RBG Playlist

Please listen to the RBG playlist and suggest additions:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_0k4mTkijq5WNiXK5nrg4mqaFPXSWnkO

 In a New York Times article, part of a Pulitzer prize–winning investigative
series on Apple, Charles Duigg and Keith Bradsher recount a dinner with
Silicon Valley executives and U.S. President Barak Obama. Apparently,
the President asked Steve Jobs why he didn’t build iPhones in the U.S.,
and Jobs replied that those positions are never coming back. Explaining
why, the article, also discussed in Chapter 5 of this volume, describes the
scale and flexibility of the Chinese company Foxconn, the human costs
of this scale and flexibility, and the effects of this scale and flexibility
on U.S. ability to compete in a global market. The Foxconn facility has
over two hundred thousand employees. About a quarter of them live in
company barracks and work twelve-hour shifts. Such enormous capacity
enables Foxconn not only to adapt to new design specifications but also
to command large numbers of workers to labor overtime. Both capacities
mean that the company can get new products out quickly. As an Apple
supply demand manager quoted in the article says, “They could hire 3,000
people overnight . . . What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and
convince them to live in dorms?” The Times piece recounts the erosion of
mid-wage jobs in the U.S., the increase in low-wage service sector positions,
and the $2 billion in stock high-level Apple employees and directors
received (on top of their salaries) in 2011. Overall, the piece is a depressing
venture into the bowels of production: the conditions of workers in
China and the U.S. are horrible, differently so, but linked in the misery of
the Apple supply chain.
Duigg and Bradsher end the article with an app. They write:

"Before Mr. Obama and Mr. Jobs said goodbye, the Apple executive pulled an iPhone from his pocket to show off a new application—a driving game—with incredibly detailed graphics. The device reflected the soft glow of the room’s light. The other executives, whose combined worth exceeded $69 billion, jostled for position to glance over his shoulder. The game, everyone agreed, was wonderful." —Duigg, C., and K. Bradsher. “How the US Lost Out on iPhone Work.” The New
York Times. January 21, 2012. 

After all the inequality, the exploitative reality of the production of smartphones
out of hundreds of components made around the world and assembled
in China, after all the incessant executive rhetoric of competition, of
can’t and must, even as Apple’s revenue tops $108 billion, we end up with
the app, the wonderful, fascinating app capable of capturing billionaires.
The app fastens all their attention to the iPhone. The device delivers a little
thrill, a little wonder. The executives can hold animation in their hands and
interact with it. In this moment of fascination, work and play converge;
after all, they are still executives doing the work of pressuring, lobbying,
and networking. Yet their fascination with the app makes them momentarily
childlike. The app rivets them to the phone such that they are completely
and totally present in the moment of the game, which means they are at
simultaneously withdrawn from the prior context of inequality and exploitation.
Fascination with the app withdraws them into immediate presence.

—Jodi Dean, Apps and Drive