UNIT FOUR – THE REAL TIME ECONOMY COURSEBOOK, p. 35; READING TASK 1 Find in the text the words which mean the same: 1. to say sb has done sth wrong, is guilty of sth or has broken the law = 2. a state of mind being constantly filled with fixed ideas = 3. an act of seeking, search or pursuit = 4. to observe, record or test sth = 5. to come or be between, happen in such a way as to hinder or prevent sth from being done or happening, or to change the result = 6. to make sb aware of sth; to watch for danger and be ready to act = 7. strong effect or impression on sth/sb = 8. action taken to resolve a difficulty; power or right to take action = TASK 2 Answer the following questions using the information from the text: 1. When asked a question, Gary Reiner gives a long answer with many digressions. T/F 2. What does it mean verbose? 3. How does the article characterize America´s GE? 4. What initiative does Mr Reiner head? 5. What does the dashboard referred to in the article show? 6. How does Mr Reiner know sth is going wrong in the system and how does he react to solve the problem? 7. What other information does the dashboard provide him with? 8. Why do all the managers have dashboards now? 9. How important was digitalisation from the financial point of view? 10. Is the digitalisation “business“ the first innovative business move of the copany? 11. Will digitalisation be the trend for other companies as well? 12. What is real time enterprise? 13. How is the entire economy becoming real time? 14. Do all the companies now know exactly where they are and where they are going in the area or real time entreprise? 15. What are the real benefits of the Real-time technology for the companies? 16. What is the new software capable of doing which the previous type of software was not able to do? 17. Does this great advancement of IT mean the death of big firms? 18. How will real-time technology change the quality of economies? 19. Does the usage of real time technology pose a threat to business today? 20. What would be the function of the circuit breakers mentioned at the very end of the article and how are they related to question n. 19? COURSEBOOK, p. 34; LISTENING Complete the following extracts with the words you hear: 1. Intranet can a._________________________ everybody within the company, b. ____________large the company is. 2. How a.____________ regularly use the intranet? 3. From the number of a. ________ we can b. ____________that at least 50 per cent of the company use it all the time. 4. The biggest a. ____________is trying to keep the information b. _________and trying not to c. _________ the site with too much information. As our intranet has d. _____________ from all over the different areas of the company, we don´t want people to e. ______________ information, so we have to keep f. ______________, so that we can continually g. ____________anything that´s unnecessary. 5. What are the main a. ____________ issues for the intranet? 6. …….. However, there is always the possibility of people a. _____________ information and emailing it to people……………. 7. Also we don´t put photographs of people there a.___________ they give us permission as there is a b. ___________of someone actually c. ____________a photograph and using it for some purppose. These are very, very d. __________ risks but we need to take them into e.____________. 8. For our intranet site, we have a. ________________everyone within the company. ….. We just have to b. _________ it like we would a newspaper and try to keep certain things, come certain c._________, d._____________________. 9. People can go a. _________the intranet. WORKBOOK, p. 19; READING 1. Characterize a blogger. 2. The two roles of Mr Scoble are not related to each other. T/F 3. Describe tablet pcs – laptop computers. 4. What is Mr Scoble extremely good at? 5. What are his attitudes towards Microsoft technology? 6. In what context is Jonathan Schwartz mentioned?