Chinese Language Project

你们好，

我想写这个一篇文章，所以你们可以学习我的汉语学习之旅。我也想要我的未来的雇主可以知道我的知识水平。我一先开始学习中文在中学。我觉得很有意思了，特别写汉字。我的同学说了太难。我听说以后，我觉度我想学中文，所以我可以证明他们是错的。 我学中文了四年了，二年在中学，二年在大学。原来是，中文是更多的写的语言。

一直学中文你应该学文化和背景。中文的文化很贵很重。有许多战争和朝代。每个都一起是中国的历史。 我找了每汉字是一个小的故事。我想说中文汉字，而且其语言的汉字不一样。因为中文的字母是身体的。我的意思是中文的汉字常常代表身体的特性。例子，我，是一个手拿一个肉。雨和淋浴，也是好个例子，因为都有小水符号。因为这些 原因中文可以是合乎逻辑的.然而，中文也可以是越来越难你学的越多. 因为音调的发音.每个音调可以有几次发音。说中文可是是很难。

现在好像中文课这年比去年更难。语法越来越难。我也现在非常参与校园。我也现在我的法学院入学考试而学习。 我很忙很负担跟工作。所以动机找难。可是我看大照片的时候，我知道我想用中文我未来的法律职业。我打算去法学院，我想做外商务法。特别并购。在这个工作我可以用我的语言能力。

我会两种语言加上中文。我的妈妈教我：外国语言非常重要的。您知道的语言越多，您可以联系的人就越多。我很喜慌旅行和知道新人，所以我希望我的中文越来越好。

Extra Credit #1

Have you ever heard of LIBOR? That's ok if you haven't it's not a broadly talked about topic. The media has constantly suppressed many scandals over the years but one that has shocked me most recently is the suppression of the LIBOR scared. The scandal happened around the 2008 financial market crash. There was so much going on during this timeframe that it is easy to become confused with what really happened. So what is LIBOR?

LIBOR stands for the London Interbank Offered Rate. Basically, this is a benchmark interest rate used for short-term loans, adjustable-rate mortgages, and student loans, and loans in general, use LIBOR as an interest rate. What this means is that a few panel banks decide what is their interest rate they offer loans to other banks for uncollateralized amounts of debt. The scandal in 2008 was that Barclay's a bank in London plead guilty to submitting false rates for their own advantage. Sometimes this means submitting false low numbers to appear better than they were or falsely high rates to make short-term profits on their derivatives contracts. Barclay's is not the only bank under investigation countless other banks, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and many other highly known institutions. 

LIBOR affects trillions of dollars of financial transactions and the effect on the economy of manipulating these loans has been huge. This also indirectly affects the stock market because LIBOR is an index of interest rates overall, it has an inverse relationship with the stocks. 

So what does this mean for the economy? LIBOR was found to be an ineffective system by the IBA. Now it is being phased out and replaced by SOFR, Secured Overnight Financing Rate.  This rate is supposed to be more accurate for a variety of reasons. First, it is based on actual transactions rather than assumptions of future costs by a panel of bankers. Because it is based on actual transactions it will need to be adjusted more often than LIBOR. For example, for one-year rates, might need to be adjusted twice a year instead of once a year. The secured overnight financing rate is based on transaction data that underlines US debt backed by US treasuries. The expectation is that this will be a more secure rate less vulnerable to manipulation. 

Currently, the issue with LIBOR being phased out of use is that many financial instruments used by corporations around the world are filing lawsuits because LIBOR negatively affected them. 

Final Blog Post

The use of technology integration into society is represented by an exponential graph. The graph below shows the relationship between time and technological inventions. As mentioned in the last article diffusions of innovations help us see the process in which new technology becomes widespread in society.

Now that technology has exponentially grown into society how have these new inventions changed the environment in which we live? There are many positive attributes, medical tools, GPS, phones, and washing machines. Some technologies have fewer drawbacks than others. Inventions are made because of the need to solve a problem, with the speed rate at which a new invention is made there is not much time given to thinking about the negative effects this technology could potentially have. 

As shown in the movie Age of AI we can see that the problem in some cases might just be trying to reduce costs. This might be positive for some stakeholders but not for all. Let's examine this on a macro level, the society as a whole will benefit because the price will be cheaper because this will cut costs and individuals will have to pay less for the product. Shareholders will also benefit, which are a part of stakeholders because they are wealthier and they have more money to reinvest in other sectors. The negatives are that many workers are cut out of a job. The mental health issues that arise are extreme and most have yet to find a solution. Not only does the displacement directly affect those unemployed but then the family of those unemployed and future generations also. As mentioned in the movie Age of AI the children of those that have lost their jobs feel strained and unable to match up to their parents. Those problems are just a glimpse of the negative drawbacks of technology on a macro level. 

As we move on to the micro-level we see most issues are related to personal uses of phones or computers. Personally believe smaller inventions like washing machines, air conditioning, and cars only enrich our lives and make them easier, when I begin to have concerns is when "smart computers" are in the center of one's life. Now there are additional problems, for example,  eating disorders, mental health disorders, anxieties, and stresses that come along with technology. Everyone at some point in their modern lives is guilty of falling victim to one of the problems listed above. 

In addition, if you try to research the issues you might face another problem with technology and the online platforms, which are overloading of information and misinformation. The saturation of the online market with different ideas is immense and it can seem overwhelming to detect the optimal route to begin. 

I believe we have a chance at combating the issues above if we take a personal viewpoint. I will use my relationship with technology as an example. I by no means have a perfect relationship with technology but I am aware of its negatives which I believe is the start. With individuals being educated about the downfalls of technology we can begin to correct a lot of the problems that we currently have. Some of the solutions are simple, that doesn't mean easy. For example, exercise has been proven to help and correct many mental health issues. Taking the time to exercise and to avoid technology for an hour or two is not a complex concept but it can be a difficult one. Now due to the attention span shortening, specifically in younger generations by social media, it can be very difficult to motivate the younger generations to do those types of simple tasks. 

Getting back to the basics I believe is one of the healthiest ways in which to combat the negative side effects of technology and begin to train ourselves to look at the pros and cons of a technology before it is introduced to determine whether the good outweighs the bad. 

EOTO #2

The second round of EOTO presentations I found very valuable. I learned new things that I had no idea affected my daily life. Below I have listed some of my favorite policies and highlighted some notes I found interesting. 

Total information awareness is a terrorist information awareness organization. TIA was meant to take in data and store it to filter out possible terrorist attacks. The problem with this was that it was collecting and storing data from the entire population. The issue is that everyone is taken into account and their privacy is not. Instead of becoming a terrorist identification tool, it became a mass surveillance platform. 

We also learned about whistleblowers which are government employees that expose the misdeeds of the government agencies. Before some whistleblowers these agencies were not publicly known about, people being spied on without their consent or knowledge. 

A similar data collection agency spoken about was five eyes, which is named by the five large countries that are participants. Five Eyes is an international data-sharing agency. There are two parts first is Prism which gathers personal data, and Upstream which gathers phone calls and text messages. 

The echo chamber is the effect of echoing one popular idea and suppressing all others. This is very popular on current social media outlets. This is a harmful effect in most scenarios because it doesn't allow any other points of view which may be essential information. 

Overall these presentations were very informative and educational. It is good that everyone knows about the types of surveillance and mass data collection the government is doing, along with the tactics used to spread information on social media platforms. 

Diffusion of Innovation

    The diffusion of innovation theory helps define how ideas and innovations spread throughout time.

    Using that theory we can assess how emojis spread over time. At first, were the premieres, the group that came up with the idea in the first place, a group of Carnegie Mellon researchers. The idea was used around a small group of brave individuals willing to start and run with something new. Then came the early adapter companies, in Japan and East Asia begin to jump on board with the new idea and implement it into their standard programming. After that other companies tried to adapt emojis into their programming also because it was popular in other cultures. 

    Next, we move on to the late adopters, which basically are those who were resistant to innovation and change into their standard phones systems to incorporate emojis. Finally, we have the laggards those who are resistant to change and who do not adapt to the new technology. Not everyone always adapts to new technology and some never will. 

    
Based on the timeline of the diffusions of innovations I predict that emojis have now reached saturation into the market of online messaging. They now are normalized characters that we constantly use daily. I do not think they will leave our phones anytime soon and be replaced by another technology, however; I do think that there will be changes and elements added to them. Emojis are almost a necessity for phone messaging, since they are seen as necessary, they will not be deemed obsolete. 

Vertical Integration

Vertical integration is when a company takes direct control and buys an essential part of its distribution or supplier. Horizontal integration is when a company buys another company to expand its outreach or to gain insight into new markets. Though they might sound similar, they are very different. The main difference between the two is that vertical integration is directly buying their distributor or supplier. 

A prime example of vertical integration is the company Netflix. Netflix is a successful online streaming platform. Netflix has copyright licenses to show and stream movies from different

companies. Now Netflix has bought some producers and has created their own movies which have been very successful because they already have such a large subscriber base. 

A drawback to vertical integration could be the initial cost. To buy a distributor or supplier can be very expensive and very costly upfront, therefore, you need projected future cash flows to see if the benefits outweigh the cost. 

From a companies perspective, vertical integration can sound very appealing, however, we must look at how this affects society as a whole. Vertical integration increases the companies' power and independence by buying out their distributors/suppliers when they do this gives them an advantage against their competition. Putting a strain on their competition can create monopolies, then the companies do not have the pressure of the market to determine their prices. That power then makes consumers vulnerable to price gauging. 

This type of corporate strategy affects parts of the population differently. Focusing on the lower-income earners' vertical integration can hurt them significantly. Since there is less competition there is more room and freedom for price manipulation. Since they have the freedom to charge what they want they can charge higher prices at no cost because there is no competition to tell them otherwise. This affects everyone but mostly the lower-income earners because they feel the pain more directly. Looking at the whole economy everyone pays for vertical integration. Monopolies are inefficient because they are not producing as much as they should be, producing more creates lower prices because it lowers the average total cost. If the company is not running efficiently then it is hiring fewer people producing fewer jobs. 

Vertical integration also leads to lower product diversification. Due to lack of competition, they will continue to produce the same type of product with little to no innovation this means that the products are not getting better and if there are issues they keep repeating themselves. 

Because monopolies are not healthy for an economy and are an inefficient strategy in the long run they tend to quickly become in debt. To offset this economic drain the government will then give subsidies to struggling industries, which reinforces the negative cycle. Vertical integration is a quick and slippery slope to a monopoly, and it is important to see if the cost outweighs the long-term benefits. 

No Such Thing as Privacy

 

True privacy in my opinion does not exist. Everyone has some part of their aspect online, from posting every waking minute online, to a reserved person doing the bare minimum everyone is online. The reason no one has privacy is that everything online is traceable and leaves a digital footprint.

So what is a digital footprint, basically everything you post or do online leaves a digital footprint. There as some different ways to leave them the most notable and widely spread are cookies. Cookies collect your data and sell that data to other companies, so now instead of one website having your information countless companies now use it. The above information is called an Adhesion Contract which is where one party holds all the power, the online companies own everything you post.

So what are the positives about this no online privacy? Well, one positive is marketing efficiency. Now because of everyone's information being filtered into a digital dossier marketing companies can now advertise the specific products to niche markets and be successful, instead of mass marketing which loses profit and is inefficient. This marketing technique pleases some people because it makes their lives simpler because it makes their shopping easier. Another pro could be that the collection of mass data and surveillance makes it easier to find and prosecute criminals. 

Along with positives come negatives. The negatives outweigh the cons, though this data can make smaller areas of one's life easier it can also destroy your reputation in just a few clicks. The issue with everyone's personal information being online is that every time companies sell your private information it makes you more susceptible to hacking. Also, this data collection can be taken completely out of context, it can say things you don't mean to say. 

So what online protection do we have? Online privacy is a difficult subject because of the third-party doctrine. This doctrine states when the first party voluntarily gives information to a second party the first party relinquishes all control of downstream uses by a third party. This law means that if you give someone your information even if it is done in confidence it loses all constitutional protections. 

So how can we improve our online protection legally? First, try to be aware that everything you post or don't post will be public, and keeping that in mind will help correct certain actions, however, some things are inevitable. One way we can combat the inevitable and protect ourselves is through legal protection. This protection can take forms in various ways, we should make companies liable to be transparent about partnerships, sponsorers, and customers. Governments should not be allowed to store everyone's data and personal information, period. 

-We are innocent until proven guilty.