Some weeks ago I along with many others reported on our concern about the manufacturing of Apple products in China.  At that time I stated that human cost does matter, and that Apple customers in the United States were certainly troubled by the report of how these products, which we’ve come to love and use are made for our use and entertainment.

In recent news coverage the retraction by Mike Daisey has appeared in many Blogs and on television.  Many discussions about whether how Mike Daisey caught our attention matters.  For starters, let’s review what ‘non-fiction’ means: Non-fiction (or nonfiction) is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be factual. This presentation may be accurate or not—that is, it can give either a true or a false account of the subject in question—however, it is generally assumed that authors of such accounts believe them to be truthful at the time of their composition or, at least, pose them to their audience as historically or empirically true…via Non-fiction – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Having read the definition provided, one has to imagine that if the untruths are presented as “non-fiction”, it can certainly harm our ability to assess a situation because we will not have all the information available to us.  As we move forward with how Apple and other companies are manufacturing our goods, we will have to take a more investigative approach to building a factual basis for our decisions on these matters. Some questions that come to mind are:

1. Would Daisey have caught our attention as quickly had he not exaggerated the story?
2. Has Daisey’s report made Apple and other companies manufacturing products in other countries more conscientious about how they produce those products?
3. What is our responsibility as consumers of the information we receive in Social Media, and other media outlets?
4. Can the labor laws we implement in the United States become applicable for countries where workers have different issues about work, resources, and poverty?

Below are some discussions that you may want to read about this topic.  As stated before, the answer is not simple, and I expect this discussion to continue for a while before we come up with some solutions.  For the moment, we can give Daisey the credit for starting the conversation.

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♦  MARCH 16, 2012 11:55PM
Does it matter that Mike Daisey lied? via does it matter that mike daisey lied? – doloresflores_d – Open Salon.

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♦ March 19, 2012

Mike Daisey Proves He Still Doesn’t Get It

The decline of American manufacturing employment is an important topic. The nature of America’s trade relationship with China should receive serious discussion. The conditions faced by the workers who make our iPhones and iPads matter immensely.They deserve rigorous inquiry. They do not deserve Mike Daisey.via Mike Daisey Proves He Still Doesn’t Get It | Via Meadia.

See you at the next Post 🙂