A valuable contribution to an overdue discussion about technology and privilege.
A damning indictment of Apple’s labor and supply practices.
Chan, Selden, and Pun persuasively argue that the relationship between Apple and shadowy Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn epitomizes the brutality of globalized late-stage capitalism. “In summer 2010,” write the authors, “we collaborated with researchers from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to conduct undercover research at Foxconn’s major manufacturing sites....Our effort to engage the corporations in discussion of labor responsibility produced only corporate rationalizations and platitudes.” The authors investigate Foxconn’s aggressive rise, propelled by mysterious CEO Terry Gou, seemingly determined to create a Maoist workers’ cult complete with slogans and surveillance. Still, “while Foxconn carved out a niche as the exclusive final assembler of the iPhone, the lion’s share of the profits was captured by Apple.” The authors merge deep dives into data with chilling testimonials from workers, including some who attempted suicide. “All of us log long hours of overtime with only two rest days in the entire month,” said one worker regarding the demands for iPad production. Due to such pressures, “fire hazards and metallic dust explosions had put workers’ lives at severe risk, with Apple complicit along with its supplier network.” Although their focus is the corrosive effect of Foxconn on China’s labor market, the authors address subtopics including exploitative internship programs, environmental issues, and workers’ efforts to organize for better treatment, opposed by the company and the government. This contrasts uncomfortably with Apple’s hip, progressive public image. “We can speak of a veritable cult of Apple,” write the authors, “with tens of thousands of consumers tracking each corporate unveiling of a new design.” Although their tone is dry, they harness disturbing and varied evidence, including anecdotes, corporate communications, and first-person accounts, creating a compelling exposé of what lies behind one of the most recognizable icons of consumerism.
A valuable contribution to an overdue discussion about technology and privilege. (b/w photos)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64259-124-8
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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