{"id":4615,"date":"2011-09-28T15:44:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T19:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=4615"},"modified":"2021-10-17T02:39:38","modified_gmt":"2021-10-17T06:39:38","slug":"theory-meets-art-what-apple-has-to-hide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2011\/09\/28\/theory-meets-art-what-apple-has-to-hide\/","title":{"rendered":"Theory Meets Art: What Apple has to Hide"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pear Tree in a Walled Garden by Samuel Palmer, c. 1829<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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While our collective imagination has been gripped with the images of downtrodden folks in other parts of the world uprising in seemingly spontaneous acts of defiance, here at home, we late industrial consumers continue doing what we do best: passively and uncritically absorbing whatever is in front of us.\u00a0 In our zeal to dive into the next hot thing that the market offers us, we seldom have occasion to question what is absent\u2014what is quietly being denied us\u2014and what social costs are obscured by the price tag of a commodity.<\/p>\n

Apple is an interesting contradiction in consumer society because, on the hand, it seems endlessly capable of producing new devices that we never knew we needed; yet, when we pick them up, they seem almost magical, enabling us to do things we hardly imagined\u2014or, rather, to consume things in ways we never imagined.\u00a0 In light of its continual innovation and its capacity to generate “cool,” Apple is often seen as progressive organization.\u00a0 On the other hand, Apple is notorious for placing authoritarian controls on its products.\u00a0 As the old quip goes: “Linux is great at letting you do what you <\/em>want to do (if you are willing to stare for hours at line code), Apple is great at letting you do what they<\/em> want you do, and Windows is great at crashing.”\u00a0 Of even greater concern, Apple remorselessly outsources it labor to China’s most offensive factories, some of which recently received attention because they had to install nets around the buildings to end a spate of highly-public suicides.<\/p>\n

Two recent artworks highlight the underside of Apple’s pristine white carapace.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Phone Story<\/strong><\/p>\n

On September 13th, 2011, Phone Stor<\/em>y<\/a>, an app that is part-game, part social commentary piece produced by Carnegie Mellon University Professor Paolo Pedercini, received international attention<\/a> when is was banned from Apple’s App Store<\/a> after a few short hours in circulation. The app’s website<\/a> explains that:<\/p>\n

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Phone Story is a game for smartphone devices that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. Under the shiny surface of our electronic gadgets, behind its polished interface, hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe. Phone Story represents this process with four educational games that make the player symbolically complicit in coltan extraction in Congo, outsourced labor in China, e-waste in Pakistan and gadget consumerism in the West.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Perdercini posted the ban notification that he received from Apple which explained that, according to its guidelines, apps cannot:<\/p>\n