadn’t chosen the Nursing course, but it kind of interests me when I came across technologies that deal with curing severe diseases, detecting a disorder that would usually take days to conclude and other stuffs like that.

Biotechnology, as defined in Wikipedia, any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use. Biotechnology has applications in four major industrial areas, including health care (medical), crop production and agriculture, non food (industrial) uses of crops and other products (e.g. biodegradable plastics, vegetable oil, biofuels), and environmental uses.

I think the area I’m most likely describing is on the Red technology which is applied to medical stuffs like genetic engineering and producing antibiotics and the like. Another one was what Sir RSG told us about a chip that once inserted to your body, would help detect any kind of sickness or disorder that is present inside your body. There are really many new inventions posted in the internet already and sure they were really amazing and interesting though difficult to understand myself since again I’m not that expertly inclined with the sort. Hopefully, I want to craft something that would give humans to have less possibility of getting diseases and something that hasn’t been thought of yet, of course. As for my side, hopefully, I can also make a device, a capsule or anything that when I take it in, would grow me up to 5 feet or so in less than a week maybe to cut the whole anticipation stage if you would really gain height. But seriously, I’m more concerned on curing existent diseases, and prevent or totally eradicate the existence of these diseases, if that could be possible, though I would really want to make something that I just mentioned awhile. I am interested with this sort because, I’m not that really afraid to die, but I’m afraid of losing someone. So if saving lives would be a very good calling for me in the future, and I’m currently in the field of IT, hopefully I could integrate all of these and make a technology so great. But to always set my foot on the ground, it wouldn’t be oblivious to me that no one can defy death.

Do I really exist?

Last Saturday was our continuation for FUTUREtech proposals presentation and I was unfortunately late and I really should have gone faster to school because it didn’t do me any good. I really couldn’t move as breezy as I can because my menstrual cramp is totally killing me for the past few days. I got into the spotlight for being late and unluckily there was another problem on our plate. Our ‘past’ technology presentation should be on Monday, but things were not actually prepared as they should have, making the presentation quite impossible to proceed on the said date. We were again in a tight space, and RSG gave us a quote saying, "I think, therefore I exist". We were asked one-by-one to say something relating the quote to the current situation of our presentation. I really didn’t understand what I should be saying because I was late, but after hearing more talks from my classmate and RSG, it was clear that in relation to our current state wherein we could not be able to do the diorama display on Monday, RSG wanted to point to us, I guess, that are we really existing and are we really thinking, ‘coz if we were, the matter at hand shouldn’t have been there at all. I dread the statement from RSG that honestly, he doesn’t that have much trust on our class anymore. And he is totally right that breaking and earning a trust is not that easy anymore. I have gone through that stage and I can say it is not a good thing to play on someone’s trust. Again, we have been a failure and I can see in RSG, a thread of losing hope for us. I hope not. He gave us one shot to prove ourselves, and move everything for next year. My answer to that quote, as an individual group, is that I am thinking and I do exist, because we have done our diorama as fast as we could to be able to present it on Monday, but as for the whole class, I wasn’t thinking that we should help the assigned group to prepare for the displays and that the whole class should be really helping each other and I partly didn’t exist in the part in making the presentation possible for next week.

Future-Phobia?

Last Saturday was or continuation for futuretech reporting, after several discussions were done, a certain group from the class was asked if whether they were afraid of the future and it was later addressed to all of us. If I were to ask if I am scared of the future, then I would really say yes. I’m not really afraid of what the future would bring, but what I’m afraid is the minds of the humans could bring. What I mean is we are the humans, and we create these technologies as well as the future technologies. Humans could be really productive yet also very destructive. As what RSG said, technology is useless if it isn’t used well at all. We all know that we can be very abusive and self-conceited and the drawbacks of the technology are somehow related to our human drawbacks. I admit that indeed it is scary of what the future may bring, that we ourselves would deliver to our side. I just hope that it wouldn’t be as scary as I think it would be.