The Scary Truth About Your iPhone

If you're like me, the transition from stationary home telephones to a society of mobile communication devices (remember the PDA and pager?) struck you as an unwelcome leap into a not-too-glorious future. While the techno-fetishists were touting the wonders of being instantly accessible to everyone you know (and even some you don't), people like me were closing their ears and crossing their fingers just hoping the hand-held digital revolution would pass and something a little more durable would follow in its place.

But--Alas!--we Neo-Luddites were all-too-naive! Rather than vanishing, the cell phone revolution took off (as we knew it would), compelling some of us, myself included, to stow away our atavistic notions of the primacy of face-to-face communication and get with the "new face of the Now."

But some distant premonition continued to tell me things were not as they should be. Technological Progress couldn't be the completely unequivocal good it was pumped up to be. Where was the hidden cost? Who was on the receiving end of our rapid ascent to a Technotopia?

Few people know about the immense ecological and social costs that result from producing the goods of High Technology. Cell phones are a great looking-glass through which to view the morally murky world of international trade (or "globalization") and all of the mining, processing, manufacturing, shipping, distribution, and marketing madness that goes into putting these delightful devices in our hands.

The detrimental impact of the mining of Coltan on the republic of Congo has been documented extensively by an ongoing series of BBC reports (which have had not the slightest impact on cell phone use and consumption). Coltan demand impacts both human communities and the non-human communities that live in the regions with coltan mining operations.

Every time someone purchases a cell phone, they are under-writing the cost of this wholesale destruction. This is the "global market" in its uncensored form, a maelstrom of externalized costs that are hidden by the marketing schemes which sanitize our consumption and blind us to the true impacts of our "advanced" way of life.

Perhaps no corporation has been more successful at sanitizing the violence and penetrating our collective psyche than Apple, which is featured in this week's Time magazine.

Yeah, I know. Steve Jobs IS a genius. Apple is a company whose products even I love. That little Apple makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, just like it does to you. Their products are hip, cute, and seductive, and exhibit a kind of subconscious pull. But as this short article from Mother Jones points out, all is not so bright and fuzzy as the logos and commercials might make it seem.

I won't spoil the fun of clicking on the little flash apps on your own by revealing here what great realizations are in store for you. But the copious list of labor rights violations, armed militia funding, destructive environmental practices, and outright corporate skulduggery should hopefully lead you to question your own (and more importantly, Apple's) (and even more importantly, Steve Jobs's) role in the impoverishment of whole nations, communities, lives, and ecologies every time you slide that little arrow to the right and start tap, tap, tapping away.