Timberland Case Study Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Timberland Case Study - Research Paper Example It is for this reason that the CEO of the company recommends the creation of a model that brings an era whereby â€Å"under the model, creating commercial value and social value, commerce and justice were â€Å"inextricably linked†Ã¢â‚¬  (Austin, Leonard, and Quinn, 2004, p. 1). Reading through the case study, it could be noticed that there is the likelihood that there could arise a subsequent problem that has to do with the implementation of the designed model. This problem is projected in the face of having to satisfy the stake of all stakeholders to accepting the innovative business model as the most suitable for the present needs of the company. Identified "stakeholders" The running of any public interest organization such as Timberland can never be complete in the absence of a well regulated and coordinated effort among some key players, commonly referred to as stakeholders (Maremont, 1993). The term ‘stakeholders’ is used to refer to these players because with their roles in the organizations, they could be said to be people who can legitimately claim stakes in the successful running of given organizations. In other words, the roles of each stakeholder are so important that eliminating the functions of one of them could cause the doom of the company involved. A critical review of the case in which Timberland finds itself brings out who the company’s stakeholders are and the roles played in the successful story of the company over the years. Employees, consumers, customers, partners, the community and the investment community all come together to act as stakeholders of Timberland (Austin, Leonard, and Quinn, 2004, p. 11). Employees of the company act as the engine of production, whose tasks include the need to ensure that there is an adequate supply margin to the demand chain on the company (Esposito, 2001). Customers and consumers are the financial lifeline to the company, whose purchases account for the company’s reven ues. Partners and the investing community also play important roles in fueling the company with fiscal resources though they come in as beneficiaries in the long run. The community, on the other hand, is an important stakeholder in the social justice phenomenon; as the community ought to benefit exclusively from the company without any thought of reciprocate in return. Important Target Groups Still on the commerce and justice vision of the company, there are some key target groups that ought to be considered in the rendering of the innovative business model of the company. Apart from the stakeholders who have been mentioned earlier as employees, consumers, customers, partners, the community and the investment community, suppliers and the government are two other important target groups. The justification in considering suppliers as important target group comes from one major factor and that is, Timberland as a company does a lot of outsourcing in the procurement and acquisition of r aw materials for its operations. This, therefore, means that for a lot of times that the company will be in the quest to go into production in order to meet demand from customers and consumers, the company would have to fall on its suppliers (Ducharme, 2002). It is for this reason that the role of suppliers as important target group cannot be underestimated. With government, not much needs to be said to justify its role as an important target

Transformation of African culture in Midaq Alley and Death and The Research Paper

Transformation of African culture in Midaq Alley and Death and The King's Horseman - Research Paper Example The novel critically focuses on the presence of the British soldiers during WWII, and these represent the western forces that have been brought to Midaq valley and influence the lives of people in this area according to the western cultures. Likewise Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman deals with the questions of cultural identity, the themes and forms of the general audience as the author brings them out clearly. The book presents contrast between the life of Europeans and the lives of Africans in a contrast of cultures. To this, Soyinka attributes lives to the forms of lives that originally developed on African soil and in the civilized world to mean Africa and European respectively. The difference of what is perceived as local and what is imported through the white man presents a case of contrast and the play brings out these contrasts to indicate how the western culture has influenced people on the African soil. Therefore, the two books portray a case of cu ltural degradation where Africans are influenced by the western cultures through a process that is termed as civilization, to adopt new ways of lives and depart from their traditional ways of life. The negative influence of the western culture in Midaq valley is portrayed by Hamida. This is a lady who grows in middle class environment and has no attachment to her mother or to any other neighbor. Hamida knows that she is beautiful and wants to control men those who are powerful and those that are rich (Amyuni, 1). While her husband Abbas is away in the army making an honest living, she is attracted to the rich Salim who is lasting for her. Hamida later realizes that prostitution is her calling and she is a â€Å"whore by instinct† (Mahfouz, 205). This presents a case of immorality where the riches that are accumulated in Cairo as are breaking up families and African communal settings as well as values. Mahfouz (1) explains Midaq valley to be enclosed between 3 walls with darkn ess. The unity and communal life is portrayed by uncle Kalim where he says; â€Å"good evening everyone.† Come on its time for evening get together†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..† this is a setting that would portray a close connection between the people of Midaq Valley, which has been broken by the presence of the white man with women such as Hamida turning to prostitution with these rich men. Mahfouz further explains how Hamida realizes that her honor had been bought several times by the British soldiers; meaning that she has been prostituting with these soldiers. This case is portrayed by Alwan a family man with complete family but is not satisfied with his wife he is â€Å"unable to find the pleasures he yearned for in his wife† this makes him be attracted to Hamida (Mahfouz, 80). In addition the book presents the negative changes of religion though civilization. This is observed when Mr Kirsha claims that â€Å"public reciters still have an appeal which won’t disap pear. The radio won’t replace us† the cafe owner however replies that â€Å"this is you say and not what my customers say and you are not going to ruin my business† (Mahfouz, 5). Though Kirsha and other public reciters had been used to recite the Quaran in public places with no resistant, the radio that represents the western civilization has brought another element where people see beyond this, and are not any more interested in these reciters or too much of their religion . This might be attributed to civilization,

Suture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Suture - Essay Example Suture was a neo-noir film of 1993 directed by David Seigel and Scott McGehee and it features actors Mel Harris and Dennis Haysbert. On that note, the photographic image both constructs the character’s identity and undermines the identity for the film viewers in several ways. For example, after Vincent Towers kills his father, he decides to fake his death (Grieveson & Wasson 98). Similarly, he attempts to murder his half-brother, Clay Arlington acted by Dennis Haysbert as a mechanism to change identities. This aspect helps in establishing the photographic image traits of Vincent in the context of the cinematic disparities. From the movie, we see that Vincent is white while his identical brother who is forced to suffer amnesia after a bomb to protect him is black. This incident supports the Apparatus theory that insists that, by nature, cinema is driven by ideological mechanics. Therefore, this is apparent because through the Lacan’s Mirror Stage effect that expounds on the value of self-identity and consciousness. On that note, while there is an element of a photographic image construction, there is also distortion of identity for the film viewers. For example, when Clay loses his memory and suffers amnesia, Dr. Renee Descartes attempts to quicken his recovery but his brothers comes back to kill him again. This results in the murder of Vincent Towers instead of his half-brother thus prompting Clay to adopt a, genuine permanent, identity (Chaudhuri 83). This decision affects most film viewers because it does not concur with Lancan’s notion of the Mirror stage that insists on self-identity and consciousness. Alternatively, there is a way in which the strategy of dis-identification in Suture undermines what Laura Mulvey calls the normative ‘visual pleasure’ of the film spectator. For example, Laura expounds on three different techniques of viewing a film that entail watching as the camera records the real events of the film, watch ing the film and interaction of characters in the film. Therefore, as observed in Suture the loss of identification of Vincent Towers who fakes himself is manifest of the violation of the visual pleasure. Similarly, the loss of Clay Arlington’s memory after suffering amnesia prevents the film spectator from interacting with the main characters in the film because of lost identity. In addition, the themes of betrayal and denial that are espoused by the main characters are an indication of the manipulation of the normative ‘visual pleasure’ fronted by Laura Mulvey in her essay (Grieveson & Wasson 109). Furthermore, after the recovery of his lost memory with the help of Dr. Max Shinoda, Clay is undecided on how dispose of one of his identities. This continues to complicate the aspect of ‘visual pleasure’ because the film spectator is denied the chance to think on the loss and recovery of identity. Therefore, because Suture takes away pleasure, there is a social function concerning race and class that is at work in the film. For example, Vincent Towers is a white who murdered his brother but tries to cover up using his black brother, Clay Arlington. This is an example of the disparity of racial boundaries because a white brother compels his black brother to suffer in order to get away with crime. On the same length, there is a determination by Vincent Towers to murder his

World Literature Assignment Help Essay Example for Free

World Literature Assignment Help Essay The most important feature of Homer’s  Iliad  is the most obvious: the central issue in this poem is warfare.  In fact, the  Iliad  is our oldest, most famous, and most enduring story about men in battle.  So one might well begin by exploring certain features of this particular war narrative.  How does Homer depict the war so as to emphasize some features rather than others? Such a question is necessary because the phrase  war story  does not reveal very much about any particular fiction.   After all, warfare, particularly the Trojan War, can be and has been used to develop an astonishingly wide range of the different stories—dramatic adventures, chivalric tales, amusing satires, bitter social commentaries, historical epics, various styles of comedy, romance, and so on, often in combination.  For war is a very fecund basis for all sorts of different tales, as one might expect, given that it includes so many narrative possibilities.  So we might start by seeing if we can get a sense of some of the more salient features of Homer’s treatment of the war. One of the most initially surprising things about the  Iliad  is how many well-known details of the full Trojan War story Homer leaves out. The poem gives us no detailed sense of how the war started (either the short-term cause of Paris’ and Helen’s elopement or the long-term causes in the wedding of Thetis and Peleus and the Judgment of Paris), nor are many of the most famous incidents in the opening or closing stages of the war given any attention (for example, the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, the recruitment of Odysseus and Achilles, the abandonment of Philoctetes, the Trojan Horse, and the fall of Troy, among many others).  There are many references to the fact that Troy will eventually fall, but no details are provided.  First-time readers of the  Iliad  who have some familiarity with details of the famous narrative frequently comment, often with a sense of disappointment, on how few such incidents are included here.  One would think that any poet interes ted in holding his audience’s attention with some exciting narrative events would make much better use of at least some of these.  But one searches the  Iliad  in vain for most of one’s favorite stories from the Trojan War. Instead, the  Iliad  focuses on few weeks in the tenth year of the war. The action covers considerably less time than that, of course, because there are some major gaps (e.g., the nine days’ plague in Book 1, the twelve-day wait for Zeus, the twelve-day maltreatment of Hector’s corpse), and the focus is almost exclusively on what is going on in that relatively short time.  There’s an interesting double chronology at work.  Events move quickly from one battlefield experience to another—there is lots of exciting action.  At the same time, while there is little attention paid to a precise chronology, we also get a sense that a lot of time is going by; this war is dragging on and on, without anything changing very much (other than people being killed).  We do not experience this war as a complete event, with a beginning, middle, and end, an experience with clearly understood causes and a series of events leading to a definite conclusion.  We star t the poem in the midst of warfare, and we end the book, several weeks later, in exactly the same place.  The only thing we know for sure at the end is that the fighting will continue, as before. The warfare is also unremitting.  One bloody encounter is always followed by another without significant variation in the basic nature of the encounters and without pause.  All attempted truces are doomed to failure, other than those the parties make, ironically enough, to collect or celebrate the dead.  Even at night, when the fighting has generally stopped, the war dominates people’s actions, thoughts, and dreams.  There is none of that sense, so prominent in the  Odyssey, that an evening’s meal and sleep bring something to a conclusion so that when Dawn appears the next day, something new and different is about to begin. This narrative structure creates a sense that this war is less a particular and unique historical campaign than it is a lasting condition of life.  These warriors are doing what they have always been doing and what they will continue to do (a sense that is strongly reinforced, as we shall see, by their memories of the past and their hopes for the future).  There has been no clear beginning to all this, and there will be no clear end.  Of course, if we bring to the poem a knowledge of the details of the Trojan War, we know that the tradition tells us it does eventually end.  But the  Iliad  does not encourage us to think about that in any detail, apart from the references to the fact that Troy will fall someday, and, if we do, there is little in the poem to suggest that such an event would change anything very much (more about this later). In addition, the absence of any sense of enterprising romantic adventure in the poem (in spite of the fact that the traditional story of the Trojan War includes all sorts of possibilities for such events) generates a sense that individual resourcefulness in tactics, strategy, or trickery (a common feature of the  Odyssey  and of countless popular war fictions) is out of place here, because this war is larger than the efforts of any one man or small group of men.  It is not something which the individual warrior can, through his individual efforts, alter in any significant way.  Whatever he and his comrades do today, then tomorrow, if he is still alive, he will have to continue doing.  By the end of the  Iliad,  we have witnessed some extraordinary human conduct, glorious courage, horrible destruction, and more, none of which has changed the course or the nature of the war in the slightest.  Confronted with this situation, the men seem trapped, as Odysseus observes: Zeus sees to it that from our youthful days to our old age we must grind away at wretched war, till, one by one, we die. (14.104) [14.85] Some readers find this narrative rhythm disconcerting. Where are we going with the story?  There is a lot of action,  but overall nothing is changing and there is little if any sense of closure.  For those who expect other things from a war fiction, it is rather surprising and perhaps disappointing to discover that most of the exciting narratives we associate with this war come from other sources—the  Odyssey,  Aeneid, and  Metamorphoses, for example—where the vision of war is very different from what Homer is developing in the  Iliad. I would like to suggest that all these relatively obvious details help to create a sense that this vision of war is thoroughly fatalistic.  The war is neither a temporary problem nor a discrete historical event nor a unique adventure.  It is, rather, the basic, unchanging, and inescapable condition of life itself. It is man’s fate. Before exploring this point further, we should first clarify precisely what the terms  fate,  fatalism, and  fatalistic  mean here, for in these modern, decidedly non-fatalistic times we may not all grasp the concept clearly.  To assert that Homer pictures the war as man’s fate is to claim that Homer views it as the essential condition of life into which these men are born. They do not choose to have the world this way, and many of them express their dissatisfaction with this state of affairs and their desire for something different.  But there is nothing they can do to change that condition.  Whatever started this war and whatever will end it (if it ever does end) are beyond human control. It is necessary to add here the important point that, understood in this sense, these terms carry no necessary sense of optimism or pessimism. It is possible to be a confirmed fatalist and yet sense that the basic conditions of life are as good as they possibly could be or are arranged for man’s benefit (as in, say, a faith in providential Christianity), or, alternatively, to have a decidedly pessimistic sense of the world one is born into.  All these terms indicate, as I say, is that life is, so to speak, a game where the rules are made up and controlled by others and where human beings have no ability to change the situation. The terms  fate  and  fatalistic  also do not mean that human actions are predetermined.  This point is crucial to grasp for an understanding of the  Iliad  and almost all classical Greek literature.  Human beings may be unable to alter the situation, but in at least one essential since they are free agents.  They are free to choose how to react to these given conditions.  In the  Iliad  the men have chosen to be warriors; more than that, most of them are determined, in their freedom, to act as heroically as they can, to live up to a code which insists that they confront this grim fatal reality with a range of human qualities (courage, loyalty, physical strength, and so on). We  will be going into this feature of the poem in greater detail in another essay.  For the moment it’s essential to grasp the point that central to lives of these men is their free assertion of their individuality in the face of a harsh fate which they cannot alter.This fatali stic quality of the poem emerges also in the way Homer insists upon the universal scope of war. As we read the story, we are always dealing with a particular event involving specific individuals, but we are also aware of a larger picture, for these events are part of a much longer time period.  The famous digressions, which have occasioned a certain amount of hostile comment, serve to remind us again and again that warfare is a condition of life itself.  Flashbacks to earlier times insist that personal armed combat is what life is about (e.g., Phoenix’s long tale of Meleager, Aeneas’ boasts about his ancestors, Andromache’s story of her family, the constant reminders of the achievements of Diomedes’ father, Tydeus, and so on).  The particular events of this battle are always being played out against a historical backdrop of very similar incidents.  One of Nestor’s important functions in the poem is to remind us all the time, both by his pre sence and by his reminiscences, that human life has always involved fighting on the battlefield: â€Å"Son of Atreus, yes, indeed, I wish, I was the man I used to be back then when I cut down lord Ereuthalion.But gods don’t give men everything at once.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Then I was young.  Now old age follows me.But I’ll be with my horsemen, advising them, giving them  their orders, an old man’s right.Fighting with spears is for the younger men  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  born after me, men who rely on strength.† (4.373) [4.318] Similarly, when Hector thinks of his young son’s future, the best he can envisage for him is that he will be a great warrior, victorious in battle (6.583), a situation all the more poignant, of course, because many readers bring to the incident a knowledge of how Hector will soon die and how the young infant will be killed when the Achaeans sack Troy.  Hector has already acknowledged that he will die fairly soon, and no one in the poem has more to lose from continuing the battles than Hector.  Nonetheless, the only future he can imagine and desire for his son is one which has produced the situation he and Andromache now face. Homer’s treatment of the combatants also serves to bring out the universal, fatal condition of this war.  The  Iliad  contains hundreds of different names of people from all over the known world.  It is virtually impossible to keep track of everyone (and one doesn’t really have to, since most of the major actions involve relatively few people), but it is equally impossible to escape the sense that on this canvas we have representatives from all parts of civilization, not simply two separate groups fighting their own private quarrel.  And what’s even more remarkable, all these combatants are decidedly similar.  Most of them speak the same language, worship the same gods, live by the same code of life, share the same rituals in prayers, sacrifices, burials, and so on.  Warriors on opposite sides are members of the same extended family, and their forefathers have entertained each other and fought as allies in the past.  Some of those on different sid es have the same name (e.g., Agelaus, Antiphus, Adrestus, Medon, Noemon, Orestes, and so on).  Such a marked similarity between the two main groups of allies works against any attempt to find a rational cause of this war in some ethnic or religious conflict and thus adds weight to the impression that warfare transcends any geographical or cultural differences between the groups fighting each other. We need to dwell on this point for a moment.  In our Western traditions, we have for a very long time coped with the disturbing aspects of war by subjecting it to moral analysis. We like to see warfare as an army of righteousness against an army of evil, good versus bad, with the forces of goodness prevailing, so that we can justify the inescapable horrors war brings with it.  And many critics have extended this tradition to the  Iliad, seeking to establish some moral basis for the war which would make its atrocities somehow more palatable.  I’ll have a good deal more to say about this tendency in a later essay.  What I want to insist upon here is that Homer appears to go out of his way to make this division between the opponents difficult to sustain.  This war has not arisen out of cultural or political or economic conflict.  It is something bigger than all such conflicts, and it has the effect of making all the combatants, whatever minor differences one wishes to point to here or there, all equally subject to its force. After all, why are these men fighting?  Or, more importantly, why do they believe they are fighting?  The treatment of Helen, the ostensible cause of the war, makes her, for all her importance in the received tradition, relatively insignificant.  She is hardly a sufficient explanation for what is going on.  If the abduction counts at all, it is a minor pretext for what these men do all the time anyway.  The suggestion that the Trojans might debate the issue and give her back (7.402) evaporates almost immediately, and the war continues as before.  King Priam expressly indicates that Helen is not to blame (3.175) since the only sensible way to account for this war is to ascribe it to the gods. Such a view of war is profoundly different from what most of us now believe.  We think we have the ability to avoid warfare and that, if we must fight it, then we will do so only when we have a moral imperative to do so (i.e., when we are the â€Å"good guys† and our opponents â€Å"the bad guys†).  And even under such circumstances, we will expect the war to be as short as possible.  The notion that war is not a temporary and unwelcome intrusion upon human life but a fatal condition of life is thus potentially disturbing, a challenge to beliefs we particularly cherish.  A central thrust of these essays is that such a challenge to our sensibilities is one of the most important things about this poem because it is a vision of the world which contradicts what we wish to believe about it.  Of course, many of us can and do seek to evade that challenge by attempting to convert the grim fatalism into a reassuring moral allegory in line with our traditions, but that, it strikes me, removes from the work its most valuable qualities. Bibliography Homer, A. T. Murray, and William F. Wyatt.  Iliad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Osborne, Robin.  Greece in the making: 1200-469 B.C. Milton Park: Routledge, 2009. Warry, John Gibson.  Warfare in the classical world. New York: Barnes Noble, 2000.

Nobody Ever Dies :: Essays Papers

Nobody Ever Dies â€Å"The Complete Short Stories of Earnest Hemingway† contains many kinds of stories, with themes ranging from the comic to the serious and the macabre, among which â€Å"Nobody Ever Dies† is my favorite one. The story is about a young man named Enrique, who had been away at war for 15 months. His comrades-in-arms secretly sent him back to a house, without knowing it was being watched. Enrique was all the time listening. Someone was trying the two doors. Keeping himself out of sight, Enrique carefully looked around the house. There was no one but a Negro walking along the sidewalk. When the dark came, the Negro was still there. Suddenly, a siren on the radio from the next house gave him a false alarm. Soon afterwards, two stones fell on the tiling floor of the porch one after the other. Enrique went downstairs to the back door. The one outside gave the password correctly, and Enrique opened the door. It was his girlfriend Maria. She had waited until it was dark to come to send him food. Enrique shut the door again. They went up to the porch and looked out. The Negro was gone. Maria learned from Enrique that many soldiers had died, including Vicente, her only brother and the flower of their party. She couldn’t accept it. Enrique finished his meal and talked about the lessons he had learned from the war and his attitude toward his companions’ sacrifice. But she said he talked like a book with a dry heart. Enrique was hurt and showed her the severe wound on his lower back. She cried. Enrique suggested their leaving the house immediately. Just then, two real sirens came both ways up the street. Enrique ordered Maria to leave at once, but she insisted he should go first. Finally, they ran out of the back door and took two ways, diving into the weeds surrounding the lot and crawling. Enrique was almost to the edge of the lot now and must make a dash across the road. But as he started to run, the searchlight caught him, which was from the police car that had come silently, without siren, and posted itself at one back corner of the lot. Enrique fell to the gun from the car.

Critical Reflection of Design Process

The Critical Reflection of the design process iphone Application This document describes the critical reflection of designing the mobile application and describing the software interface in terms of learnability, memorability, effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction CTS Griffith University 11/6/2012 The Critical Reflection of the design process iphone Application This document describes the critical reflection of designing the mobile application and describing the software interface in terms of learnability, memorability, effectiveness, efficiency and satisfactionCTS Griffith University 11/6/2012 Critical Reflection of the design process Issues I have had issues with the development process were I had coding errors that needed to be resolved and spent some time fixing coding errors. Getting my program up and running in the iOS simulator was very difficult. Sometimes the emulator wouldn’t load properly and other times Titanium wouldn’t recognise that the emulator had successfully launched, I had to stop the emulator and start again and ends up taking time to launch.The program has taken a great deal of time to load. Outcome I was very satisfied with the outcome the project, the project went very well, finally had the program loaded on the emulator and had it successfully launched. Titanium is great for rapid prototyping. One thing I would differently though that would be an improvement is to add more functionality so that mathematical calculations that are not included in the current application can be performed. I will in the future build for Android and eventually the blackberry.I have acquired many skills and knowledge doing this project. I have Learnt how to develop inside of appcelerator titanium to build cross platform mobile applications, how to load the program on the emulator and have the capability and skills that from the knowledge I gained using the Titanium appcelerator to do future projects with it. I have learnt how to code the pr ogram, JavaScript is a language many developers know and enables myself as a qualified web developer to get into mobile app development.I have also learnt how to develop design ideas for the application to be suitable to be used outside, easy to use, address usability issues and make it look attractive. Software interface – learnability, memorability, effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction The iPhone calculator is a simple calculator with minimal functions. The iPhone / iPad calculator has been designed for simplicity, easy to use, to be user friendly and usability.Designed for a wide range of users, the iPhone / iPad calculator is primarily designed for students as it is the student’s major tool for performing calculations; this calculator is designed to improve the speed and accuracy of the student’s computational skills and be used. The iPhones calculator works like a pocket calculator. The iPhone’s calculator feature on the Home screen, by clickin g the calculator icon. The calculator function is used to perform a variety of different mathematical operations. The iPhone calculator works by adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.Numbers and symbols are large and easy to see and has large separated keys for increased accuracy It is also designed so that you have an efficient finger placement approach when selecting the keys so that you can perform calculations in a minimum amount of time. The iPhone calculator also has large colourful buttons and high contrast color schemes that will allow you to see the screen well outside. As most people nowadays owns a phone, the calculator function would come very handy to use when needed to perform calculations.It can be used anywhere at home, shop, work or travelling The calculator is very effective that allows the user to do a simple calculation with ease, enter in a number, then an operation, then another number, and then the = button. The c button will clear the current operati on. The calculator will perform operations in standard mathematical order. So 5+2? 2 will return 9. This is because multiplication and division are have higher precedence than addition and subtraction. .

Three Ways of Being with Technology

Three Ways Of Being-with Technology by Carl Mitcham Introduction: Mitcham talks about the relations between technology and humanity. He starts with the chicken-and-egg question â€Å"Which is primary-humanity or knowledge? † What exactly is happening? Is it that we influence the technology or is it so happening that the technology is shaping our morals and us? At this point he quotes one of the Winston Churchill quotations that â€Å"We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us â€Å".Then he tries to answer this question by saying it is a mutual relationship in between these two but even the mutual relationship take different forms. He then proposes a three ways of being with the technology and takes the whole document on structural analysis of the three forms. Ancient Skepticism: The articulation of a relationship between humanity and technics in the earliest forms when stated boldly is â€Å"technology (that is, the study of technics) is necessary but dangerousâ⠂¬ .Technics, according to these myths, although to some extent required by humanity and thus on occasion a cause for legitimate celebration, easily turns against the human by severing it from some larger reality – a severing that can be manifest in a failure of faith or shift of the will, a refusal to rely on or trust God or the gods, whether manifested in nature or in Providence. Ethical arguments in support of this distrust or uneasiness about technical activities can be detected in the earliest strata of Western philosophy.Socrates considered farming, the least technical of the arts, to be the most philosophical of occupations. This idea of agriculture as the most virtuous of the arts, one in which human technical action tends to be kept within proper limits, is repeated by representatives of the philosophical tradition as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Jefferson. Socrates argues that because of the supreme importance of the ethical and political issues, human beings should not allow themselves to become preoccupied with scientific and technological pursuits.Socrates argues that human beings should determine for themselves how to perform their actions and therefore should not depend on god for help in â€Å"counting, measuring or weighing† whose consequences are nonetheless hidden. In the Intellectual Auto Biography of Socrates, he explained how he turned away from natural science because of the cosmological and moral confusion it tends to engender. Never did he speculate on the ‘cosmos ‘of the sophists or the necessities of the heavens but declared those who worried about such matters were foolish.The classical greek culture was shot through with a distrust of the wealth and the affluence that the technai or arts could produce if not kept within strict limits. Socrates explains what is important is moderation. He explains that under the condition of affluence human beings tend to become accustomed to eas e and thus to chose less over the more perfect. He explains â€Å"Once drugs are available as palliatives, for instance, most individuals will choose them for the alleviation of pain over the more strenuous paths of physical hygiene or psychological enlightenment. Which is very true in the modern con text than to that current in athens that scarcely need to be mentioned. Another aspect of this tension between politics and technology is on the dangers of technical change. In the words of Adeimantus, with whom Socrates in this instance evidently agrees, once change has established itself as normal in the arts, â€Å"it overflows its bounds into human character and activity and from there issues forth to attack commercial affairs, and then proceeds against the laws and political orders†.Technological change, which undermines the authority of custom and habit, thus tends to introduce violence into the state. This should be taken more serious with the experience in the 20th centu ry. Eros or love, by contrast, is oriented toward the higher or the stronger; it seeks out the good and strives for transcendence. â€Å"And the person who is versed in such matters is said to have spiritual wisdom, as opposed to the wisdom of one with technai or low-grade handicraft skills† It’s the person with the spiritual wisdom that the love is oriented to.The ancient critique of technology thus rests on a tightly woven, fourfold argument: (1) the will to technology or the technological intention often involves a turning away from faith or trust in nature or Providence; (2) technical affluence and the concomitant processes of change tend to undermine individual striving for excellence and societal stability; (3) technological knowledge likewise draws human beings into intercourse with the world and obscures transcendence; (4) technical objects are less real than objects of nature.This pre-modern attitude looks on technics as dangerous or guilty until proven innoce nt or necessary – and in any case, the burden of proof lie’s with those who favor technology not those who would restraint it, because this way of being with technology views it with skepticism. Enlightenment Optimism: This is a radically different way of being with technology; it shifts the burden of proof from those who favor to those who oppose the introduction of inventions in the name of enlightenment.Aspects of this idea or attitude are not without pre-modern adumbration. This idea is first fully articulated in the writings of Francis Bacon at the time of renaissance. Unlike Socrates Bacon maintains that God has given humanity a clear mandate for the change i. e. the technical change. Technical consequences are all cut loose with an optimistic hope and the consequences of such actions are treated as mere accidents. We all deemed to form in the image of god are all expected to create and the art plays the primary role in this.Formed in the image and likeness of Go d, human beings are called on to be creators; to abjure that vocation and pursue instead an unproductive discourse on ethical dilemmas. Bacon indeed claims that not applying new remedies must expect new evils. The kingdom of man founded by sciences is none other than the kingdom of heavens. It is important to understand that Bacon and Socrates relates to each other in pro- and anti- technology partisans. Technical action is circumscribed by uncertainty or risk.Bason doesn’t evaluate technical projects on their individual merits, but simply asserts/affirms the technology. It is important to pursue technological action irrespective of the dangerous consequences. The uncertainty of the technological actions is jettisoned in the name of revelation. Bacon argues that the inventions of printing, gunpowder, and the compass have done more to benefit humanity than all the philosophical debates and political reforms have done to the human kind throughout history.The distinctly modern w ay of being-with technology may be articulated in terms of four interrelated arguments: (1) the will to technology is ordained for humanity by God or by nature; (2) technological activity is morally beneficial because, while stimulating human action, it ministers to physical needs and increases sociability; (3) knowledge acquired by a technical closure with the world is more true than abstract theory; and (4) nature is no more real than artifice – indeed, it operates by the same principles.Romantic Uneasiness: The pre modern way of being with technology effectively limited the rapid technical expansions in the west for approximately 2000 years. The proximate causes of this radical transformation were, of course, legion: geographic, economic, political, military and scientific and the author questions then what brought all such factors together in England to engender a new way of life. Romanticism is what came out from this yelling for change.This paved the way for the new way of being with the technology, one that can be identified as with ancient skepticism or modern optimism but tries to be neutral by accepting change but showing uneasiness towards the change. Mitcham argues that the Romanticism is a form of questioning. On the ancient view, technology was seen as a turning away from God or the gods. On the modern view, it is ordained by God or, with the Enlightenment rejection of God, by nature. With the romantics the will to technology either remains grounded in nature or is cut free from all extra-human determination.In the former instance, however, nature is reconceived not just as mechanistic movement but as an organic striving toward creative development and expression. William Wordsworth tries to demonstrate the same thing through his poems. In which he first shows exult over intellectual mastery and inventions and then in the following poems looks back and grieves over the great change that happened because of inventions and the outrage done t o the nature. Then he writes how unpropped are these arts and high inventions.Rousseau argues the need for actions, not words, and approves the initial achievements of the Renaissance in freeing humanity from a barren medieval Scholasticism. He argues that the destruction is better than inaction. He then points out to a paradox that: turning against technology – but in the name of ideals that are at the heart of technology. In with the way of romantic way of being with technology, there is a paradox. There is a certain ambivalence built in to this attitude. The attitude itself has not been adopted whole-hearted way by the modern culture.