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CMN 170V Final Exam Questions and
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What are the characteristics of digitalization? ✔✔-Digital footprint
- Timeless Time
- Death of Distance
- Poly-directionality
- Network structure
- Network externalities
- Economies of scale
- Media richness selection
- Exposure selection
- Algorithmification: A.I
What is the digital footprint? ✔✔-Storage and computation convergence
- Examples: Google location tracker, video of amazing mind reader who was able to find out private information about people through the internet, recording everything, justdelete.me
What is timeless time? ✔✔•The social practice that aims at negating sequence to install ourselves in perennial simultaneity and simultaneous ubiquity
•Technology allows you to have a real time communication with someone like through a chat or asynchronous communication (like a forum post)
•Timeless time refers to the fact that the combination of synchronous and asynchronous information processing allows to negate sequences
What is the death of distance? ✔✔•You can communicate with anyone around the world, distance is no longer a factor
What is poly-directionality? ✔✔-From one to one: telephone, letter
- From one to many: radio, TV
- From man to one: election, applause
- From many to many: meetings
What is network structure? ✔✔•The Internet and World Wide Web are NOT the same, even though they are often used interchangeably
What are network externalities? ✔✔When the value of a product to the one user depends on how many other users there are
What is positive network externalities? ✔✔Positive network externalities means the more people, the more benefit for everybody
In regards to economies of scale, what is a fixed cost? ✔✔land, machines, etc.
In regards to economies of scale, what are marginal costs? ✔✔workers, buy new materials, the more you produce, the cheaper it gets
In regards to economies of scale, what is the variable cost? ✔✔sum of all the marginal costs
True or False. In regards to economies of scale, in digital products, most costs are related to fixed costs. ✔✔True
True or False. In regards to economies of scale, digital products have infinite economies of scale ✔✔True
What is media richness selection? ✔✔The ability to:
-handle multiple cues simultaneously
-facilitate rapid feedback
-establish a personal focus
-utilize natural language
-High media richness: face-to-face dialogue
-low media richness: letter, email
What is exposure selection? ✔✔Selectable degree of privacy and identity
What is algorithmification? ✔✔•Previous tasks done by humans are now done by algorithms and machines
•Web. 1.0 (Organizations) → Web 2.0 (People) → Web 3.0 (Semantic Web, Internet of Things)
oThings capable of predicting own behavior, assessing own health, adaption to new environments, coordinating distributed resources, etc.
What is crowdsourcing? ✔✔Source resources from the crowd, examples: Netflix through Kaggle, NASA through Kaggle
What are some of the characteristics of digitalization that contribute to the reduction of transaction costs? ✔✔o Timeless Time: not necessary for strict hours online like in a branch
o Death of Distance: banks do not need as many locations to be close to you
o Economies of Scale: only has to develop the banking software once
o Algorithmification: instead of a person, an algorithm does it for us
What are some of the "transaction costs" (in the sense economists use the word) involved in the retail music business? ✔✔o Costs associated with searching for music
o Costs associated with settling for a price (incl. time it needs to compare prices)
o Distribution costs of music (incl. sales-personal or an internet connection)
o Enforcement costs (incl. supervision of the seller and buyer
True or False. If internal transaction costs are low than in source and grow the company. If external transaction costs are low than outsource and shrink the size of the company. ✔✔True
Does digitalization make companies bigger or smaller? ✔✔We don't know yet, digitalization shakes up the traditional optimal size of a company
What is mass-customization? ✔✔•Think about a tailor at a high end cloth store, who takes personal measurements. Does the store go for individualization/differentiation or for scale/cost- leadership? individualization/differentiation
What is whistleblowing? ✔✔The disclosure by a person, usually an employee in a government agency or private enterprise, to the public or to those in authority, of mismanagement, corruption, illegality, or some other wrongdoing
The relative cost structure of producing information consists of
o high fixed costs and low marginal costs
o low fixed costs and high marginal costs
o low fixed costs and low marginal costs
o high fixed costs and high marginal costs ✔✔high fixed costs and low marginal costs
o True, he argues that with modern telecommuncation there is no need to live in cities as what matters, because what matters is the flow of information
o False, he argues that the space of flows increases the importance of the global networking logic, leading to a concentration in metropolitan regions ✔✔False, he argues that the space of flows increases the importance of the global networking logic, leading to a concentration in metropolitan regions
Manuel Castells coined the concept of "timeless time" in the digital age, by which he refers to
o the unimportance of time in the information age
o systemic perturbation in the sequential order in the information age
o the fact that nobody has time in the information age, due to the information overload ✔✔systemic perturbation in the sequential order in the information age
Empirical vs. Theoretical ✔✔•Empirical: collect data, example: survey
•Theoretical: logical conclusions
True or False. The empirical leg of science is quantitative, while the theoretical leg is qualitative. ✔✔FALSE. Theoretical work can be qualitative, but most successful scientific theories are very quantitative. Think about Einstein's formulas... Empirical methods often use statistics (quantitative) Theoretical methods often use pure math (also quantitative)
True or False. Big data is analyzing digital footprints, basically a digital crystal ball. ✔✔True
True or False. Computer simulations explore scenarios that never happened, like a magic wand. ✔✔True
True or False. Digitalization affects both aspects of science: empirical data work (observations of the real-world), and theoretical modelling (hypothetical constructs) ✔✔True
What are the five characteristics that are often present with the term Big Data? ✔✔-Digital footprint (produced anyways for free)
-n=N (no sampling, but potential bias) (Volume)
-Data-fusion (unstructured and incomplete) (Variety)
-In real-time (dynamic)(Velocity)
-Machine learning (no need for theory)
In regards to the characteristics often present with Big Data, what does n=N mean? ✔✔-Lots of data to use
-n=small sample size
oPredictive policing: use data and models to predict when and where crimes would happen
oHomicide Parole candidates: were able to predict 60-70% accuracy which murderers will likely commit it again
Proxies vs. Reality ✔✔we confuse the footprint with the actual foot
True or False. In regards to computer simulations, data from the past has problems with changing futures. ✔✔True
True or False. In order to build their famous flue/disease trend algorithm, Google researchers employed the world's best epidemiologists and medical doctors, who had profound knowledge about the predictive patterns of the underlying big data sources. ✔✔FALSE. No theory and nobody with domain knowledge were involved. Only machine learning and related experts from computer science and the like. Why did the model stop working years later? Reality changed
True or False. Predictive models need to be changed constantly to keep up with the change ✔✔True
So-called "tipping-points", "phase-transitions", or "non-linearities" refer in this case here to the fact that: ✔✔small changes in the behavior /attitudes of individuals can make big differences in the collective behavior of society
True or False. Doing scientific modeling with the help of computer simulations: allows to re-use code from previous models, while adjusting for new settings ✔✔True
True or False. The Obama 2012 Campaign shows the power of real world data and computer simulations ✔✔True
True or False. Computational social science is built on both legs of science. ✔✔True
What is the Butterfly Effect? ✔✔flap of butterfly wing can cause a hurricane
Analyzing online search engine entries, researchers from Google were able to predict the spread of the winter flu in the United States almost in real-time. They achieved this by analyzing:
- who searched for "medicine for cough and fever" and as such identifying who might have the flu
- data is always from the past and cannot predict unprecedented future dynamics
- databases have gotten too big to be analyzed ✔✔data is always from the past and cannot predict unprecedented future dynamics
During the 2012 Presidential campaign, the team of President Obama:
- used a team of a dozen data analysts to analyze social media opinions about voting preferences, convincing 50 % of the targeted voters
- decided to spent most of its budget on generic TV adds, considering that online social media is not useful for influencing voting behavior
- spent $ 1,000 million and used Facebook apps that convinced almost 80 % of targeted undecided voters to vote for Obama ✔✔spent $ 1,000 million and used Facebook apps that convinced almost 80 % of targeted undecided voters to vote for Obama
Through the combination of real-world data sources and computer simulations, researchers were able to show that in the case of an outbreak of smallpox in the city of Portland, the first and second important elements to detain the spread of the outbreak were:
- the choice of the actual response strategy chosen and the extent of mass vaccination
- the speed and delay in the response
- the extent of mass vaccination of the population and the speed of response ✔✔the speed and delay in the response
Big data analytics does not merely refer to the volume of data. In class we identified other characteristics. The following is not one of them:
- sampling techniques are often not required
- machine learning makes data fusion unnecessary
- data is available in real-time
- it is big enough to be exploited by machine learning algorithms without the need of theory
- complementary data sources are combined to complete datasets ✔✔machine learning makes data fusion unnecessary
True or False. 20% of the global population has 70% of global income and 30% of global ICT subscriptions. The 80% of the global population that lives in lower income have 70% of the world's ICT subscriptions. ✔✔True
True or False. 40% live on less than $2 a day ✔✔True
True or False. 20% live on less than $1.25 a day ✔✔True
True or False. Sen's view is that development as freedom. ✔✔True
What are Sen's five instrumental freedoms? ✔✔1. Economic facilities
- Political freedoms
- Social opportunities
- Transparency guarantees
- Protective security
In regards to Sen's five instrumental freedoms, what is the freedom of economic facilities? ✔✔Opportunities to utilize economic resources for consumption, production or exchange
In regards to Sen's five instrumental freedoms, what is political freedoms? ✔✔Opportunities people have to determine who should govern and how, ability to scrutinize authority, freedom of expression, press, etc
In regards to Sen's five instrumental freedoms, what is social opportunities? ✔✔Arrangements made by society for education, health, etc.
In regards to Sen's five instrumental freedoms, what is transparency guarantees? ✔✔The freedom to deal with one another under guarantees of disclosure and lucidity
In regards to Sen's five instrumental freedoms, what is protective security? ✔✔social safety net
What is the multi-dimensional challenge? ✔✔if more than two indicators are used simultaneously to measure something, it is not clear which ones are similar and which ones are different
What is the iron rule of this world? ✔✔It will either by done by you, or to you!
True or False. When the T. Friedman uses the metaphor that "the world is flat" due to digitization, he means it as an expression for viewing the world as a level playing field in terms of trade and communication ✔✔True
Two common counter arguments to the claim that digitalization lead to a flat world full of positive opportunities are: ✔✔digital inequality & global downsides of digitalization
