To paraphrase Mike:
if you control the way people view and interact with the world, you control their world
having Google to find out something for you doesn't mean you're smart, you get smart by using your head and digging in with both hands
everyone complains that nothing is hand-made, whereas everything is handmade and some of those hands are bloody and deformed from making the stuff we use everyday.
Mike Daisey loves technology and what Steve Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak created at Apple. The two of them started out as rebellious, counterculture entrepreneurs. Their first creation was a pirate box to make long distance phone calls, stealing from A T & T. The first call on the box was when Jobs had Wozniak call the Vatican to tell them that Henry Kissinger, at the White House, wanted to speak to the Pope. The Cardinal, or whoever it was that answered the phone, said the Pope was asleep but he would wake him up. Wozniak freaked and hung up the phone They sold hundreds of those boxes. Then they got a job from Atari to make an easily programmable computer game in 2 months. The job paid $700. But if they made it especially easy to program and in one month they would get $1000. Steve Wozniak, the geek in the partnership, did it. They split a $1000. Wozniak later learned that Jobs was paid $5000 and there were no requirements about the time frame or the programing.
About 10 years ago there were reports of numerous suicides at a technology assembly plant in China. So Mike Daisey posed as an American businessman so he could get access to the workers and some of the bosses. Workers were as young as 13. They would spend at least 14 hours on line doing the same robotic movement. Probably the reason for the suicides. One worker died after being at his work station for 34 hours. The company is Foxcomm in Shenzhen, China. 440,000 thousand people work there. They have 25 cafeterias and each one can sit 20,000 people. The plant assembles technology parts for Apple and many other companies. Because of the robotic working conditions, joints in the workers hands disintegrate. To shift workers around to other lines would easily alleviate those joints, but they don't. The liquid used to clean the face of the iPhone causes neurological injuries in the workers' hands. They were using plain alcohol, but the new solution cleans faster. Many workers are let go at 25 years of age because by that time they're not able to keep up the pace.
Steve Wozniak saw the show and wept. He told the NY Times that he would never be the same.
At the end of the show Mike Daisey says he hasn't really told us anything we don't already know. What he hopes he has done is plant a virus in our consciousness. Can we buy more stuff without thinking "who made that"?
P.S. There is some controversy about the show. His interpreter during the visit contradicts some of his statements. But what I have written here has been checked and deemed accurate.
