How Uber has benefited from Advancements in Technology

Uber is an American international company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It develops, markets and operates the mobile-app-based transportation network also called Uber. The Uber app allows consumers to submit a trip request, which is routed to crowd-sourced taxi drivers.

Uber was founded as “UberCab” by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp in 2009 and the app was released the following June. In 2014, it experimented with carpooling features and made other updates. It continuously raised additional funding, reaching $2.8 billion in total funding by 2015. Many governments and taxi companies have protested Uber, alleging that its use of unlicensed, crowd-sourced drivers was unsafe or illegal.

Uber uses an automated algorithm to increase prices to “surge price” levels, responding rapidly to changes of supply and demand in the market, and to attract more drivers during times of increased rider demand, but also to reduce demand.  Customers receive notices when calling a cab with Uber that prices have increased.

Uber has received criticism for this system because of the prices increasing around holiday times, become very expensive to use.

Uber can benefit society as whole as it allows people to quickly get cheap travel when they need it. It can help people to quickly get around as a taxi will be able to turn up quickly. It is benefits society as is surge pricing model means that the price depends on how much demand there is in an area. This means that an area with few taxi trips is cheaper than an area with many. This is good as it means that people may avoid taking this when the price is high due to other taking it. This could reduce pollution.

A negative to society is that this could negatively affect traditional taxi services as they may be driven out of business due to Uber having lower prices. This is bad as it means that people who work for these taxi company with be left unemployed which is bad for society.

Uber can benefit individuals as it allow individual to get around quickly and cheaply. This is good as it means that they do not have to pay much for a trip and that they can get the trip quicker which means that they can be more productive with their time. Surge pricing can benefit individuals as it means that people can get very cheap journeys in areas where there is little demand and is also discourages use when in an area with high demand by having higher prices. This helps to reduce pollution as people do not want to pay for this.

A negative to individuals can be that they would have to pay more for a journey when there is high demand than they would do for a traditional taxi. This means that on holidays that people would have to pay far more than they would normal pay to get a taxi to pick them up. This is bad as it means that individuals would have less money to spend on other things or at other businesses.

Hololens

Hololens is an augmented reality headset being developed by Microsoft. It use the surrounding world to help work by using augmented reality to make many everyday tasks easier.

It has multiple features such as watching TV, playing games, etc. It also has some major feature that would be very useful for someone in a managerial position and for helping them make managerial decisions.

One feature is that it allow you to communicate with others using online calling software such as Skype. This is projected onto a flat surface, such as wall and allows for video communication whilst moving. This would be very useful for a manager as it would allow them to communicate with other managers in the organization.

Another feature is an online web browser. This would allow the user to gather information online for use in helping to decide on managerial decisions and would allow for a user to use document management systems such as Google Drive whilst moving around.

A benefit to society of this technology is that is would allow for society to become much more up to date on current events as they could be shown on a new headline window and users would also be able to be much more productive as they would be able to do things such as gather information whilst moving and could be used a computer based training tool to save time and money on training. This is good as it makes society more efficient and this allows for society to advance at an accelerated rate.

A negative to society of augmented reality is that people may become dependent on it and not be able to do ordinary everyday thing if they do not have access to the technology. This is bad as it would make people less efficient.

Future Technology — RFID tags and Automated Transactions

RFID tags are radio frequency ID tags, they are small tags that are put on the side of objects in the same way as barcodes. These RFID tags emit radio waves, these radio waves can be detected by a radio wave detector. Once these tags have been detect, they can be deactivated.

This makes RFID tags perfect for use in storage and supermarkets. Items in a supermarket could have RFID tags on them, replacing barcodes. These RFID tags would emit radio waves and these radio waves will be detected by the detector when leaving the supermarket. The customer would be able to be charged by making a transaction against the customer’s bank account via their wireless bank card (which are already common). The RFID tags would then be deactivated.

In storage of goods RFID tags could be used to track goods, this would allow the package to be much easier to locate than if RFID were not used.

A organization such as a supermarket would use RFID tags as it would say them money. It would be much cheaper to have a machine that can detect when people leave with items and then charge them for it and someone to maintain and provide help, instead of employing a dozen cashiers.

However RFID tags are still in their early development and as such are expensive, too expensive to put on the side of a good hat could costs a fraction of the price of the RFID tag on it. A problem that RFID tags could cause are a loss of jobs as most of an organizations expense come from paying employees, cutting these costs would be a logical outcome.

RFID tag technology could affect individuals in multiple ways. They would be able to shop much easier as they would not have to wait in line to be served at a checkout or use a self checkout that has an <Unexpected> item in the bagging area (21% O2, 70% nitrogen, 9% CO2…). A negative would be for individuals who are employees in supermarkets. With RFID technology, cash tills will go, cashiers will loose their jobs. This would be a negative for these people since they would loose their job.

RFID tag will affect society by making the shopping experience a much faster one and will remove that requirement to go to a till or use a self checkout. This will allow a store to have more customers as customers won’t take up space for as long in the store when they do not have to queue. However a negative for this would be unemployment as people loose their jobs to machines. This would be negative to society as having unemployment is bad for society.

Virtual Reality Technology

Virtual reality is done by using a device that allows you to see the environment in a game as if you were there. An example would be the Oculus Rift, which is a head mounted devices that has 2 screens, each at 960x1080p resolution. It uses sensors to detect what direction you are facing and what angle you are looking at from the floor. It can also display in stereoscopic 3D. This technology currently only exists for a select few number of games and simulation programs.

It effects individuals by being easy to use and accessable by many people who has disabilities. Virtual reality technologie is controlled by sensors in the device. This means that people who are missing arms or who cannot fully move their arms, hands, or fingers will be able to use the technology. This allows more people to get use out of the technology as more people will be able to operate with its interface.

It effects society by being so realistic. The technology allows people to view the electronic world in the same way as people are able to view the real world. This may lead to less face to face interaction between people as why would anyone want to go out and meet someone to talk about something when they could do it in an electronic world that looks the same as the real world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift