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Speech communication.
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Speech communication.In its use to communicate, electronic media has many negative effects which hinder its effectiveness. The ability to communicate gestures and tones, along with more subtle body language such as eye movements renders this form of communication useless in times when all contact is needed. This often leads to various feelings, some of which are depersonalization and isolation among its users as outlined by Sproul & Keisler (1502). With regard to these inefficiencies, many instances might necessitate use of other types of communication, in order to ensure a complete communication process is achieved.
This effect or influence of electronic media on communication has a largely negative impact on the process. The inability to communicate fully might lead to total lack of, or partial comprehension. It might also reduce the effectiveness of feedback as gestures and body language form a large part of this, as well as being inappropriate for some circumstances. Formal communication for example, can be seriously affected by electronic media. As much as it forms a large part of this type of communication, its effects could negate any benefits especially if social media habits and traits are assimilated. In light of this, Lengel & Daft (199) suggested avoiding this type of media for certain types of communication.
Research as recent as 2010’s, points to frequent use of computing devices and internet as debilitating on the human brain’s functions. The ability of the human brain to focus on a particular task is greatly undermined by the deluge of information we get from all these computing and communication devices especially when coupled with the internet. All these information has been demonstrated to invoke the brain’s centers responsible for responding to threats and opportunities hence sudden bursts of anxiety. Anxiety triggers the release of the hormone dopamine in the brain, without which we just feel bored.
As demonstrated by numerous researchers from the universities of Utah, California both in Irvine and San Diego report that the effects of computer use and the internet are mostly negative. These range from increased stress due to too much information to process, to less social development due to a total dependence on electronic rather than social interactive method. In some cases, an addiction has been shown to be present in heavy users of these technologies especially if they form part of whole livelihood making structures. This was shown to result in increased aggression and venting out on close family and/or friends.
However many the negatives are, the benefits of computers and internet use combined far outnumber them. From medical imaging to entertainment and defense, these benefits clearly demonstrate innovations here to stay. Its positive impacts on the brain being; increased reaction and multiple processing capacities, as demonstrated by game players have been extensively studied. Eyal Ophir, a Stanford researcher showed how all these increases in information and load has lead to tiny adaptations in certain human brains to help them better filter out distractions and juggle problems. This demonstrated the human brain’s ability to rewire itself and attend to changes in its environment, something previously thought nonexistent. All these research is convincing that computers have a profound impact on us in both a negative and positive manner.
The causes of the Great Depression
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The causes of the Great Depression
This economic disaster was not caused by one factor but a number of related factors. Historians and economists have compiled a large list of the agents of The Great Depression, but most of them agree on the following as the main causes.
The stock market crash of 1929
In the 1920’s, the United States Stock market was the subject of rapid expansion that peaked in 1929. During this period, “wild speculation and weak regulatory frameworks were the characteristics of the bourse” (Gunderson, 16). By 1929, unemployment had risen due to decreasing production leaving much of the stock with inflated values. This caused the market to collapse aided in part by a struggling agricultural sector, the proliferation of the national debt, and low wages. In addition, many banks had excess loans that could not be liquidated.
On October 1929, after a month of rapidly falling stocks prices, the collapse of the US stock market began. This culminated in a panic gripping the masses of investors who proceeded to trade more than 12.894 million shares on October 24th, 1929 also known as Black Thursday. Investors and large banks tried to remedy the situation by purchasing large amounts of stock easing the economy out of free fall. However, the same returned again the next day eventually leading to Black Tuesday on October 28th when 16million plus shares were traded. On this day, thousands of investors were completely wiped out, and billions of dollars lost. The events of 1929 were just the beginning of a series of events that combined later to compound into the Great Depression. By 1933, almost a third of America’s workforce was out of their jobs, and nearly half of America’s banks had failed.
The reduction in spending across the board
After the stock market had crashed resulting in panic and economic frustration, the people’s confidence in their economy waned. This caused them to reduce expenditure by ceasing almost all forms of purchasing. This sharp reduction in purchases negatively affected the production companies that already had liquidity problems forcing them to either reduce costs by cutting jobs or completely close down.
The resulting unemployment led to people’s assets they had bought on payment plans getting repossessed as they could not pay for them due to unemployment (Hall and Ferguson, 75). This resulted in banks and other lenders accumulating inflated inventories that also negatively affected their already cash-strapped balance sheets. The result was that a quarter of the US working class lost employment.
The widespread banks failures
In the early 1920’s, the United States had a well-developed banking system in terms of operational reach. The average banking system catered for most of the country’s rural and urban regions. Nebraska, for example, had over 1.3 million people back then. As a thriving but relatively rural area, the region still enjoyed the privilege of a bank for every 1000-1500 people. Though most of the banking activity in those days was poorly regulated, it provided the main services every bank was supposed to – depository and interest rate controlled loans.
As the economic hardship seeped through society and infiltrated into the rural areas, farmers had less money to spend. This meant even less money to save a situation that rendered banks redundant and even useless. Without their deposits, financial institutions were unable to operate and eventually forces to close down. In the early 1920’, they failed at a rate of 60 to 75 per year, but the number grew ten-fold to 744 in first two-thirds of 1930 alone. On total, it is estimated that almost 9000 banks failed during The Great Depression (Knoop, 253). With the closures, many people lost their life savings aggravating an already dire financial situation.
International trade and economic policies
As a result of the increased economic growth experienced in the early 1920’s, European and Latin America countries increased their borrowing from United States. However, foreign lending to these countries fell sharply in the 1928-1929 period due to higher interest rates and a booming stock market’s influence. This affected many borrower countries especially those in Europe, which was only just recovering from the devastation of World War One. Some of the economies actually almost collapsed just before The Great Depression affected the US.
An already dire situation was aggravated with the US enactment of the Smoot-Hawley tariff. This was meant to protect the US agricultural production by creating an unfavorable market for European agricultural imports through prohibitively high taxation. However, this backfired when Europe and Latin American countries adopted protectionist countermeasures resulting in almost no international trade between the major trade partners in the world. This worsened the situation by affecting major global producers, causing major balance-of-payment problems and major contractionary issues in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Major drought in the US
While not considered a major cause of The Great Depression, the great drought that affected the Mississippi Valley in 1930 contributed greatly – at least from a US perspective. Most of the people back then relied on their land and its products for both sustenance and monetary gain. Agricultural activity was suddenly affected over a larger area by drought resulting in millions being unable to pay loans at their lending firms and banks. In addition, this major source of primary raw materials was suddenly unable to provide the large industrial raw material needs of the US at a time when unfavorable international trade policy was the norm, namely the Smoot-Hawley tariff. In addition, tax revenues for the government’s spending reduced greatly. Banks repossessed farms from defaulting farmers while other opted to sell theirs at a loss. They moved to cities further worsening the already dire unemployment situation.
Why The Great Depression lasted so long
The Great Depression has come under great scholarly interest recently as economists and scholars seek to find out the reason such a bad economic situation persisted even as the governments of US and European countries input restorative efforts. The main culprits appear to be government policies that hindered fair competition.
The forces of demand and supply should have reduced wages, lowered business costs and increased employment and output. However, the National Industry Recovery Act (NIRA) prevented this from occurring. As a policy passed in 1933 to aid the process of restoring national prosperity by giving industry players the opportunity to collude, this policy sanctioned other activities that would have triggered antitrust practices(Bernanke, 73). These included minimum price formation and formation of restriction on expansion within the industry. The only trade-off the government put in place for this arrangement was these cartels share their large profits with workers creating employment through large wage increases.
Many industry players passed off fair prices under the NIRA leading to increased wages and prices. However, not all industries were able to agree on the prices as per the NIRA codes making growth in their areas stunted. Any economic development was pulled down by this situation of uneven policy implementation leading to some areas experiencing price and wage increases while others remained stagnant.
A short period later, NIRA was declared unconstitutional leading to the National Labor Restrictions Act. This greatly empowered the labor unions’ bargaining power as the driving force of the economy – its labor force – took on a more proactive stance. This body implemented policy that saw an increase in wages up to the 1938-39 recessions. In a different context, the National Labor Restrictions Act was able to introduce changes by the late 1930’s that saw the number of hours workers could work increased. That growth in the labor and wage structure was sustained to the late 1940’s when the National Labor Restrictions Act was replaced by the Taft-Hartley Act. Growth in the economy’s major factors, wages, and labor-force, continued to fuel national economic recovery until the US was finally out of The Great Depression.
Works Cited
Bernanke, Ben. “The Gold Standard, Deflation and Financial Crisis in the Great Depression: An international comparison.” Essays on the Great Depression. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. 73. Print.
Gunderson, Cory G. “The Roaring Twenties.” The Great Depression. Edina: ABDO Pub, 2010. 16. Print.
Hall, Thomas E, and J D. Ferguson. “Sowing the seeds of disaster.” The Great Depression: An International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1998. 75. Print.
Knoop, Todd A. “Business Cycles in the United States.” Recessions and Depressions: Understanding Business Cycles. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010. 253. Print.
narrative on A bloody affair
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A bloody affair
The long search ended in a city council morgue where his lifeless body lay. The atmosphere of the morgue was rented with yells and shrieks from the kinfolk members. How could death rob us a young energetic and ambitious man who had a vision? This was totally unbelievable, that Claude was no more. Two years were not over since he wedded his gorgeous wife in a very colorful ceremony that was graced by the duchess of Cambridge. The fond memories of quality time had barely elapsed when he met his untimely demise. A myriad of questions with no answers ran through everyone’s mind. It was evident that Claude had been shot dead by some assailants. This was clearly evident as a bullet had been lodged into his chest, torn through his tender fresh leaving a hovel that was so scaring. His beloved wife of a year had not arrived at the scene. This was truly traumatizing, little did we know that behind the scenes were sum unearthed bitter truths that would leave everyone in awe.
Claude Kelvin was the most hard working young man I had known in my tender years. He was a jack of all trades and contrary to the wise Sayers he was also a master of many. Claude had spent all his life in the countryside with his parents who were large scale farmers. As a child, Claude was very bright in the school. In his fourth to seventh grade, he was always on the top in his class which made many teachers get fond of him. Claude was an exemplary student when it came to sciences. He always won prizes in the science congress that was held annually in his school. Claude was enrolled into St Johns high school where he worked to his level best and got as in all his papers. This landed him into the prestigious Harvard University where he enrolled for a degree in law.
During his stay at the Harvard, Claude met this lady Mary Brown with whom he fell in love. Mary was in the school of medicine and was a very beautiful and charming young lady. It all started as a friendship when Claude’s buddy, Johnson introduced him to Miss Brown. Within weeks, their friendship blossomed into love and they became one of the inseparable couples. Every party introduced the other to their families who gave them blessings. There were some rumors that ran about Mary but Claude gave a deaf ear. Some of her course mates speculated that she was a free mason but Claude had no space for such crap. His eyes were fixed on getting a happy ending with this beautiful lady he had known now for some years. Claude graduated a year before his lover and landed a job in the United States of America. This was quite a good start for this ambitious young man whose greatest wish as a student lawyer had always being fighting for the rights of the weak in the society.
During his stay in the United States, Mary was his constant visitor. One Monday morning, Claude rose up in the wee hours and readied himself to work. Mary had visited him the previous weekend and was to spend a week with him. During that morning, Mary had pleaded with him not to attend work but spend some time with her in the mansion Claude had recently bought. Claude however, managed to convince Mary that he could not afford to miss work. On his drive to work, Claude swerved off the road and hit a tanker that was parked on the roadside. The intensity of the bang sent the tanker blowing and the flames burnt Claude’s vehicle severely and it was rendered completely written off. Claude escaped death by a whisker as some passers-by rushed him to hospital where he was admitted with severe burns on his limbs and deep cuts on his head.
It took Claude a year to recuperate from his injuries and luckily he never succumbed to his injuries. He was bedridden all this time and Mary was by his side always carrying out chores for him and feeding him. Claude was convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that this was the woman he always saw in his dreams. This was everything that a man would look for in a woman, a clear indicator of true love. She always nursed his petrifying wounds day in day out. She even resigned from her work to take care of him. What a caring and loving lady she was. She moved the hearts of many especially in Claude’s family and the bond was never as strengthened before. After a year of nursing, Claude’s life took a new turn as he was totally healed and was back to his normal life. He resumed his duties in full swing in the organization that had employed him.
Two years later Claude had a change of mind. She had found another girlfriend at her workplace and had fallen in love with her. Contrary to our expectations, she proposed to this lady who was foreign even to his family. A year later, he proposed to the girl and wedding arrangements began. A few months later, Claude walked down the aisle with the lady in an extremely colorful wedding. To Mary Brown, this was the height of betrayal. She could not believe that her dreams to become a life partner to Claude had been shattered. Life took a new twist; they no longer saw each other eye to eye. Mary was traumatized; this agony was too much for her to bear. How could Claude be so inhuman? How could he repay her goodness with betrayal? This is some of the questions that remained unanswered even to his closest friends.
Claude was a committed Christian and was an active member of his church. On the fateful day, he had gone to deliver some foodstuffs to some mission men who had taken the good news to a foreign land. Claude left in a jovial mood, humming a tune he liked. He kissed his beloved wife goodbye and in his ever humorous tone teased her that they would meet in heaven if his time was over on earth. Little did she know that it was the last time he was seeing him alive. Claude did not have kids of his own but her wife was heavy with pregnancy. Sooner or later Claude would be a father to a beautiful daughter.
Claude speeded towards the 4th street and he waved to his wife who waved back. This was the last time they saw each other. Claude was never at one time late to get to his home. He always got home even before the verge of darkness. On this day he never appeared even after it was past nine o’clock in the evening neither did he call to notify his wife of anything. His wife back at home became impatient back at home. Her efforts to reach him through his cellphone proved futile. She immediately raised alarm to his immediate family members and his close acquaintances. Calls were immediately made to the place he had gone but the missioners said they had not set eye on him. This raised a lot of suspicion on his whereabouts.
The following morning, a thorough search for Claude was stepped up by his close kinsmen as well as his friends. They made immediate reports to the police department who staged a vigorous search for this young man. The search was a wild goose chase as they could not trace using wave technology, his cellphone. Her grief stricken wife was so shocked and she remained dumbfounded all this time. Her friend tried to reassure her that everything was well but all she was doing was weeping bitterly and probably whispering a silent prayer to God to take care of his husband wherever he was.
The search took a new turn after Claude’s vehicle’s wreckage was found stuck on a bridge. Numerous bullet holes were noticeable from a far. This sent shivers down the spines of his friends and family. The next place they searched for him was the municipal morgue. His lifeless body lay here and his clothes were soaked in blood. This was such a mysterious and untimely demise. The investigations to unearth the cause are still underway. Who was behind Claude’s murder and for what reason? This question remains unanswered and will probably be.