Tag Archives: Apple

Am I An iPhone Twit?

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Back in May 2011, I entered the world of Apple products and smart phones thanks to my dad’s benevolence. In March and April, I had neither the inclination or the funds to get an iPhone, but by the time my renewal had come up, my father had offered to hook me up with an iPhone. Despite the Foxconn workers on my mind, I accepted the gift quite readily.

There have been many benefits to having an iPhone. They include having a 5 Mpx camera on hand at all times, being able to geocache with it, being able to check email from remote locations, etc. And I’ve not thought about the Foxconn workers for quite some time. Truth be told, my mind had become quite cluttered around mid August.

I have a Twitter application on my phone, and I began checking it quite regularly when I had a free moment. I watched the tweets from the Midwest Rising protests in St. Louis. It was like watching the news ticker at the bottom of the screen on cable news stations (FOX NEWS, CNN, MSNBC, etc.), except with more images and first-hand accounts. Weeks later in mid September, I observed the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street “occupation”. Some thought they wouldn’t last the weekend, but I observed in real-time as they sought take-out food and generators. They lasted not days but months.

Twitter and other web sites allow you to find news or stories that you would not normally hear in mainstream newspapers, television shows, or other media sources. While I did appreciate the ability to catch the #Occupy news in a largely unfiltered stream from primary sources, my mind was becoming cluttered from watching all these developments in real-time. Also, there became a great need to sift through crummy posts or free-riders who posted about the events just to receive personal attention or web traffic.

I broke my iPhone glass a couple of months back, and the fracture shook me from a daily existence that was getting somewhat saturated with smart phone usage. I pondered how much of an iPhone junkie or twit I had become. I go back and forth between being too desirous of the constant stimulation the Internet can provide and being content with moderate Internet usage. (What is moderate usage? Once a day? Weekly? Monthly?) A smart phone greatly increases the occasions for overindulgence by providing a portable access point for the data stream. It makes it seem archaic that Neo and Trinity needed to check out of the Matrix at pay phones.

Now that I have an intact phone (for free thanks to Apple) I’m asking myself again, am I an iPhone twit? My girlfriend probably thinks that I check my iPhone too much, and I agree with her in those times when I’m sacrificing engagement with the world in my physical proximity for the erratic stimulus of a digital feed. In the end, the smart phone serves me best when it is a tool aiding the rest of my life, not as an end into itself.

Through the haze of social media posts and game application notifications, I want to remember to be thankful and accountable to the FoxConn workers who put the phone together, the power company workers who facilitate the recharging of said device, and the people and living things that will be burdened with the eventual disposal of my iPhone.

Apple’s Already On The Job – My Blog Posts Are Belated

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Here I am posting photos about the workers who make components for Apple products like it’s the first time any of us have seen such a thing. But Apple is much more aware of the state of the factory workers than I am, as they should be. Apple has been aware of some of the situations facing the factory workers at their supplier companies (such as Foxconn).

You can find more information on the Apple web site under a section called “Supplier Responsibility”. On their web site, there are audits regarding supplier compliance with Apple’s social responsibility standards. You can see how they have observed their suppliers to be measuring up. Also, Apple assures the web site viewers that the company is working to achieve standards “beyond compliance” through education and other initiatives.

Foxconn Workshop

from www.foxconn.com

It’s welcoming to see that Apple is conducting some sort of audits, but this whole issue goes deeper than pleasant euphemisms like “corporate compliance”. And even though governments have given corporations some of the rights of citizens, I still don’t trust a corporation to do a citizen’s job. We need to be the ones keeping an eye on business practices. Don’t sleep.

from apple.com

Foxconn Office

from www.foxconn.com

Awareness: Is It Enough?

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In attempting to develop the practice of love in our lives, I have said we will bend our ears to needs and injustice in the world. But is listening and becoming aware of things enough to move us act lovingly?

This is a very broad question, but consideration of it will affect whether or not our efforts at awareness of our fellow human beings might translate into us loving more fully. In lieu of Mike Daisey’s recent performances and interviews about the source of Apple products and other technological gadgets, I want to challenge myself and others to find out if we can be motivated to make any changes in how we live our lives by achieving a greater knowledge of how things are made and by whom they are made.

So, just as a small seed to grow in this knowledge, think about your cell phone. Who made it? Where was it made? What materials were used to make it? These pictures are specific to iPhones, but let’s just assume (for the moment) that they are similar to most phone manufacturing facilities. I am not aware of a cell phone on the market today that is made in a drastically different fashion.

The iPhones currently come from an environment at Foxconn that looks like this and is assembled and tested by people such as this worker. I’ve included a picture of her below.

iPhone worker

via markm49uk at MacRumors forums

Was she thinking of you when she worked on the phone? Probably not. Was the iPhone user thinking of her when she bought her iPhone? Probably not. It is really difficult to conceive of the other people involved in the complex patterns of our globalized economy. But what changes would we make if we thought of them (their wages, their families, their health plans, and their work) like we think of us and the people we know? Maybe awareness is not enough. But it could be a place to start, a window into our world.