Loud

The same folks making the most noise, though, will most likely be the first in line at Apple to buy that iPhone when it comes out. Stand in line, and blog, Twit, Book, Space their experience. Because, let’s face it, and I’m sure Fake Steve would agree: it’s a lot easier to dye your avatar green, than to make a lifestyle change that will make a real difference.

You get what you pay for

I left a comment on Shelley’s post linked above. Figure I might as well preserve it here as well.

I heard a while back that the Foxconn plant goes by the name of ‘Mordor’ among Apple staff.

I’ve been worried for some time about the basic sustainability of computing, not just the environmental aspects, but also about how we’re wasting human capital.

‘Human Capital’ in this context being the basic well-being of a very large number of human beings.

Anybody with an ounce of curiosity has known that the ‘cost of doing business’ in the electronics and computer industry is measured in humans, not money. But the prices are low, the computers are reliable while under warranty, after which they break, and everything grows.

Profit. Markets. GDPs.

It’s not as if we can avoid it. Boycotts are a naïve plaything for pampered middle-classs kids who think they can save the world by substituting one brand name for another. We couldn’t starve these companies any more than we could starve water. The problem isn’t with the fish in the sea or the corporations in the economy, but with the very makeup and drives of our society.

More. Faster. Better.

Meanwhile the health of the average Englishman (where I live) is worse than that of his twelfth century ancestor. The medieval life expectancy being of a divergent nature. If you lived beyond youth and early adulthood, you had as much of a chance of reaching old age as you do today. Except most of the people around you wouldn’t be obese, diabetic and with hearts messed up by fat and poisons.

We can’t go back. The goal of maintaining a good standard of living through technology is a good one. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of other people’s standard of living.

I stopped complaining and shouting about this a few years ago because there isn’t much of a point when you have no solutions and no idea of how to change things for the better.

Except maybe to try to live my own life in moderation. But that is more than made up by the excesses of my countryfolk, who are, almost to a T, the most avid pursuers of the rat race I’ve ever encountered.

I worry a lot, and think, about things I can’t do anything about. Which just leads to anger and frustration. I read about the lives the people who slave for us lead and I try to imagine what is like, and I’m always brought back to the stories my grandparents told me about the lives of their parents and their grandparents under the rule of the Danish colonialists.

Stories about all their siblings that died before they even managed to turn ten. How some of their grandparents had to give children away. Of widows and widowers. Of children working so that the Danish could have their fish.

In Iceland ‘Helvítis Danir’ (roughly translated as ‘Bloody Danish’, except considerably ruder) among the older generation might as well be one word.

I don’t like the thought of Chinese generations to come cursing my name in justified anger.