In “Mr. Daisey and Apple,” Mike Daisey makes several points that forces the audience to think about not only Apple’s behavior, but also the behavior of everyone who owns Apple products. What I found most interesting was when Daisey explained that he gained so much pleasure from the beautiful technology of Apple products that he never even dared to question where and how they were made. In fact, he even said that he had a picture in his head of a machine making iPhones. He had no reasoning for believing this–he simply assumed that there was a flawless ethical process for creating iPhones. He then explains that the reason Apple came under investigation is because someone bought an iPhone that wasn’t blank, but had manufacturing information on it. When the iPhone 4s first came out, when asked where she was manufactured, Siri would respond “I am not allowed to say.” Interestingly enough, when I asked Siri on my iPhone where she was manufactured, she responded, “I was designed by Apple in California.” This response completely ignores the question I asked…
Daisey then continues to explain how one third of all electronics are made in the city of Shenzhen in China and how the working conditions are horrible with suicide rates through the roof. FoxConn, the company that manufactures iPhones, had to place safety nets around its buildings to prevent workers from jumping through the windows. The word “workers” bothers me. Here in the United States, we would refer to them as employees. However, the term “worker” implies that those people’s sole purpose is to work–not to live and be members of society.
As I mentioned before, what caught my attention most was Glass’s claim that he was blinded by pleasure. This concept reflects not only the ethical issues of Apple, but a much bigger problem in our society. It is a problem of justifying bad behavior. We, as human beings, have a way of making excuses that put us to sleep at night. Yes, we enjoy fruitful lives in the “land of the free,” constantly consuming and disposing of products. It is an addiction. We enjoy shopping and consuming so much that we don’t even want to know what the consequences of our actions are. For example, my wardrobe consists of an unbelievably unnecessary amount of clothing. Most, if not each and every article I own was hand-made by a person who is just like me. Yet I don’t spend my days hacking away with a sewing machine with my hands slowly approaching the pain of arthritis. After reading about the conditions at FoxConn, I feel that we need to make a change and accept lower levels of extravagance so that people in other countries can live better lives. There needs to be more of a medium.