This week, the Rose Scholars had the pleasure of being visited by Jeff Prince, a professor of Business Economics and Public Policy from Indiana University. He spoke to us about the difficulties of really understanding what the consumer is looking for in products. Whether it be efficiency, portability, content, the only way to really figure out what the consumer wants is to collect data and from there make deductions. When you survey someone, usually people either don’t take it seriously or they are not honest in their responses. For this reason, “free” online websites collect viewership data in order to calculate what is the best way to keep the user engaged and target their needs through computer programming. It was interesting to learn about the issues consumers face with frequency versus bandwidth. Personally, both concepts were unfamiliar to me at the time, but basically, it involves the length of time it takes for a signal to reach a satellite, bounce off, arrive at its destination, and return a response. 

A topic that is of great concern involving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) nowadays is the issue of net neutrality. This principle states that Internet service providers and governments regulating the Internet will treat all data the same not charging differently for any circumstances. However, if we were to eliminate this, dominant communication companies would monopolize the entire system of communications by being able to afford the fastest services to the most people. Prince spoke about the issues with this and how the new FCC has made strides in eliminating this policy. If such a policy were to be eliminated completely, then we would be forced to trust either three or four organization in informing us of the truth. Though technically people would still be able to express their opinions online, accessing this information could be costly and in some people’s opinions, impractical. 

Though it is still uncertain as to the future of online access, the fact of the matter is that people are always looking for two things, practicality, and efficiency. If you can say the message in thirty words instead of one hundred, people will choose to read the shorter article. If you can access information in two seconds instead of two minutes, people will choose that as well. Seeing as to how technology continues to innovate with each coming year, there is already talk about there being four main monopolies that govern all social media the public has access to. However, with this in mind, there are still rules in place to make sure they do not obtain too much power, which would be harmful to all everyone’s privacy and knowledge. It was really great having an experienced professor such as Prince come and speak with us, and I hope to apply to their business program in the future if possible.