What is truth? Lies? Who gets to decide?
Now things get complicated. You heard This American Life’s podcast focusing on Mike Daisey’s monologue-play and the issues it raises about Apple, China, worker rights, us as consumers, and globalization.
There is a reason I had you listen to that bootleg version. TAL scrubbed the podcast from its website and released “Retraction” in which they devoted a full hour to “retracting” the original podcast.
Consume
For your post, based on our discussion on Monday, you should pick one of these (links below).
1) Listen to “Retraction” the TAL podcast retracting “Mr. Daisey and Apple.”
2) Watch the Bucknell Forum version of Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.
For #1: Please listen now to “Retraction.” You can do so on-line here, or you can get it through iTunes or other distributor like Amazon. There is even a TAL app (iphone and droid).
Your Task
- What has Apple or Foxconn done to improve working conditions in factories?
- Do you like the play? Would you have done something different?
- What does it say about Mike Daisey that he made his play available for anyone to perform or modify it?
- Is Ira Glass of TAL justified in his anger? Does he over-react?
- Is art different from journalism? Which one is about “truth”
- What do Chinese workers think? Are they free to complain or advocate for better conditions?
- Does Apple owe its customers “guilt-free”products? Is some technology, like blood diamonds mined from war-torn areas of Africa, “bloody”?
- Are ANY technology makers doing “the right thing” in the life cycle of their products? Either the making or the disposing of it?
- Was Mike Daisey an unethical liar? What, exactly, did he lie about, or not?
- What is art, journalism, or truth? Who decides?
- Is globalization inevitable or “natural”? Or is it a set of forces and processes that governments, firms, citizens, and others can shape and direct?
- Are there sterotypes of one kind or another in this story? Are they unfounded, prejudicial, or harmful? Are some stereotypes useful or legitimate?
More Relevant Information
Original and Revised scripts (for free!) from Mike Daisey.
Featured image source: On Portland newspaper from 2010.