I wish it was like the old days. I wish things had that human touch.But that's not true. There are more handmade things now than there have ever been in the history of the world.
I didn't even think about this during my reading of this transcription but he's right everything has been touched by numerous humans before we touch it.
a worker at Foxconn dies after working a 34-hour shift. I wish I could say that's exceptional, but it's happened before. I only mention it because it actually happened while I was there.
I'm a bit disturbed how he brushes this off and only reports it because it occurred when he was there.
And it is constant. They work a Chinese hour, and a Chinese hour has 60 Chinese minutes, and a Chinese minute has 60 Chinese seconds. It's not like like our hour. What's our hour now? 46 minutes? You have a bathroom break, and you have a smoke break, and if you don't smoke, there's a yoga break.
I never thought about the difference of a working hour in relation to different countries. This is such an interesting concept.
What would you change at Foxconn if you could change anything?That question always gets them. They always react like a bee has flown into their faces. And then they say something to Kathy. And Kathy says, "He says he never thought of that before." Every time. Every time.
This proves his point that the way things are people just get used to it because they aren't used to positive change occurring at this company.
The Foxconn plant in Shenzhen has 430,000 workers. That can be a difficult number to conceptualize. I find it's useful to instead think about how there are more than 20 cafeterias at the plant. And then you just have to understand that workers told me that these cafeterias can hold up to 10,000 people. So now you just need to visualize a cafeteria that seats 10,000 people. I'll wait.
He's right. This is hard to imagine only one venue this large, it's even harder to think of 20 of these venues this large under one roof.
And at the end of the day, I am large, I am American, and I am wearing a goddamn Hawaiian shirt. And we are going to the main gates.
I just had to annotate this because it's absolutely hilarious.
Shenzhen is a city without history. The people who live there will tell you that, because 31 years ago, Shenzhen was a small town. They had little reed huts, little reed walkways between the huts. The men would fish in the late afternoon. I hear it was lovely.
This is a sad passage because it makes you realize the positives and negatives industry can bring to formerly small towns like this.
And in all that time, until I saw those pictures, it was only then I realized, I had never thought, ever, in a dedicated way, about how they were made.
This is interesting because not until this class did I start thinking about how technology I own is made.
So the truth is, I never would have questioned this religion.
I find it interesting how he correlates the type of technology you like to a religion or a faith.
Can I say, I love, especially, "I am not allowed to say"? Because it implies that Siri somehow knows the answer, but she's just not allowed to tell me, which is insane, because she's a machine. Especially because-- flip over the phone. Right here, on the back, it's printed-- "Assembled in China."
This comment reminds me of how I've heard some people say how much they love that Apple is a product made in the United States, but in actuality it's not.
“This is why I am here,” I thought, “I can’t live without my phone, and people here are dying because of it.”
An amazing realization that our eyes always go to a screen no matter what's happening around us.
And to stop them, we don’t need more laws. We need to end slavery.
YES
Here’s how: slaveholders are criminals, operating firmly outside of any law or regulation. When they mine gold they saturate thousands of acres with toxic mercury. When they cut timber, they clear-cut and burn, taking a few high-value trees and leaving behind a dead ecosystem.
This passage explains clearly how slavery creates such massive destruction in the natural world.
But all this normally happens far from any prying eyes. It’s a hidden world that keeps its secrets.
This is interesting because it really is a hidden world. We're so blinded by consumerism that we don't care to learn how our things are made. It takes horrifying images, games like Phone Story, and articles like this to finally open our eyes.
If slavery were an American state it would have the population of California and the economic output of the District of Columbia, but it would be the world’s third-largest producer of CO2.
This is an eye opening statement. It makes you realize the amount of people who are enslaved, how much damage occurs to our environment because of slavery, but also how much economic profit is due to slavery.
Whether we are grilling shrimp for our friends or buying T-shirts for our children we generally think of these things as beginning where we first encountered them, at the shop, at the mall, in the grocery store. But just as each of us is deeper than our surface, just as each of us has a story to tell, so do the tools and toys and food and rings and phones that tie us together.
We don't tend to think about where our goods come from before arriving at the store we buy them from.
Cellphones have become electronic umbilical cords connecting us with our children, our partners, and our parents with an immediacy and reliability hardly known before.
Powerful metaphor explaining our reasoning why cellphones are viewed as a necessity to our generation
The peace and order of the graves surrounding ancient churches was suddenly marred by images of slave children shaping and polishing the stone that marked those graves.
Death is supposed to be a time that the person who has died is at peace with themselves and the images of the children creating these tombstones completely dissolves that peace of mind.
they were shocked by what they discovered. Expecting industrial operations, they found medieval working conditions and families in slavery.
This is such a vivid image and a reminder that slavery does still exist and though we are more technologically advanced, slavery drags us back to another time.
This debt bondage is illegal, but illiterate workers don’t know this, and the bosses are keen to play on their sense of obligation, not alert them to the scam that’s sucking them under.
This reminds me a lot about sharecropping and how in America post-Civil War and liberation many former slaves went back to make a living as sharecroppers however the owners of the land would "lend" them supplies but rack up their debt even more making them property again and it became a family and generational debt.
“See the little girl playing with the hammer?” asked a local investigator. “Along with the child, the size of the hammer grows, and that’s the only progress in her life.”
This is such a powerful quote because it shows that in other countries the growth is more than just the girl growing up but her capabilities of work being exploited also grow.
We think of Steve Jobs in his black turtleneck as the origin of our iPhones.
After playing Phone Story, I still see Steve Jobs as the mastermind behind inventing the iPhone but I recognize the other work and lives across the globe that go into creating just one iPhone.