Consumer behavior

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Our staff of freelance writers includes over 120 experts proficient in consumer behavior, therefore you can rest assured that your assignment will be handled by only top rated specialists. Order your consumer behavior paper at affordable prices with cheap essay writing service! Part 1 Executive Summary

This report explains the decision making process , the internal and external factors that have influences a ¡°high involvement ¡° purchase of Steve Wang that was made recently.

At the beginning of this report, introducing the demographic detail about Steve Wang and his lifestyle information. Then the product information like price, distribution and competitive position. In the part of analysis of the decision process, mainly give the theories of the process, using some tables and diagrams to make clear and understandable, in this part, the every stages of the process are discussed, include the internal and external factors that impact.

Part five gives the explanation of process and factors, the facts of the actual situations compare with the theories.

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An interview transcript is given in appendix of this report,

The biggest limitation is the lack of the experiences of analysis although everyone is a consumer.

Part Overview of the person interviewed and the product purchased.

.1 Demographic and life style information

Demographic characteristic such as age, income, family size, and employment status are objective descriptors of individual consumers and householders. The markets for most products are influenced by consumer demographic characteristics. A demographic characteristic such as age is relevant for both coffee and detergents. When marketers ask who their customers are, they frequency refer to the age, income, and regional make up of customer buying their product. Nevertheless, demographics are important as consumer descriptors because they want to buy ( age, education, marital status, household composition )

Steve Wang as a full-time college student, he has no income right now. All kinds of payment from his parents. Therefore, he has limited budget and sometimes has to shorten on the other parts to satisfy a particular purchasing like to purchase a pair Timberland shoes that is priced at RM5. this definitely is a high involvement purchase to him as well as almost all college students. Age is a powerful determinant of consumer behavior. A person's age affects his/her interests, tastes, purchasing ability, political preferences, and investment behavior. At 1 years old, people usually put more attention on whether himself/herself appearance looks good or not other than to care about him-/herself whether lack of Vitamin C or B. And they will shift to more qualitative than quantitative on choosing things. Like other guys, Steve does care about how people feel about his looks especially the girls, the well-known brands and mid-to high priced products become the most popular alternatives from his point of view even though there is not enough money budget. He is a second-year college student, it is the different level in one's life, therefore he wants to be identified from the teens like high school graduates or first year college students and be a mature man is the reason why does he choose brands like Timberland. His family has a very simple composition-father, mother and son, his father is a busy business man and mother just because a part time housewife due to father's business is getting better than before. And his budget is getting better too. There is more budget for him to use to purchase things that he likes, but he mentioned that a pair of Timberland still a big purchasing item for him.

Life ¨Cstyle variables as factors that more closely reflect the consumer's day to day interests and therefore are more likely to explain consumer purchases. Life-style is measured by the attitudes, interests and opinions of consumers. Steve has a positive attitude about life, although he worries about some common problems and situations that people worry at the same age. He always tells people--do not buy things depend on the price cheap or not, but to concern whether that product has the extent value for future and long term. Products that he wants to buy all depends on such a belief. He is some in principle oriented type, these individuals are guided in their choice by their beliefs and principles rather than by feeling, events or a desire for approval. He loves the outdoor activities, whether new products about outdoor activities, he'll try at the first time. So he is some in the action oriented ( experience ) type.

. Price, distribution and competitive position about the product purchased

The shoes ( Timberland ) is priced at RM5, that is a high priced product but acceptable. If the company has selected its target market and position carefully, then its marketing mix strategy, including price, will be fairly straight forward. The objective of timberland is product quality leadership. They decide the products have to achieve product quality leadership. This normally calls for charging a high price to over higher performance quality and the high cost of R&D. Timberland focus on the high quality, high price end of the leather athlete series, they set the price almost 5% higher than the competitors but there are still lot of Timberland lover all over the world. Timberland targets their athlete series mainly on the people aged 0-5 years. Due to this group of people's attitude, lifestyle and they want the high quality shoes for their activities. And the most important thing is this group of people they are easy to learn about the new information or to accept the new features about the product, that means, easy to change to the new product that the company introduce, they are also willing to pay such a high price compares with other brands. Usually, when people mentions about Timberland, the good quality comes first and then the high price. Therefore, the information about the timberland that people ready kept in mind a certain point. ¡°If I want high quality shoes. I pay for it because it worth.

Steve bought the shoes in a franchised store of a big shopping center and he mentioned that the previous purchasing was in KLIA franchised store. The reason why Timberland put the stores in big shopping center and airports still because of its targeting and product positioning. They identify and analysis the segment of the market, the targeting customers are those who are in the higher standard level of living class the places they normally go for shopping things are also in the higher standard place. They use the exclusive distribution, giving a limited number of dealers the exclusive right to distribute the company's products in their territories.

There are a few of competitors in the marketer, but Timberland stands on several competitive advantages. At the first, it has the much higher quality than its competitors compare under the pricing, then they give the very good and comfortable environment to their customer in every store, this is a important inference; they also give the excellent services after the buying like you can bring your Timberland shoes to any of the Timberland store to clean them for free and if something wrong with the shoes they will repair it for free, in some situation the customer may get a new pair of shoes for replacement.

After all this through a longtime period, people will remember timberland as a trusted brand.

Part Consumer decision process

As usual, the customer decision process begins with the problem recognition. A difference between an existing state and a desired one become a consumer problem, a consumer begins with a particular state of mind that represents his or her perceptions of and attitudes forward known brands. For example, consider a business school student who is thinking of purchasing a personal computer. Once the problem has been recognized, an information search is undertaken to isolate an effective solution. After the information has been gathered, allowing the consumer to determine and compare the relevant and feasible alternatives, the decision can be made. The attributes that influence store choice are examined, and related to the needs of particular consumer groups. The actual acquisition of the product is analysis, with particular attention given to retailers efforts attract and satisfy consumers in the exchange process. Post purchase processes are examined by marketing managers and she/he has to make necessary decisions on that both external and internal influences affects the consumer decision making .

.1 Situational influences

A situation ( Neal 18) is a set of factors outside of and removed from the individual consumer or the stimulus object to which the consumer is reacting. The consumption process occurs within categories the communication situation, the purchase situation and the usage situation. ( Refer to table 1)

Table 1

Comm. Situation Purchase situation Usage situation

.Information has an impact . Affect product selection .The selection of a

on consumer's behavior. . i.e. a mother is influenced product depends a

.Alone or in group, in a good by the thing that her great deal on the

and bad mood, hurry or not children interest in. situation in which

( degree) it will be consumed

. The different wine

for guest and used

by oneself.

The first class of situational influence provides a system that managers can use in determine whether a situation has an effect can a consumer's purchase behavior. ( Refer to table )

Table

Physical surroundings.

.include geographical and institutional location, d¨¦cor, sounds, aromas, lighting, whether, and visible configurations of merchandise or other material surrounding the stimulus object.

.E. g shopping in the crowed and dirty hall and in the lighting place with safe music.

Social surroundings

.Provide additional depth to a description of a situation.

.The Chinese from China would rather like to discuss business during the dining time.

Temporal perspectives

. are situational characteristics that deal with the effect of time on consumer behavior.

.E.g. consumers are less likely to visit department stores when they are time pressured than when they are not time pressured.

Task definition

.includes an intent or requirement to select, shop for or obtain information about a general or specific product.

.buying gift for wedding and personal use.

An antecedent states

.Are momentary moods or conditions rather than chronic individual traits.

.E.g. some people buy a lot of things due to the bad mood he/she was in.

. Problem recognition

As the consumer mores from a very low level of involvement with the purchase situation to a high level of involvement , decision making becomes increasingly complex. Purchase involvement is a continuum, and it is also useful to consider habitual, limited and extended decision making as general decryptions of the types of process that occur along various points on the continuum.

A consumer is committed to a certain brand ( Timberland) because he/she believes it best meets overall wells, and because an emotional attachment has been fit, formed. Therefore, he/she is brand loyal. It will be very difficult for a competitor to gain his/her patronage. Extended decision making is the response to a very high level of purchase involvement. ( shopping product).

The recognition of a problem is the result of a discrepancy between a desired state and an actual state, without if there is no need for a consumer decision. Both active and inactive problem occurs in the consumer problems. There are several factors influence the consumer's actual state meet past decisions, normal depletion, product brand performance, individual development, emotions, the efforts of consumer groups and government departments the availability of products, and the current situation.

. Information search

Consumers are continually recognizing problems an opportunities, so internal and external searches for information to solve these problems are on going processes. Information search involves mental as well as physical activity on the part of consumers. The use of information from memory is referred to as internal search. And, the search process is focused on external stimuli relevant to soloing problem is called external search. A consumer decision requires the appropriate evaluative criteria for the solution of a problem. The existence of various alternative solutions the performance level or characteristic of each alternative solution on each evaluative criteria. As consumers move into more extended decision making, the relative importance of external information search tends to increase. External information can include the opinions, attitudes , behaviors and feelings of friends, neighbors and relatives; professional information; direct experiences and marketer ¨Cgenerated information.

The information sources are from memory; personal sources, independent sources marketing sources and experiential sources. Usually different measures of external information search have been used number of stores visited; number of alternatives considered; number of personal. Sources used, overall or combination measures. Market characteristics include the number of alternatives, price, and age. Store distribution and information availability. It is the consumer's perception of, or belief about, the market characteristics influence shopping behavior. Product characteristics like price level and differentiation tend to influence external search. The consumer and situational characteristics also influence the external search.

.4 Evaluating and Selecting alternative

While consumers are gathering information about various alternative solutions to a recognized problem, and after they have done so, they evaluate the alternatives and select the course of action that seems most likely to solve the problem. Evaluative criteria are the various features a consumer looks for in response to a particular problem. They are the performance levels or characteristics consumers use to compare different brands in light of their particular consumption problem. The number type and importance of evaluative criteria used differ from consumer to consumer and across product categories.

When consumers judge alternative brands or several evaluative criteria, they must have some methods for selecting one brand from the various choices. Decision rules are used by them. A decision rule specifies how a consumer compares two or more brands. Five commonly used decision rule are the disjunctive, conjunctive, lexicographic, elimination-by-aspects, and compensatory rules.

.5 Outlet Selection & product purchase

The decision used by, consumers to select a retail outlet is the same as the selecting a brand. The store is image and the type and amount of retail advertising often exert important influences as evaluative criteria. The major dimensions of store image include merchandise, service, clientele, and physical facilities, convenience. Promotion and store atmosphere. Outlet location is an important attribute for many consumers. Larger outlets are general preferred over small outlets.

Shopping orientation refers to the general approach a consumer takes to acquiring both brands and non-purchase satisfaction from various types of retail outlets. While in a store, consumers may often purchase a brand or product that differs from their plans made before entering the store. Such purchase is referred to as impulse or unplanned purchase, and the decisions can be the result of additional information processing induced by in store stimuli. Once the outlet and brand have been selected, the consumer must acquire the rights to the item.

.6 Post Purchase Processes

Following some purchases, consumers experience doubts or anxiety about the wisdom of the purchase. Whether or not the consumer experiences dissonance, most purchases are followed by product use. That consumers use a product to fulfil certain needs. If the product does not fulfil these needs, a negative evaluation may result. Monitoring product usage can indicate new uses for existing products, needed product modifications, appropriate advertising themes, and opportunities for new products. Disposal of the product or its packaging may occur before, during or after product use. ¡®socially-conscious' consumers, are an important market segment not only because of their purchases but because of their social and political influence. Postpurchase dissonance, product usage disposal are potential influences on the purchase evaluation process. Basically, consumers develop certain expectations about the ability of the product to fulfil instrumental and symbolic needs. Taking no action, switching brands, products, or stores, and warning friends are all common reactions to a negative purchase evaluation. After the evaluation process and, where applicable, the complaint process, consumers have some degree of repurchase motivation. There may be a strong motive to avoid the brand, a willingness to repurchase it some of the time, or some level of brand loyalty, which is a willingness to repurchase coupled with a psychological commitment to the brand.

.7 Influences

.7.1 Internal influences

In this report , focusing just on several relevant area about internal influences. Perception consists of those activities by which an individual acquires and assign meaning to stimuli, begins with exposure, usually the result of ¡° self-selection. Attention occurs when the stimulus activities one or more of the sensory receptors, and the resulting sensations go into the brain for processing. Interpretation is the assignment of meaning to stimuli that have been attended to consumers must learn almost everything related to being a consumer product existence, performance, availability, values, preference & so on. Learning is defined as any change in the content or organization of long-term memory. Conditioning & cognition learning are used by consumers reinforcement plays a much larger role in operant conditioning than it does in classical conditioning. The strength of learning depends on importance, reinforcement, repetition and imagery. Consumer motivations are the energizing forces that activate behavior & provide purpose for and direction to that behavior. Maslow's needs hierarchy states that basic motives must be minimally satisfied before more advanced motives are activated. It proposes five levels of motivation physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem and self-actualization. Consumers are often aware of and will admit t the motives causing their behavior. Because of the large number of motives and the many different situations that consumers face. Motivational conflict can occur, in approach-approach conflict, approach-avoidance conflict and avoidance-avoidance conflict. The personality of a consumer guides and directs the behavior chosen for accomplishing goals in different situations. The relatively long-lasting personal quality that allows individuals to respond to the world around them. Emotions are strong, relatively uncontrollable feelings that affect behavior, occur when environmental events or mental processes trigger physiological changes. Attitude-change strategies can focus on affect, behavior, cognition or some combination of these.

.7. External influences

There are a lot of external influences on consumer decision making process, but here the relative influences will be discussed.

The reference group is a group whose presumed perspectives or values are being used by an individual as the basis for his or her current behavior. Marketers have found three classification criteria-membership, degree of contact and attraction to be particular useful. Groups that have frequent personal contact are primary groups, while those with limited interpersonal contact are called secondary groups. Group influence varies across situations. Informational influence occurs when individual conforms to group expectations to gain approval or avoid disapproval. Identification conformity is still stronger since an individual uses the group norms & identifies with them as apart of his/her self-concept and identity.

Part 4 Explanations in actual case

Steve first walked in the Timberland store in One Utama shopping center, he immediately felt that very comfortable, the layout & display made him easily choosing a pair pretty good shoes, that he bought as the first pair of Timberland shoes. The physical surrounding there is absolutely good as well as every its franchise stores. As people walk in the store the first display table is displaying the newest clothing and shoes, very comfortable seats for people to try the shoes just opposite the shoes displaying shelf and the every corner for a certain kind of product like classical shoes, jackets, shirts and pants, and athlete series, mountain clamber series. They have very high quality staff work in every store that makes consumers feel really good.

Social surroundings are also involves in here, Steve said that he would rather buy if the stores are in the big shopping center. A pair of Timberland shoes is considering as the shopping product in the problem recognition also a extended decision making. There is several factors influence Steve's actual state; at first, the most important one is the very good performance of the shoes, comfortable and durable, and a pretty high class design. That attracts people's attention; then, the shoes gives him a good feeling of wearing it, he said that the emotion is the important component when he makes a purchase; and last is individual development, he is now a 1 years old guy and a second year college student, not only the knowledge but also the mental have developed, he wants to make himself more mature that is the reason he chooses the brand like Timberland.

He did some compares ion works before he actually bought that RM5 shoes. Actually, he wanted to choose from 4 brands at the first time Nike, Adidas, Converse all stars and Timberland. But after he tried the Timberland he decided to buy it immediately, and several friends of him are wearing Timberland boots as well. He likes all kinds of timberland ads, he even feels those are the rest ads make him feel good. The disjunctive decision rule is used by him in the evaluation and selection of alternatives. He would first consider the design and quality of the salesman's introduction. Steve always follow the brand first, outlet second in store influences that alter brand choices, Steve said he will never buy things that his eyes can not contact, therefore the timberland's layout just satisfies him. The timberland shoes completely meet his expectation and performance quite well, he is very satisfied with it. As a result, he said if his budget permits he will buy an other pair of same brand shoes, and he has the big interest in Timberland shoes that are newly introduced. Therefore, until here he has no dissatisfy with the shoes, and he has a kind of loyalty to the Timberland brand.

And another thing has to mention here is the group influences also play an important part in his decision making, both from friends and family. Steve belongs to a group of people they have the similar life quality lifestyle, habits, even the quite similar budget, and the same or higher education level. He wants himself to be a mature man, in other words, he wants to be the same with others. there is an identification influence occurring.

Referencing

1. The Editors of INC. magazine. (18) the best of INC. guide to Marketing and selling Prentice hall press

. Assael. H. (1) consumer behavior. Behavioral Aspects of Marketing. BH ASIA

. Berry. L. L., (15) On Great Service a frame work for action. The free press

4. Bradmore. D., Joy. S., Kimberley. C., Walker. I., (17) Marketing Visions. ed Edition Prentice Hall

5. Hartley. R. F. (000) Marketing Mistakes and Successes. 8th Edition WILEY

6. Kotler. P., and Armstrong. G., Principles of marketing. th edition. Prentice Hall

7. Lovelock. C. (14) Product Plus. How product +Service=Competitive advantages. McGraw Hill

8. Neal. C., Quester. P., and Hawkins. D., Consumer Behavior. Implications for marketing strategy. ed edition. McGraw Hill

. Rice. C., (17) Understanding Customers. ed Edition. BH

10. Rice. C., (1) Consumer Behavior. Behavioral Aspects of Marketing. BH ASIA

11. Rickard. L and Jackson. K. (000) The financial Times. Marketing Case Book. ed edition. Prentice Hall

1. Schewe. C. D., Smith. R. M., (180) marketing concepts and applications. Graw Hill

1. Schutte. H., and Ciarlante. D., (18) Consumer Behavior In Asia. MACMILLAN Business.

14. Tront. J. and Rivkin. S., (000) Differentiate or die. Survival in our Era of Killer Competition. WIELY

Appendix

Interview transcript

The person who has been interviewed in this report is a full time college student.

( lunch time)

writer of the report ( W) Steve Wang ( S)

W Hi, Steve, how are you?

S Fine, but I am very busy this two weeks.

W I am sorry for using your lunch time.

S it's OK, don't mind.

W I heard from Ben ( friend of Steve) you bought a pair of expensive shoes. What is brand?

S Yes, Timberland. That is a very good brand, and very good quality. You should buy it. They introduce the women's foot wears recently.

W Really, I will try.

S You should.

W Why you choose this brand, that is expensive.

S I know, and my budget is not enough at the same time, but I just like it when the first try.

W Do you have any alternatives before you decide to buy it?

S Yes, at the first, I wanted to buy the Nike, you know , I have several pairs of Nike. Adidas is a good brand, but I just like its classical design . The one with three zebra crossing , and last month I bough the Converse all stars leather sport shoes. So I have to look for others, Timberland really makes me satisfy.

W How do you find the Timberland at the first time?

S Ads, Ya. I like all of the ads of Timberland, these are what just fits my tastes. And Ben, Jim, David they all wearing the similar design with me. Do you notice that?

W Honestly, I do not, but I notice that you all have pretty good and similar tastes.

S oh, thanks. I tell you, do not spread out. I want to be mature, and do you know what feeling that Timberland gives me.

W What are these?

S A man, durable., comfortable, cool and the spirit of adventure. Yes, all in all, a completely mature man.

W That's cool

S Yes, thank you.

W Just now, you mentioned that you like the ads of that.

S Yak! They not only have excellent ads design, but the environment of their store. I think that makes me to decide faster to buy or not .

W You mind the surroundings of store?

S Of course. The whole store, do you notice that the store almost display the man's clothing and shoes, and all thing is within my eyes sight. When I stand in front of the store, I want to go in and take a look.

W Do you want to buy if the store is in a big shopping mall or just on the street?

S Of course the more stores the better.

W Do you satisfy with the shoes you bought , and do you want to support this brand if they have new products in the market?

S Yes. Sure , if I am not satisfy then why I buy it. If I have enough budgets, for sure I will them all ( laugh). I think that in some way the Timberland shoes not only simply a pair of shoes, but also gives the good feeling. Like some people they like the perfume, not only the fragrance , but also the emotions and moods that perfume bring to people. And I believe the new designs have the new functions that the old designs do not have.

W Do you think RM5 is expensive, does that worth for these money?

S Whatever I buy , I will care about does it have any extend value in the future, not only now , how much it is, of couse it is expensive.

W If there is a store they introduce the similar shoes with Timberland, do you still choose Timberland?

S I am a kind of brand loyalty, I will still choose Timberland, but I will compare the quality and design of them. Because I can't just tell you I refuse to buy any other alternatives.

W Do the services of store effect your purchase?

S Sure, for every consumer purchasing behavior is not only to purchase something, but also a good commercial behavior. If they have the good product and poor service, the product and the services are is equally important to me. Beside, I have several alternatives that are very good, too.

W When you satisfy with its shoes, do you interest in the other product, like T-shirts and bags?

S Not as interest as the shoes, I will choose the best and the most special product in a particular store.

W If some thing wrong with the shoes after you bought it, what will you do?

S It's a difficult question, because I am always satisfied with that brand, but if something wrong about the shoes itself or I damage it. I will bring it to the store. But that has just a little effect on me.

W Does the functions and design meet you expectation?

S Yes, almost, even exceeds my expectation in some way, I am not a professional person on shoes, and some functions are really good.

W Will you introduce it to you friend?

S Of course, I will. Because I firmly believe that is a good brand and product.

W Will you be effected by your friend who wearing the same brand of shoes?

S A little bit, but, yes, the model of the Timberland ads affects me more.

W Ok, thanks you for taking the interview.

S You are welcome.

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ROBOTS AND BEYOND

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--- Exploring AI of Robots

A "machine" is any physical system. Human beings are sort of extraordinary complex, self-controller physical machine. Obviously, humans are conscious. The question is the chance that the robot can be intelligent and conscious? What kind of machine can be conscious? How to create a robot to be conscious and intelligent? The most efficient and advanced technology is the young field so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is the most brilliant solution to "build" a "brain" for the robot to make robot to be intelligent and conscious. The most valuable asset of a robot is making it smart and conscious like humans.

The evolutionary robotics is an efficient technology to develop a simple robot to be intelligent and conscious. It is developed by AI technology. The evolutionary robotics systems in the 180s was predicated on the idea that intelligent robot could do what human experts could do. (Rethinking of AI). This system can be used to capture the process in design and decision making by robot itself. At the same time, evolutionary robotics techniques began to reach a maturity with which it could be applied to represent complex and real world problems like those arising in medicine.

Cheap Custom Essays on ROBOTS AND BEYOND For half a century since the robot came into existence in society, the goal of developing intelligent robot has become a central purpose in AI field. Over the same time period, both processing and storage capacity of robotic systems have increased. The next few decades robot may have a rapid progress in AI field. It has the sufficient power in society, and it is an important part of the society

For the first time in the society, AI is solely responsible for the creation, evolution and implementation of a rudimentary robot. The intelligent robot is a new development of AI. In robotics system, each encoding of the robotic control system is randomly created and put into the particular environment. An intelligent robot can do limited behaviors such as walk, watch, and talk according to its specified system controller. Robot's performances on various tasks are automatically evaluated.

Robot's functionalities are used to measure robot's abilities to perform desire tasks. The role of AI is limited to the specification of the number of functionalities. Since human started using tools, AI technology has shaped human's life. The development of AI field is drastic. Since human started using tools, AI technology has shaped human's life. Intelligent robots have applied in different areas, such as in industry, agriculture, military affairs, and medicine.

AI will improve the social structure of human. Advancing AI technology has changed human's life and transformed how human conduct the entire society. For example, in the United State the application in AI techniques, the intelligent robots greatly effect to medical decision making. It has grown out of a Symposium on AI in Medicine presented at the 17 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of intelligent robots. (AI in Medicine). The AI in Medicine (AIM) field emerged in the early 170s in response to several simultaneous needs, opportunities and interests. An increased demand for high-quality medical services coupled with the explosive growth of medical knowledge has led to the suggestion that robots could be used to assist physicians and other health care providers in discharging their clinical roles in diagnosis, therapy and prognosis. At the same time, evolutionary robotics techniques, especially those of the AI field, began to reach a maturity with which they could be applied to representing and reasoning about complex, real world problems like those arising in medicine.

The AI robots play important characters in the entertainment community. For example, the Disney Company uses AI technology in many areas. The movie 101 Dalmations and The Lion King, used the AI software-aided animation. AI is used to make entertainment much more interactive and tailored towards the interests of individuals (Rethinking of AI). Human follows the development of AI, and AI helps to crate a new path for human to connect with the physical world, advanced technology, and robot. Developers from Microsoft, Netscape, General Electric and Disney explore numerous experiments of robots which are enabled to be intelligent and conscious. AI research has developed new ways of building an intelligent and sentient robot. Today's AI technology has reached the stage where more natural and familiar modes of communication will soon make the robot being conscious. Evolutionary robotics system can be used to capture much of the process involved in design and decision making by robot itself. The additional information about robot's mind, alternatives considered and rejected, and the expertise underlying the result is an enormously valuable affect. Therefore, the most valuable asset of a robot is making it smart and conscious like real human.

The intelligent robot will play an important role in the future of information access. The rise of rule-based evolutionary robotics systems in the 180s was predicated on the idea that intelligent robot could do what human experts could do. (Rethinking of AI). Today, the emphasis is not on doing what people do. Instead, the emphasis is on exploiting opportunities of the intelligent robot to do tasks that people cannot do. For example, in a quite dangerous environment for humans, the intelligent robot is designed to remove radioactive road from a nuclear reactor in a safe manner. For instance, the World Wide Web has provided access to so much knowledge, people need help from robot in organizing increasingly tedious personal information libraries. To provide that help, the creators of aggregation tools must take advantage of intelligent robot work in the area of knowledge representation. However, knowledge representation is not used to mimic human reasoning, but to provide a robust and extensible source with which the user can be accessed. Therefore, intelligent robot needs to make decision and organize information in order to provide user's accurate knowledge.(Rethinking of AI). As matter of fact, intelligent robot makes it possible for organizations to make better decisions. Hence, robot can help save large amounts of money in the world of complex information system and expensive resource allocation. In addition, intelligent robot plays a significant role in a specific operating system.

Evolutionary robotics technology is progressing and the development of intelligent robot enhanced by AI technology. However, during the 80s, AI experts developed systems for solving problems ranging from chemical-plant optimization to oil-well log analysis. Some of these systems were spectacular successes, with payback measured in hours. But in spite of such early successes, Esther Dyson, editor of the influential trade publication Release 1.0, predicted that intelligent robot would not become truly important commercially until robot became embedded in main-stream, strategically important systems like raisins in a loaf of raisin bread. (Rethinking of AI). Time has proven Dysons prediction correct. In the 0s, AI, as a field, is becoming more important as emphasis shifts away from replacing expensive human experts with stand-alone expert systems toward main-stream robotic systems that create strategic advantage. In reality, AI has applied to work in such industries as defense, transportation, manufacturing, and entertainment.

There are some different kinds of intelligent robots being built, such as Sony's new toy, a robot that is able to sing, dance and talk. There is another humanoid intelligent robot with proper legs, like Honda's asimo. The robot can walk ok, but has been designed to fall without breaking. Furthermore, another interesting feature is the ability to recognize faces, which admittedly is a hot topic in nowadays, but definitely a cool feature. Everyone in these days is saying that Artificial Intelligent technology has developed the intelligent robot. However, the question is did robot itself can grow intelligence on its own after some sets of mathematical equations have been programmed. It should be just like a newborn child who initially to get attention waves his hands in haphazard way and slowly it is his mind, which is learning. For this case, let the robot move around and hit the wall, it is just like a child learning to walk, he falls gets up and again walks. For example, the user tells the robot that hitting the all is not a good thing, which is the only input human give to train the intelligent robot. If people train the robot in that manner, can the robot be called conscious? On the other words, whether or not the intelligent robot has its mind to understand and learn. Those are the questions that AI researchers will explore in the future. It is feasible that intelligent robot itself is capable to achieve this purpose by the development of AI technology.

(Robot Rights) The most concerned subject of AI is about robots being conscious and having rights. AI technology is advanced and explaining many things. By the developing AI technology, many advanced robots have been built, such like Kismet and Cog, which imply that by applying AI technology, people will one day build conscious robots. Once consciousness didn't seem so special anymore, humans seemed less exalted, less like some special species for whom the existence of the universe was meant. That eventually leads to highest developing of AI technology. On the other hand, people will see a debate on whether or not machines will have rights, and whether or not robots are "alive". Generally, in nowadays, the main people speak out against it, because it is detrimental to man's special place in the universe. However, consciousness might be implemented into an intelligent robot when AI is advanced enough to achieve this goal. Once the robots become a species equivalent to human being, they might able to learn from input to compile personality that people consider the characteristics of intelligent life. (Artificial Life Warehourse). Hence, the robots might have their own rights to accomplish and control their behaviors. The intelligent robots will have to built and taught over many years, therefore, it will probably have its own rights in the future.

People actually witness intelligent robots involving to society continuously. In addition, people assume that the robots are concrete and have become one part of the entire society. The existence of robots in the society is getting significant and more important.

Consciousness can be a database that gives robot guidelines as to decide what to do and how to do. For instance, there is a very specific task for the robot. If a man asks a cup of tea, a robot wouldn't need emotions to do that. However, if the robot were not to cooperate with this man, it would reject the request with the various possible memories of its own willing behaviors. Furthermore, intelligent aspect of robot's consciousness fixed concepts, which help robot itself to make the right decision as an individual intelligent being. With an intelligent robot in a society, conscious are definitely needed. It indeed helps create a conscious robot to solve problems in the society and answer questions related to people's life.

(TuringTest) In some circumstance, consciousness is necessary for a robot to do certain tasks. However, talking about an intelligent robot response as not being optimal, if conscious play a part in the construction of that response, it's true that the response may not be optimal, but if the robot always did the optimal things, it wouldn't seem as real or life-like. Humans are intelligent, yet we do stupid (not optimal) things over conscious like love, hate, jealousy etc. If an intelligent robot form always did the optimal thing, then it wouldn't appear to be conscious, it would only act like a simple machine. There is a perfect example why robots with conscious would function better so-called Turing test. The test typically involves two teletypes in one room. One of the teletype is connected to a person, while the other is connected to a robot. A judge then types questions to both participants, and after a while, he has to decide which is the robot and which is the real person. If chooses incorrectly, or can't decide, then the robot is considered to be sentient. Of course, the robot is attempted to lie in order to convince the judge that it is human. It implies that the robot had ability to make itself answer questions incorrectly as same as human being. Consciousness is a pioneering of achieving the intelligent robot's behaviors. It is the key for AI technology development as well.

Robots are no longer science fiction metaphors or wish-fulfillment fantasies. According to the United Nation's World Robotics 001 survey, there are at least 750,000 units in operation around the world building cars, vacuuming floors, and mowing lawns. In Flesh and Machines How Robots Will Change Us, Rodney Brooks, director of he AI Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and probably the single most influential roboticist in the world, argues that the robots are about to come to real life. "Today there is a clear distinction in most people's minds between the robots of science fiction and the machines in their daily lives," he writes. "Our fantasy machines have … emotions, desires, fears, loves, and pride. Our real machines do not. Or so it seems at the dawn of the third millennium. But how will it look a hundred years from now? My thesis is that in just twenty yars the boundary between fantasy and reality will be rent asunder." ( Robots are Us The Mystical Side of Science (and Fiction), Jeremy Smith, AlterNet).

In the real future, AI technology will continuously develop robots as metal buckets into being intelligent and conscious. The creation of an intelligent, feeling humanoid robot represents the final victory of AI field. However, the research will yield technologies that will alter the relationship between human and robots. There actually will be no need to worry about mere robots taking over from humans. The distinction between humans and robots is going to disappear.

(Prosperity) In the field of twentieth century AI, the intelligent robot that most resonates with human's needs, is naturally created by human's image. In the future, the dreams of AI is made of robots have their own consciousness, hence, the intelligent robots made by advanced AI technology will receive the soul of humankind. Since the middle of 0th century, the robotic labor has meant greater profits in many field, such as in industry, medicine, military, education, agriculture etc. The robot takeover is subtler and more beneficial than humans. It presents a new era of prosperity in AI field. In the past, humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now the new creatures, intelligent robots join society. They are stronger, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to the society. Moreover, robots will be conscious and better breed than humans in the future.

(Influence of AI) AI creates intelligent robots and brings robots to life. At the beginning of 1st century, this is the myth that defines human's relationship to the robots. Since robots are becoming more conscious, the constructs do not mimic humans. Instead, they actually are, in many ways, human already. After hundreds of years, someday, a human might shoot a robot and see it bleed. When the robot shot back, the human would gush smoke. It would be a great moment of achievement in AI. In nowadays, PCs and PDAs are ubiquitous and linked together by the World Wide Web. Similarly, the intelligent robots will be an important part of human's life. People talk and work with robots, and robots help people, take care of humans. Ideally, after centuries of distrust, people have learned to love the intelligent robots. In popular, mainstream films such as Terminator II, the Matrix, and Bicentennial Man, people even embrace the intelligent robot as a path to expanded consciousness.

(Future) In the automated economy, people may not know what to do with themselves. In such future, the transcendence offered by the robots would be an escape from terrible reality, not a gateway to long life and higher consciousness. In the future, there will be many possible responses to AI technological change. The entire environment is knitting human and robot's consciousness that cover the whole world. Maybe someday people will ask, "Will I have my own robot simply like having a car?" As matter of fact, the robot extends and gives new meaning to human's life. Time will tell that AI technology is developing and the future of intelligent robot is what human make it.

(Design Robot StructureThe robot itself has own structure. The robot learn about things is based on its programmed structure. It is the first important step of the process to design adequate "brain" structure to the robot. The structure includes the behaviors controller, language of thoughts, and even consciousness. This design applies to a complete intelligent robot. (The Well-Designed Child, John McCarthy, Standford University).

(ROBOT Consciousness) Generally, the single most defining characteristic that separates man from machine is consciousness. Most philosophers propose consciousness as a very specialized, subjective experience that can only exist in the complex and biological system of the brain. But with recent advanced in AI technology, some philosophers, such as Gilbert Ryles and other strict materialist who don't believe in the immaterial mind or soul, have begun arguing that in fact some robots can "think" in a manner similar to humans. (Conscious Automata, Brain Cutcliffe) It seems apparent that the idea of a conscious robot may not be so far from now. However, the public has doubted in new AI technology and mistrust the very nature of what robot means to be conscious.

For example, the film of Terminator, and Terminator play on the theme of resistance to control. The robot achieves self awareness spontaneously. Once the robot possessed its own will, it begins to act out the purpose for which it was created and launches expected behaviors. For this case, the robot was trying to make decision on its own and attempted to develop its own will. Therefore, the robot actually achieves consciousness on its own. In the future, human will become so dependent on the intelligent robot.

(Relationship with robot ). However, the new relationship between man and robot is getting complicated since the robot becomes conscious. The robots are feeling thinking beings and attempt to rebel against humans. But not all exploited robots rebel. The fact is that man may create robots, but the robots they create have power. The robots have power to change people's life. Since the robots are becoming conscious, the very nature of consciousness with its desire to live and will of its own decision lead to conflict with humans. (Conscious Automata, Brain Cutcliffe)

(Createion of Robot) Many AI researchers use AI technology to form control programs for robots in order to help robots to "learn" the best way to complete a task based on experience. Typically, researchers generate hundreds of variations of control program to see how the robots perform on the task. Crucially, small changes in the control program leads to the robot's better performance. A team of scientists led by Dr. Phil Husbands at the University of Sussex has found a way to mimic the working of NO in the neural networks they are evolving to create control programs for robots. Often, it takes many thousands of generations to create control programs that do a good job of completing the task given to a robot. Then, the control programs have been human)used to create control system for an intelligent robot. (Robot brain become more

(Exploring in AI, Mind) Robot does things, which human can't. Recent decades have produced a blossoming of research in AI that exhibit important properties of mind. One of the researches is on famous MIT robots such as Cog, a robot designed to translate its environment through sensors---both visual and tactile. It illustrated that robots can be humanoid and efficient. In many ways, people can't do something, which robots actually can do. For example, human beings wouldn't have the ability to read each other's fingerprints or irises to confirm identification. In contrast, the intelligent robots can instantly process the complex network of patterns and determine if one matches another. One key area where robots are making a difference to the quality of human life is in haptic technology. It allows robots to simulate a sense of touch. Robots also can go where atmospheric conditions or terrain make it difficult to human beings to do research. The very good example is the explore advances in underwater robotics. ( Exploring AI at MIT, Robot and Beyond)

(KISMET, MIT)Another achievement of AI research in MIT is the robot called Kismet. Kismet is a sociable robot. Most current robots are programmed to be very good at specific task. Kismet was structured as a real person. It physical features includes big blue eyes, lips, ears and eyebrows. The eyes, in particular, are actually sensors that allow the robot to glen information from its environment, such as whether something is being jiggled next to its face. Kismet can then respond to it, such as moving its head back if an object comes too close, or communicating a number of emotions, (such as happiness, fear and disgust). A human wears a microphone to talk to the robot, which also has microphones in its ears. Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, a postdoctoral associate at MIT's AI Laboratory and the leader of the Kismet team. She said, "The intelligent features, behavior and "emotions" work together so it can "interact with humans in an intuitive, natural way," For Kismet, Dr.Breazeal noted, " I think people are often afraid that AI technology is making us less human. Kismet is a counterpoint to that it really celebrates our humanity. This is a robot that thrives on social interactions." To make Kismet as lifelike as possible, Dr. Breazeal and colleagues have been exploring how Kismet interacts with people who aren't familiar with. The results are encouraging. For example, many of people who've met Kismet have told Dr. Breazeal that the robot has a real presence. "It seems to really impact them on an emotional lever, to the point where they tell me that when I turn Kismet off, it's really jarring. That's powerful. It means that I've really captured something in this robot that's special. This kind of reaction is also critical to the robot's design and purpose." Kismet is continually evolving with new sensors and software. Dr. Breazeal said, "It's not like we can develop one more learning algorithm and say we're done. We're trying to develop the first robotic creature that takes an active interest in its world and learns and develops over times, becoming more and more capable."

Work Cited

Cutcliffe,Brain. "Conscious Automata." 4 May.00 http//smallwonder.hispeed.com/MindsSouls/ConsciousAutomata.html

"Kismet." MIT on the Web. 4 May.00 http//www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics group/kismet/kismet.html

McCarthy, John. " The Well-Designed Child." Stanford University, Tue Jul 7,1.

"Robots and Beyond Exploring AI at MIT." MIT Museum on the Web. 4 May. 00. http//web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/robots.html

Smith, Jeremy. "Robots Are Us The Mystical Side of Science." AlterNet, April 1, 00.

Szolovits, Peter. "AI in Medicine." AAAS on the Web. June, 18. Cambridge, Mass.January 000. May,00http//medg.lcs.mit.edu/ftp/psz/AIM8/ch0.html

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How does Black music and culture function as a part of American Popular culture?

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I think that the question suggests the enormity of the range and scope of the African-American experience in the New World over the last several hundred years and of his African ancestors before that. In order to address the question we must examine the nature of a couple of things. One of those is certainly what it is we mean when we say "Black" in the context of music and in the context of America and in the context of American music. I find it curiously intriguing that the question does not use the term "Black Music." I suspect this is quite deliberate, as it invites us to ask, as Stuart Hall (1) cagily queries "What is this "Black" in Black Popular Culture?" Our mission here is similar, to wit what is this "Black" in American music? (pun unintended but acceptable).

The question hints at whether we can distinguish the validity of something called "Black music," and if so, how are we to identify it? It also gets at whether "Black Music," if it exists, is the same or something different than "American music." Does it exist as a sub-genre of American music but is something separate and equal? (or unequal?). Or, is to speak of Blackness as "an aesthetic marker" in American music to "mark" American music as Africanized? It seems we must consider the African-Americanization of African music on the one hand, and the Africanization of American music on the other. These issues are as intriguing to consider as they are complex. To ponder them is to appreciate the elusive nature of an extended late-era John Coltrane solo, potentially inexhaustible in its polytonality (reference points) and motifs (themes). Coltrane never got to the end of a solo, at least not in the studio, but at some point, he simply had to quit playing after he reached the end of the recording time. Given the scope of our concerns, time and space do not seem enough to fully address everything that we might want to consider, but I will address these issues as thoroughly as I can without continuing to the end of recorded time.

Let me return for a moment to Hall (Hall, Stuart 1 "What is this "Black" in Black Popular Culture" in Black Popular Culture. Gina Dent, ed.), who suggests that "the people of the black diaspora have…found the deep form, the deep structure of their cultural life in music." Further, that "there are deep questions here of cultural transmission and inheritance, and of the complex relations between African origins and the irreversible scatterings of the Diaspora (Hall 7)." This suggests a number of things. Hall correctly points to Africa in order to begin to identify Black cultural products in America. There are issues of cultural inheritance and transmission that have been well documented in the scholarly literature, as well as the complexity and diversity of the geographical locations and cultural manifestations this inheritance has produced in "the irreversible scattering of the Diaspora," or what Paul Gilroy refers to as "the Black Atlantic."

In examining the scope and nature of Black music, we must consider certain processes, including

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selective appropriation, incorporation, and rearticulation of European ideologies, cultures, and institutions, alongside an African heritage [which led to] linguistic innovations in rhetorical stylization of the body, forms of occupying an alien social space, heightened expressions, hairstyles, ways of walking, standing, and talking, and a means of constituting and sustaining camaraderie and community (Hall 8).

What we must consider here is that when we speak of "Black" in the context of anything American, we speak of a syncretized process, perhaps more appropriately understood when we use the term "African-American." This term points to the concern with origins and cultural inheritances that have been mapped out in cultural terms, and which suggests things that we might look at in determining, to return to my earlier question, "What is this Black in American music." We must consider too, why Hall chooses to emphasize music as most representing "the deep form, the deep structure of their cultural life" when he speaks of the Black Diaspora. Hall's query collapses two independent queries into one what do we mean by "Black?" And why is Black culture most represented by expression in music? Do these two inquiries point in the direction of something we can come to know as "Black Music?" I suggest that this is the case, but others have also suggested it.

H. E. Krehbiel (Afro-American Folkssongs. 114, Erich M. von Hornbostel, ("American Negro Songs," Int. Rev. Missions. 16) and Melville J. Herskovits (The Myth of the Negro Past, 141) represent three early and important points of reference establishing both the prominence of music and the importance of an African heritage in African-American culture. There are many other examples (I think Richard Waterman's articles "Hot Rhythm in Negro Music," Journal of the American Musicological Society, 148, and "On Flogging a Dead Horse Lessons Learned from the Africanisms Controversy," Ethnomusicology 16, are especially critical) but we'll look at only a few; certainly these three bear examination because of their historical precedent.

Herskovits dispels the notion that the American Negro is a man without a past, writing that

it is seen that the African past is no more to be thought of as having been thrown away by those of African descent than it is to assume that the traits that distinguish Italians or German or Old Americans or Jew or Irish or Mexicans or Swedes from the entire population of which they form a part can be understood in their present forms without a reference to a preceding cultural heritage (Herskovits ).

Herskovits argues eloquently for evidence of African retentions in African-American culture and provides a summation (important for our purposes here) of the earlier contributions of Krehbiel and Hornbostel. Herskovits also articulates a critical observation with respect to Black American culture, writing that "Its has long been held that the principal contribution of the Negro to the culture of the Americas, and most particularly to the culture of the United States, lies in the expression of his musical gift (Herskovits, 61)." More will be said of this observation later, and many others will make it, the point being that despite other cultural attributes that the African may have brought with him to the United States, music was considered the most important, and the most important for American culture. First however, the music of the Negro slave had to be recognized as comprising something distinctly and substantially African rather than something European.

As Herskovits summarizes, Krehbiel most clearly and vigorously expressed the opinion that "Africa was to be looked to for an explanation of [Negro music's] essential characteristics (Herskovits 6)" in what had become a controversial debate regarding the derivation African or European of Negro religious songs. Krehbiel's writing -- which looked for instance, at the use of scales and of the "rebellious" approach to fourths and sevenths in the diatonic major scale and to the fourth, sixth and seventh of the minor scale -- only suggested serious differences in the way Africans approached the performance of European music and hinted at an African explanation. Hornbostel later brought a new critical perspective to the conversation by observing the use of "leading lines sung by a single voice, alternating with a refrain sung by a chorus (Herskovits 6)," suggesting to him that "in the United States the Negroes have evolved a real folk music which, while neither European nor African, is an expression of the African musical genius for adaptation that has come out under contact with foreign musical values (Herskovits 6)." Hornbostel, writes Paul Oliver, (Paul Oliver, Max Harrison and William Bolcom. The New Grove Gospel, Blues and Jazz, 186) was the first scholar to hear Black music both in African and America, and his 16 finding "made an important distinction between transcriptions of spirituals and their performance by American Blacks (Oliver 6)."

This recognition of the call-response pattern, an critical aspect of African music making, was enough, according to convince Hornbostel that something new occurred as a result of African and European syncretization, and that these things could perhaps be observed and codified, that they were tangible and salient in Negro culture. Christopher Small (Christopher Small. Music of the Common Tongue. 187) fleshes out the picture for us, writing that by the time slaves were converted to Christianity in the mid-1750's, "at least some of the slaves were singing psalms, and it is strongly to be inferred that they were singing them in their own way (Small 8)." Small documents in detail "the musicking of black people, as well as of the alarm felt by some white clergy at discovering that their way of singing was finding its way into white religious practices also (Small 8)," so that by the time Hornbostel wrote his findings in 1, African-musical practice in a European idiom was well established, including "their heightened rhythmic sense and their penchant for call and response (Small, 0)."

Gena Dagel Caponi ("The Case for an African American Aesthetic," in Signifying, Sanctifying' and Slam Dunking. A Reader in African-American Expressive Culture, Gena Caponi, ed. 1) suggests that, even though Herskovits did not conduct his own extensive study of African music (nor did Krehbiel), he nonetheless helped bring about broader discussion of continuities between African and African-American music, including three hallmarks of African music the call-and-response pattern, the integration of song and dance and the prominence of the rhythmic element (Caponi 1 18).

Waterman's 16 article "On Flogging a Dead Horse," was critical in summing up what had come before him, and in observing, from a musician's perspective, several critical aspects African musical practice together and providing detailed musicological analysis to suggest how they comprise aspects of African-American music making, and offering his now infamous commentary that, obviously, (and I paraphrase) Negro slaves were not blind, paralytic deft mutes. Clearly, he intended here to make the point that Herskovits made, that African immigrants carried traits of their culture with them as surely as did immigrants from other lands, so that it should not be surprising to find retentions of African musical aesthetics in African-American musical practice what began to be referred to as "Africanisms." Among the musical traits he identifies are call-and-response, a sense of operating in complex musical time that he refers to as "Metronome sense, dense musical textures and a heightened use of rhythm and syncopation.

Leroy Jones (Blues People, 16) offers one of the first critical assessments of Black music making by an African-American , linking it to African musical practice but also providing a more expansive look at its development in the context of American culture and a reason why it has persisted. Jones, in fact uses music as a metaphor for those forces that produced the American Negro, arguing that "the development and transmutation of African music to American Negro music (a new music) represents to me this whole process in microcosm (Jones 8)." As he writes

Only religion (and magic) and the arts were not completely submerged by Euro-American concepts [after slavery]. Music, dance, religion, do not have artifacts as their end products, so they were saved. These nonmaterial aspects of the African's culture were almost impossible to eradicate (Jones 16)."

Jones notes the emphasis on polyphonic or contrapuntal rhythmic effects as well as antiphonal singing techniques, the use of word games like "the Dozens" and folk tales, but he also suggests something more, that "the survival of the system of African music is much more significant than the existence of a few isolated and finally superfluous features. The notable fact is that the only so-called popular music in this country of any real value is of African derivation (Jones 8)." This last statement I find rather remarkable, for is suggests rather early on what had not been as yet fully acknowledged by music scholars, which is to say, the enormous role that African-American music-making had already had on the development of American popular music, most notably in the development and influence of ragtime, the blues and jazz not only on American music but American culture. Caponi (1), acknowledges a singular contribution of Jones' viewing all Black music as culturally linked, and in insisting that "any form of African American music had to be studied in relation to all others and within a larger social context" (Caponi 1).

Jones articulates various points at which African-American expressive culture either emerges or is transformed through a variety of historical and social forces. At various points in his narrative he identifies points of dynamic stress, or rupture i.e., the Middle Passage, adaptation to bondage and to freedom, the massive migration from the South, adaptation to the urban city, social divisions based on class, privilege and education, the politics of nationalism versus assimilation, and discusses how these shaped the development of musical styles, particularly of the blues but also of the various genres which followed it; this development represents a continuum of an African aesthetic of music making which enabled blacks in the United States to make the spiritual transition from capture and slavery to freedom and aspiration in America with an intact historical and cultural referent which continued to define a sustaining and essentially African identity separate from that of the European.

Blues songs, particularly of the rural south, are rich depositories of double-meaning and messages intended only for a certain listener. Often, rural blues songs that may seem on the surface to be about sadness and defeat may actually convey quite opposite themes, so that these songs took on socio-political as well as cultural significance. Ames (Ames, Russell 17 [150] "Protest and Irony in Negro Folksong" in Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore) argues that "defiance, endurance, action, and heroism, however, prevail in theme and mood despite the seeming passivity of the much song blues songs (Ames, 4)."

Instrumental blues such as that developed by New Orleans musicians, most prominently players like Louis Armstrong, Buddy Bolden and Joe King Oliver, used traits that had come to be long associated now with Black music, and which developed into what would become the distinctly Black form called jazz (the innovation of ragtime by Scott Joplin, which brought African sensibilities to European march music, would develop along somewhat different lines). The use of slurs, shaded tonal coloration, spontaneous improvisation and call/response, marked the music as distinctly black, but it would not be until the 140s with the development of bebop and the 160s, with the development of the Black Arts Movement and the development of so-called "Free Jazz" that the music would come to be associated with the Black push for social change rather than merely as entertainment. The music of the 160s especially became aligned with Black Nationalism, and it attempted to reject virtually every aspect of European musical aesthetics in favor a more radical approach squawks, squeals, dispensing with chords and changes, polytonality, chaotic meters and clashing sonorities -- in order to further Africanize an African-American music. Writes Budds (Michael J. Budds, Jazz in the Sixties. 10).

The awareness of non-Western musical cultures by American jazz musicians was not a purely musical development. Extra-musical, sociological factors were of extreme importance to the jazz musicians's investigation of exotic instruments and practices. Because of the new-found solidarity among blacks in America during the sixties and the newly defined alienation from White America resulting from it, American blacks begin to look to the Third World…with new interest. African was, of course, the primary interest (Budds 16).

Also in the 160s, Black protest songs became more openly critical and less hidden in terms of their meaning. As criticism became less obvious, one could argue that the need for subterfuge and for irony, (hallmarks of Black song from plantation songs to rap music) became less critical. One protest spirituals might contains the following phrases

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me ‘round,

turn me ‘round, turn me ‘round

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me ‘round,

gonna keep on walking, keep on walking

walking up to Freedom's Land.

Later on, however, the lyrics would be changed to reflect a particular situation and address a specific oppressor, and with the following lyric

Ain't gonna let Jim Crow, turn me ‘round, turn me ‘round, etc.

Soul music and funk of the 150s and 160s, begins to expose more overt and varied expressions of emotions, thoughts and attitudes of black Americans. And while it musically transformed the landscape of American pop, the oral ingenuity of its performers would not be eclipsed by the music. Many of the songs of James Brown during this period can be considered protest songs, but of a new, more assertive variety as well, including "Say It Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud" and "I Don't Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing [Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself"], both militant, non-apologetic paeans to racial pride and black nationalism at a time when the some segments of society strongly resisted Afro-American efforts to overturn discriminatory Jim Crow laws in the Deep South. But Brown's music in particular, and Southern music in general as exemplified in the recordings by Stax Studios and some of the Stax/Atlantic collaborations, were also marked as especially black because they featured less refined elements a roughness, rawness and gospel intensity -- associated with vernacular Black music styles of the South, as opposed to Black music that had been refined for popular appeal, e.g., Motown and doowop. Stax studios, in fact, which was fairly antithetical to the more conservative Motown, became directly affiliated with Black nationalist politics when it sponsored an event in Los Angeles known as WattStax with the Rev. Jessie Jackson.

Portia K. Maultsby ("Africanisms in African-American Music" in Africanisms in American Culture, 10) underscores the importance of salient features in Black music as well as other cultural expressions, writing that "the continuum of an African consciousness in America manifests itself in the evolution of an African-American culture. The music, dance, folklore, religion, language, and other expressive forms associated with the culture of slaves were transmitted orally to subsequent generations of American blacks (Maultsby 185)."

Maultsby, like Jones, also critically observes (and here she draws from other scholars including Olly Wilson and J. H. Kwabena Nketia) that to discuss the retention of musical traits in American Blacks is not merely to discuss these in quantitative terms but in qualitative terms, that "Africanisms in African-American music extend beyond trait lists" and must be viewed in terms of creative processes and conceptual approaches to music-making. Here in fact, she is critical of the approaches of Waterman and Krehbiel and others for emphasizing the quantitative ways in which Black musical retentions can be observed and not the qualitative ones.

Among the concepts she stresses are a communal approach to music-making, style of delivery, manipulation of timbre, texture and tonal coloration, call-response structure and rhythmic complexity or rhythm "organized in multi-linear forms (Maultsby 1)." Further, An African approach to music-making ahs been translated from one genre to the next throughout African-American musical history…each genre is distinctly African-American because it is governed by the conceptual framework" which links performer and audience in terms of a unique delivery style (body movements, facial expressions, dress that accompanies the performative context), quality of sound (raspy timbres, heightened pitch and dynamic variation, use of "hollers" "moans" "hooting") and a mechanics of delivery.

We can begin then, to identity not only specific musical characteristics of Black African music but an approach to the practice of music-making that can be definitively traced to the music of Black Americans. As Cornel West ("On Afro-American Popular Music Fro Bebop to Rap" in Sacred Music of the Secular City. Jon Michael Spencer, ed. 61 Spring 1), suggests, "Afro-American popular music constitutes a crucial dimension of the background practices the ways of life and struggle of Afro-American culture. By taking seriously Afro-American popular music, one can dip into the multileveled life-worlds of black people (West 8)."

We can, then point to certain musical traits that mark Black music, and that has had a transformative effect on American music. Benzon (17) provides a short-hand summary in arguing that "the cultural character of the United States of America has been dominated by two interacting cultural systems. One of these derives from Europe and the other from Africa (William L. Benzon. "Music Making History Africa Meets Europe in the United States of the Blues," in Leading Issues in African-American Studies. Nikongo BaNikongo, ed. 17). Benzon argues the European system dominates in mattes of intellectual and scientific and political culture, but that

When we turn to expressive culture, matters are quite different. In some expressive domains, literature, architecture and perhaps even painting, the European influences have dominated through most of American history, But in other domains the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa have had a profound, even a determining, influence (Benzon 10).

But things are more complex than just pointing at European and African cultures and identifying what comes from where. Olly Wilson ("The Heterogeneous Sound Ideal in African-American Music," in Signifying, Sanctifying' and Slam Dunking. A Reader in African-American Expressive Culture, Gena Caponi, ed., 1) argues that "it is difficult to pinpoint precisely the essential qualities that make this music a part of a larger African or black American tradition" because "the music of black Americans exists within a larger, multicultural social context (Wilson 158)." Nonetheless, he also identifies the presence of underlying conceptual approaches to music that marks it as specifically Black no matter what genre of Black music is being discussed. This includes "a common approach to music making in which a kaleidoscopic range of dramatically contrasting qualities of sound (timbre) is sought after in both vocal and instrumental music," what he refers to as "the heterogeneous sound ideal." He also identifies

1) The organization of rhythm based on the principle of rhythmic and implied metrical contrast (Waterman's "metronome sense") that forms the basis for the tense, propulsive rhythmic element in jazz referred to as "swing" [and in other Black music, notably funk and hip hop].

) A percussive manner which stresses the use of accents.

) The tendency to create music with antiphonal structures.

4) Dense musical events within a short musical time frame.

5) Body motion as an integral part of the music making process

Rap music raises African-American orality to an unprecedented level of technical brilliance, but it is built upon all that has preceded it, and draws on a continuum of rhetorical aesthetic practice that begins with the birth of the American Negro, but extends further back in time to other shores. Rap music, in all its multiple sub-variations, did not create itself in a vacuum, nor can its complexity adequately be addressed in the absence of a particular socio-historical context. Rather, it must be viewed as an extension of an African and an African American vernacular oral aesthetic, and of a folkloric tradition in the United States that has continually revitalized itself in the crucible of hegemonic domination at virtually every socio-cultural level.

Rap music relies heavily on technology, particularly "New School" rap of the digital era. But rap nonetheless is a heavily oral practice, and as such, can be said to be part of Afro-American oral tradition, arguably, more so than some of the genres earlier discussed (e.g., the "love raps" of Isaac Hayes and Barry White), since rap music by its very nature foregrounds spoken word skill and artistry rather than have it act as a tangential, contextual zing technique in a song where there is also singing. Rose (Tricia Rose. Black Noise. Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. 14) suggests that "the power of rapper's voices and their role as storytellers ensured that rapping would become the central expression in hip hop culture (Rose, 55)."

To some degree, rap music draws upon every style of black musical and oral expression that precedes it. The "jive scat" of Cab Calloway, the heated monologues of soul singer Millie Jackson, the spontaneous oratory of the Sunday Sermon, black disc jockeys, pimps and oral performers like Malcolm X, and H. Rap Brown, all find continuity amid the successive ruptures (including the many smaller ruptures along the way) in African-American culture. Each rupture has interrupted the relative socio-cultural cohesion (enslaved Africans being from a variety of ethnic backgrounds but nonetheless sharing more cultural traits in common than not) of a large community; but that splintering has produced in each major instance, a flowering of new cultural forms. As Perkins (Perkins, William Eric, "The Rap Attack An Introduction," in Droppin' Science. Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture. William Eric Perkins, ed 16.) astutely observes

The rap tradition has been nurtured on the accumulated and residual forms of African and African American music, verbal art, and personal style as well as the constant process of self-innovation within each of these elements. This cultural residue is the source of much of the strength and vitality of rap and African American culture (Perkins, 5).

But rap, more than being simply the newest link on the chain of black oral invention, has added new sonic strategies to the process of sound organization and musical representation, owing to the new array of technological devices available to them, including digital samplers, cross-faders and drum machines. Rose identifies three of these strategies as flow, layer and rupture, concepts that also appear in other aspects of hip-hop culture, including breakdancing and graffiti (Rose, 8).

In Rose's description, flow refers to "an ability to move easily and powerfully through complex lyrics as well as the flow in the music," in other words to orally deliver words dramatically, in rhyme and time, over the beat laid down by the DJ. The DJ, in turn, may layer by stacking sounds "literally one on top of the other, creating a dialogue between sampled sounds and words; rappers, on the other hand, may layer "by using the same word to signify a variety of actions and objects."

Rupture, by comparison, indicates a break of the lyrical flow by the rapper, or the musical flow, by the DJ. The DJ may cause a rupture in the rhythmic flow of the music in a variety of ways, including scratching or by the injection of musical passages from another song. By his repetition of a word or a passage, for instance or by playing with vocal timing, a rapper may cause a rupture in the flow of a line, only to recapture it at a later point so that the flow is first broken, then continued. These ideas are particularly intriguing when viewed in light of the primary themes we have examined, namely, rupture and continuity as dominant tropes in the gradual development of Afro-American culture, in particular, oral vernacular forms of cultural expression. While we have seen that these themes function in ways that have allowed the continuation of an "ever same but ever changing" African-derived cultural identity in the midst of a succession of critical ruptures, in rap music they become reified as sonic strategies in the production of musical sound, or if you like, musically informed noise. Rose perhaps speaks to this best, in her observation that

Interpreting these concepts theoretically, one can argue that they create and sustain rhythmic motion, continuity, and circularity via flow; accumulate, reinforce, and embellish this continuity through layering; and manage threatens to these narratives by building in ruptures that highlight the continuity as it momentarily challenges it. These effects at the level of style and aesthetics suggest affirmative ways in which profound social dislocation and rupture can be managed and perhaps contested in the cultural arena (Rose, ).

Rap certainly has its antecedents in Black funk music, in verbal games and street poems, but it is a new point of musical department, as Rose suggests and Benzon affirms. Benzon notes that rap 1) employs musical collage which depends on extant records ) is the most insistently rhythmic of black genres, ) has the most elaborate lyrics 4) often substitutes anger for the sensuality which had been basic to earlier forms (Benzon 18).

Rap, argues Benzon, "is the most relentlessly and consciously Black, as in Not-White, form African America has produced. It is also the angriest (Benzon, 1)." Angry in that, certainly it was born in a climate of social chaos and despair. Cornell West (1) sees rap as the continuation of traditional black aesthetic values and musical practices, but with little contemporary contextualization except as a demeaned expression of the spiritual and material poverty of its adherents (Rose takes issue with this kind of analysis of rap). He locates black musical styles, including jazz, soul, funk, techno funk and rap, within a continuum he calls the "Afro-American spiritual-blues impulse" and its related practices "of polyphonic, rhythmic effects and antiphonal vocal techniques, of kinetic orality and affective physicality (West 8);" there is something explicitly uplifting, culturally sustaining and ultimately spiritual about this epic tradition of black creative expression, he suggests. But West posits rap music as "emblematically symptomatic of a shift in sensibilities and moods in Afro-America" even as he considers that it "recovers and revises elements of black rhetorical styles." For West, this shift is fundamentally narcissistic and endemic of a youth-oriented culture that, having been essentially abandoned in the social, political and economic upheaval of the post-Civil Rights era, has lost a humanistic sense of itself and its own spiritual moorings. What he champions most in rap music is that it nonetheless appears to retain tradition, to wit, "the two major organic artistic traditions in black America black rhetoric and black music (West )."

Some of the most problematic expressions of newly emerging concepts of African American identity have come about with the creation of hip-hop culture, which Neal (Neal, Mark Anthony. Soul Babies. Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic 00) regards as "most profound aesthetic movement in black popular music in the post-Civil Rights era (Neal, 16)," and one fueled "a distinct urban-based African American youth culture (Neal, 15)" with its own existential impulses and world-view. The music is, suggests Neal, "perhaps the first popular form of black music that offered little or not hope to its audience. The fatalistic experience has become a standard trope of urban-based hip-hop," the rap song "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five being the clarion example of that bleak vision, a vision whose roots can be traced to the disintegrating social conditions and expectant life chances of young black youth as a result of the abandonment of the inner city beginning after the 168 urban riots.

Despite the fact that rap music has become part of the American popular culture mainstream, it continues to be "a black cultural expression that prioritizes black voices from the margins of urban America," argues Rose (Rose 14 ). It follows in the aesthetic tradition of other Black expressive forms as "a form of rhymed storytelling accompanied by highly rhythmic, electronically based music (ibid)," but its stories also "continue to articulate the shifting terms of black marginality in contemporary American culture (Rose 14 )." The age of digital technology has offered new creative strategies that have become part of the music, privileging flow, layering and ruptures in line as well as other aspects associated with the music, namely break dancing, graffiti art, style of dress and street poetry.

Rap can be analyzed in terms that explicitly relate to the hallmarks of African music-making as mentioned earlier, but rap music uses these in new and more complex ways as well as introducing new elements that have come about because of the technology. These practices, sampling for instance, and the use of low-sound frequencies in conjunction with sonic density and high levels of volume as aesthetic considerations, marks the music as a distinctly Black musical expression in the way that they are combined in production. Yet, as Rose argues, "the study of popular music has been quite inattentive to the specificity of black practices in the popular realm. There is a significant intellectual divide between the study of black music and the study of American popular music (Rose 8)."

To bring this to some sort of close, because we are now nearing the end of recorded time, we have identified both quantitative and qualitative elements that we can point to that marks the music of African-derived peoples as distinctly Black, or Africanized. These elements can not only be recognized in African-American music making, but in mainstream American popular music as well dating back for decades as Black approaches to music making have increasingly become absorbed into American music in general via spiritual, the blues, jazz and virtually every form of black musical expression. And it is difficult, I would argue, to separate much black music from political and social considerations in addition to its cultural aspects. If the personal is political, then African American music is deeply and irrevocably both. And while it is not the only cultural expression that points to indeed sustains Black identity in the broader American landscape, it is certainly the most potent, and as we have seen, it has been the most important in terms of its influence on American culture.

Please note that this sample paper on How does Black music and culture function as a part of American Popular culture? is for your review only. In order to eliminate any of the plagiarism issues, it is highly recommended that you do not use it for you own writing purposes. In case you experience difficulties with writing a well structured and accurately composed paper on How does Black music and culture function as a part of American Popular culture?, we are here to assist you. Your persuasive essay on How does Black music and culture function as a part of American Popular culture? will be written from scratch, so you do not have to worry about its originality.

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Sophie Germain

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Sophie Germain was a woman before her time. Some have went as far as to call her revolutionary. She lived during a time when women were not considered equivalent to men, especially where knowledge was concerned.

Sophie Germain was a withdrawn child. She was the middle child of Ambroise-Francois and Marie-Madelaine Gruguelin Germain. She grew up in Paris, France; born April 1, 1776 and she died June 7, 181. She never married,

unless you count her marriage to Fermat's Last Theorem. Germain was born in the midst of a Revolutionary era; the American Revolution had begun and 1 years later, the French Revolution (in her own country) broke out.

Sophie Germain didn't get to go to a big expensive college, or even a measly little schoolhouse. She taught herself in the candlelight at night. Of course, that was before her parents found out what she was doing and took her candlesticks, clothes, and heat. She continued to study, though. One must ask what made her love numbers so much. No one knows for sure, but we do know she read a book (from her father's study, where she spent most of her time) about Archimedes and his death. She found it intriguing that one could be so absorbed in geometric means that it would lead to their death. She thought it must be the greatest thing in the world.

Custom Essays on Sophie Germain

In 174, the Ecole Polytechnique (a college) opened in Paris. It was ideal for young mathematicians who wanted to expand their knowledge. Naturally, it would have been perfect for Germain. Unfortunately, this particular college was reserved for boys only. Through friendships she made with some of the students, she got a hold of lecture notes and, under the name Monsieur Antoine-August Le Blanc (M. Le Blanc for short), handed in papers and problems. The supervisor of the course, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, noticed a sudden change in M. Le Blanc's problem-solving abilities (M. Le Blanc was a man who was already enrolled as a student, but had left Paris, which the academy had no clue about). Lagrange sought out Le Blanc and was astonished to discover he was a woman. His respect for her work never changed, and to show gratitude, he became her tutor and mentor.

Germain's work on Fermat's Last Theorem was her greatest contribution to mathematics. Fermat left a theory that would boggle the minds of mathematicians to come. His theorem was one that the most educated mathematicians wouldn't even attempt. Fermat's Last Theorem was

x + y = z

x4 + y4 = z4

x5 + y5 = z5

x6 + y6 = z6

etc.

The Institut de France set a prize competition with a challenge that stated "formulate a mathematical theory of elastic surfaces and indicate just how it agrees with empirical evidence." The competition deadline was set for two years. Germain was the only entry. The competition was expanded a total of three times, two years each time. The contest re-opened in 1815 and Germain's third attempt got a prize of a medal of one kilogram of gold. She did not attend the award ceremony, for she felt the "judges did not fully appreciate her work." Germain's work on Fermat's Last Theorem earned her the respect of many. Carl Gauss (arguably the greatest mathematician of his time) had known her and her work. He knew how hard she worked and used his influence as the Professor of Astronomy at the University of Gottingen to get the University to award her an honorary degree. Tragically, before she could receive this honor, Sophie Germain died of breast cancer.

Very few women, have had such an influence as Marie-Sophie Germain. Various names have been bestowed upon her Revolutionary Mathematician and Math's Hidden Woman, just to name a couple. One thing for sure, she never got the respect she so rightfully deserved, because she was a woman of the 1700's and 1800's

Please note that this sample paper on Sophie Germain is for your review only. In order to eliminate any of the plagiarism issues, it is highly recommended that you do not use it for you own writing purposes. In case you experience difficulties with writing a well structured and accurately composed paper on Sophie Germain, we are here to assist you. Your persuasive essay on Sophie Germain will be written from scratch, so you do not have to worry about its originality.

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