Hasta La Ideas

pIn yesterday’s Times, Rob Walker discusses the need for increased transparency and accountability in our designed goods in “a href=”http://nyti.ms/9sAa3a”Where Do Gadgets Really Come From?/a” Here’s a sample:/p

blockquoteOn the other hand, every so often there’s a stark reminder of how opaque the relationship between us and our many purchases remains. You might own a device made by Dell, Hewlett-Packard or Apple, for instance, but had you heard ofa href=”http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/foxconn_technology/index.html?inline=nyt-org” Foxconn Technology/a before multiple suicides by workers became a big news story? Foxconn’s factories in Shenzhen, China, with an estimated 400,000 employees, manufacture products for all three of those familiar tech names; the company has also reportedly made devices, equipment or components for Nintendo, Amazon, Cisco and others. It’s surprising enough, perhaps, that objects from such distinct brands are all produced by a single company. And as I read the stories speculating about whether working conditions played some role in the bizarre rash of suicides, I considered my own ever-proliferating gadget cache, wondering if any of my electronics came from a Foxconn facility./blockquote

pRob then follows up the post in his a href=”http://www.murketing.com/journal/?p=5728″Murketing blog/a, shining a light on the wonderful a href=”http://www.sourcemap.org/”SourceMap/a. br /
/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/news/rob_walker_on_design_and_transparency_16822.asp”(more…)/a
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