Over on MacRumors there’s a thread about someone who found photos on his new iPhone — photos of the factory in China where it was built, focusing on a single female worker there. Despite all the misgivings about having our stuff built in China and the images it conjures of sweatshops and harsh working conditions, these pictures look like they could have been taken at any high tech facility — cute Asian girl in a clean suit grinning and posing for the camera in a brightly lit environment.
I can only hope she isn’t fired or worse now that the images are on the net; in fact, it would be a rather cool experiment if Apple would ask the workers to take pictures of themselves and put them on each phone. When the phone is first activated, the picture could pop up as an Easter Egg, showing the person — the human being — who assembled it for you. Wouldn’t that be cool for a lot of products? Not an abstract little tag saying “inspected by no. 12”, but a photo of an actual person who assembled, built, mixed, cooked, and made your product. (Lush does something like this, their employees stick little cartoons of themselves on each product they make.)
Who sewed your shirt? Harvested your coffee? Picked your tomatoes?
Who sewed your shirt? Harvested your coffee? Picked your tomatoes?
