Technology and Prescient Concerns - Assignment Example

Section/# Technology and Prescient Concerns The growth of technology has fundamentally and unquestionably re-shaped the current global structure. Along with this fundamental shift in the way that individuals from both developed and undeveloped countries seek to live their lives, has come the growth of multinational and unbelievably powerful, both economically and politically, tech companies that exert a powerful influence on the world, the environment, culture, entertainment, communications, privacy, and a litany of other tangentially related fields. As such, this brief essay will seek to elaborate on some of the ways in which large multinational tech companies dominate areas that have not traditionally be dominated and that the casual observer would not necessarily assume such firms could exert an influence over. As a means of doing such an analysis, it is the hope of this author that the reader will come to a more broad and complete understanding of the way that these firms have spread their influence over almost every aspect of the current system and threaten some very fundamental rights that were previously not at the discretion of but a handful of massively powerful multinationals. It should of course be understood that the author is not fundamentally opposed to the existence of multinational firms or even the influence that they can yield over a given system; rather, the proceeding analysis is meant only to elaborate on a few of the negative externalities that have been born from the existence of these entities. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the issue of free speech and censorship has come to a level of prominence of late due to the means by which the federal government and private entities are seeming to cooperate to a closer and closer degree. This is of course worrisome for those that seek to retain a level of internet privacy as well as fight the seemingly endless battles against censorship of free speech. As a function of this, the reader should be aware of the fact that both Apple and HP, arguable two of the biggest extant tech companies in existence, refused to attend hearings on the Global Network Initiative; a multi-stakeholder conference which was sponsored with the express intent of acquainting its members and guests with fundamental issues regarding privacy, human rights on the internet, and other technical and related areas of ethical concern (Chang, 2009). Although one cannot fault these firms too greatly for not attending due to the fact that they have many different obligations that pull them in a variety of different directions, it is bothersome that both of these firms reasoned that such a conference was of so little importance that they would not expend the time to ensure that at least one representative from their firm was able to gain the necessary perspective that such a meeting would necessarily have offered. The tacit understanding that exists with relation to such an action is of course that the firms place a very low emphasis on the importance of these issues. Such an issue is again cause for concern with relation to the way in which the Apple Corporation has outright banned political cartoons from its wildly popular iPhone platform. This was done on the grounds that these cartoons had the possibility or engendered a level of sacrilege to religious or other entities. As the reader can readily note, the shear exhibition of possibility to offend is in and of itself not sufficient grounds for the firm to seek to repress and/or otherwise censor material. Unfortunately however, the censorship of political cartoons is just the beginning of Apple’s issues relating to the free and fair use of information and or information systems. As has been noted over the past several years, American firms that were expected to be a beacon of freedom in an otherwise censored China have practically cow-towed to the Communist Chinese Party and have agreed to bend or mould their technological platforms into compliance with whatever demands that the PRC might have for them. This ethical sell-out represents a firm that shows a fundamental lack of concern for the violation of freedom, levels of censorship, and/or the way in which their technology is ultimately used in lieu of generating a higher market share and generating further profits. Although it is not the reasonable expectation of this author that the PRC will change its mind with relation to censorship, it should be at least nominally expected that the American mega-firms that do business within such places should have a modicum of ethics and resist systemic demands by the host government to fundamentally modify their technology to serve the demands that whatever breed of dictatorship is being supported. Similarly, both Apple and the mother of all American telecommunications, AT&T, face a number of price fixing and anti-trust battles which have thus far defined the past decade with relation to their cooperation. Firstly, with regards to price fixing, Apple has been the target of price fixing investigation with relation to its eBooks. As opposed to the other dominant players within the market, rather than allowing the price of eBooks to float freely, Apple has been proven to fix prices due to the belief that their consumers will pay the price regardless due to the dominance that iTunes provides for the given market (Pike, 2012). Similarly, with respect to creating a form of non-competition with their uniquely branded items, Apple has experienced a great deal of its early profits from the way in which the iPod and iTunes fundamentally reshaped the market for personal electronics as well as mp3s. Ultimately, rather than merely being able to sell the customer the product they have also captured the market for selling the products that the player utilizes as well. In such a way, the firm of course represents a prime example of how a monopoly has developed and the ways in which anti-trust actions are likely to seek to reduce its influence over time. Of course a similar situation of anti-trust abrogation is with regards to the way that the Apple Corporation licensed AT&T and soley AT&T to offer the iPhones to the consumer market. This served to create a cooperative monopoly in which both AT&T and the Apple Corporation sought to carve out market share based upon their agreement. Although not strictly illegal, the means by which this was effected can and should engage with the reader the understanding of how such issues come to prominence in the first place. Finally, this analysis will consider the means by which companies such as Dell utilize materials that are supplied through conflict or unethical reasons. This occurred throughout the years from the Central African Republic or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ultimately, the negative publicity that the Dell firm received as a function of this caused them to provide a special page within their website dedicated to the fact that the company places a high importance on the ethical acquisition of the core components of its electronics. However, it should not be inferred from this that only the Dell Corporation is involved in such an unethical practice. Due to the need and shear demand for the core components of the electronic industry, a litany of firms ply the world’s markets to seek to save even pennies on the ton of raw material as a function of the very high amounts of product that is created or yielded within the process (Ramzy, 2013). For this purpose and due to these very reasons, it should not be surprising to the researcher that almost every multinational electronics or tech firm that produces hard products is engaged in very much the same types of practices that Dell formerly engaged. Although it is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss such a facet, it should at least be tangentially mentioned that perhaps of primary importance to the ethics of how these minerals are obtained is the means by which the environment is damaged and key areas of the world ultimately destroyed in the process of seeking to extract these lucrative metals and minerals. As can be seen from the preceding analysis, the level of ethical issues that face the world of technical multinationals is high. It is the belief of this author that this is a function of the fact of the relatively young age of this industry. Although ethical concerns and clear deviations from process and procedures of best practices will always be engaged within the business world, the fact of the young age and rapid development of these industries has meant that they are experiencing a level of growing pains similar to the growing pains that the first major companies in American history experienced. These pains can be alleviated by company shareholders insisting on behaving in an ethical and moral manner with within whatever business context is being performed. Similarly, these very same firms will need to have a direct level of government oversight to ensure that they abide by the rules that have been set throughout the system by the federal government. With such a level of oversight, the extent to which these instances, which have thus far been mentioned, can continue will be severely abated. ? References Chang, R. (2009). SHOULD APPLE BE ARBITER OF TASTE FOR IPHONE APPS?. Advertising Age, 80(17), 4-35. Pike, G. H. (2012). Apple and Ebook Price Fixing Investigated. Information Today, 29(4), 24. RAMZY, A. (2013). Precious Holdings. Time, 181(6), 10-14. Read More