Tech Won't Save Us - What Apple Won’t Tell You About the iPhone w/ Brian Merchant

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss the development of the iPhone, how Apple manages the press, and how the parts of the company’s supply chain that get too little attention.Brian Merchant is the author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone and Blood in the Machine, coming in 2022. Follow Brian on Twitter at @bcmerchant.🚨 T-shirts are now available!Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.Also mentioned in this episode:In 1968, Douglas Engelbart showed off the “Mother of All Demos.”David Nye wrote the American Technological Sublime.Paris thinks Apple’s Steve Jobs Theater has big church vibes.Disgraced former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes tried to emulate Steve Jobs.IBM built the Simon smartphone in the 1990s, but it was ahead of its time.In 2011, Apple made $473,000 per retail employee — far more than other retailers. Its revenue per square foot was almost double Tiffany’s. That year, Cory Moll also led a push for an Apple Retail Workers Union, but Apple fought back and he left the company in 2013.In 2010, after facing criticism, Steve Jobs said the suicide rate at Foxconn factories was “well below the China average.”In December 2020, workers at a Wistron iPhone factory in India ransacked the factory because they weren’t getting paid.Jenny Chan, Mark Selden, and Ngai Pun wrote Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and The Lives of China’s Workers (US/UK).Apple files annual conflict minerals reports. You can read their 2021 report here.Support the show

I don't know how deep you want to go into the history of how the iPhone came about, but Steve Jobs literally had nothing to do with it. He made important product calls, I guess, but he wasn't inventing much. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this episode is probably the longest episode I have ever done, but I think that you will really enjoy it because this is a fantastic conversation with friend of the show and returning guest, Brian Merchant. Brian is the author of The One Device, The Secret History of the iPhone, and the forthcoming book coming next year, Blood in the Machine, about the history of

worker struggles against automation. He's also the founder of Vice's speculative fiction outlet, Terraform. Now, as you might be able to guess from the title of this episode and, you know, the time that it is coming out, Brian and I are talking about Apple and in particular the history of the iPhone and a lot of the details of that history and its development as well as, you know, its creation that was hidden in how it was presented to the public and that continues to be hidden today in many cases as we think about what actually goes into making an iPhone. I've wanted to have this conversation for a while because it has long annoyed me that when Apple makes these big announcements about the new iPhone or the new Mac or whatever big product it's putting out there,

you'll hear about the specs, you'll hear about the new design, you'll hear about whether, you know, the camera is better than last year. But very rarely, if ever, does any mention of the people who actually make these devices and kind of the environmental footprint of these devices ever make it into reviews and these articles about, you know, whether or not you should buy a new phone or upgrade your phone this year. And Brian makes a really interesting point in kind of linking it to this broader kind of culture, media culture that Apple created around its events, especially with the return of Steve Jobs and the kicking off of this period of massive growth that has made it kind of like the darling of the tech press for the past couple decades. So obviously, I think this is a fantastic conversation. I think you are really going to like it, even if you're not

super into Apple. Or if you're like, still a big Apple fan, I still think it's a good episode for you to listen to to get more context on this device and this company. So I hope you enjoy it. Tech won't save us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, a group of left-wing podcasts that are made in Canada. And you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com. If you like this episode, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. And you can also share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from this conversation. And finally, every episode of Tech Won't Save Us is provided free to everybody

because listeners like you choose to support the work that goes into making it every week. So if you like the show, you can join supporters like Greg from Montreal and Matt Monahan by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and becoming a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Brian, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Thanks, Paris. Good to be here. Great to speak with you again on a different evil tech corporation. Maybe evil is, no, actually, maybe it's not going too far. You know, obviously, you are the author of The One Device,

you know, this book that really dug into the history of the iPhone, you know, all of the kind of details and the people who I guess a lot of people would not recognize were kind of behind this product that so many people are reliant on today. And obviously, you know, as we speak, this week is Apple's annual iPhone event where they, you know, announce their big new product, you know, the product that brings in the lion's share of their revenue and profits, most importantly, every year. And so I thought it was a good opportunity for us to, you know, have a conversation to talk a little bit about that product that has become so central to so many people's lives in the past, you know, decade and a half, I guess. So I wanted to start

by asking you about, you know, the way that Apple positions and presents these products and the iPhone in particular, right? Like, you know, a lot of people can think back to that first unveiling of the iPhone with Steve Jobs on stage, you know, showing things off, even how he, you know, took credit for certain things that maybe he shouldn't have taken credit for. So what do you make of the way that these keynotes are structured and the way that they kind of influence how people think about these products? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think it's something that doesn't really get as much attention as it as it should. It's really interesting that it's become sort of this

subgenre unto itself, these keynotes, these like product unveilings. I mean, they're really glorified infomercials. They're really just kind of ads that people have been conditioned and the tech press and tech consumers especially have been conditioned to sort of anticipate as some exciting, dramatic event. And there's a couple different threads that sort of go into that. I mean, there is a rich tradition in the tech world that even predates Apple, predates sort of hyper-commodified tech. Maybe a useful starting point would be sort of this event called the mother of all demos that was done way, way back, sort of as early computer technologies were coming together. It was sort of the brainchild of a guy named Engelbart, Doug Engelbart, I believe.

I should pause here. It's been a minute here since I've been in Apple land. And in this after I finished the iPhone book, I shunned all things Apple for a year or two before getting back into the trenches. So not everything's as sharp as it was when this thing rolled off the presses. But yeah, it really was this sort of a lot of technologists cite the mother of all demos. A lot of sort of key sort of prototype technologies were displayed then. It was there's an early mouse and the keyboard and some systems that looked a lot like even Google, where people could collaborate on writing a document. Like these ideas were prototyped 50, 60, 70 years ago. It's kind of crazy to think how little we've progressed in some of these fronts. I mean, it speaks to how entrenched a lot of these technological traditions have become. But it also speaks to how old and how these things that we consider innovations are really not new at all.

Anyways, it was a big deal. It was sort of a founding moment in tech history. And a lot of guys were aware of it. It sort of spread in tech lore. You know, it was this was the time of Stuart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog. And sort of these, it really became an influential kind of even if you weren't there, it was actually streamed. Another technology we've become all too familiar with. But even if you weren't there, it was actually streamed. Another technology we've become all too familiar with. But even if you weren't there, it became one of those things kind of like a techie woodstock. Everybody was sort of like, oh, yeah, you know, the mother of all demos.

Like, yeah, especially for the tech set. So that ever since has informed kind of this is how you do a product demo. You get on stage. You sort of use a commanding voice. You show you bequeath the technology unto the world. And that was done even before these weren't products that they were going to sell, right? This was just a demonstration.

It really was a demo. And it was trying to get people excited about all these things that were going on in Xerox Labs and sort of some of the precursors to the tech company model that we know today. The second part is I would mention the work of the historian David Nye, and he talks about the American technological sublime. And he basically argues that these sort of big projects, not necessarily that demo, but things like the Hoover Dam is one of his early examples, where in sort of a fractured, fragmented society with lots of different religions, lots of

different political credos, there is a value in sort of the unveiling of a major technological work where we can all sort of just stand in awe of the feat of humanity with ideology somewhat stripped away, or at least not laid bare in the moment of its unveiling. And I think that is something that whether or not they're aware of that happening, a lot of the tech gurus, guys like Steve Jobs are attempting to tap into that. This is a wonderful thing. We're making this progress regardless of whether you, you know, you are conservative or progressive or if you're a Christian or it doesn't matter because we are progressing. And so they stand on the stage and they present the technology and they say, look at all this that this can do. This is humanity. This is in action.

This is humanity progressing. Please take part in this great sublime. A lot of that is hokum, of course, but it's this sort of, you know, American nature of showmanship that really has informed the tech entrepreneur and the CEO and these kind of talks. So all that said, that's maybe a lot of preamble to get to, you know, a modern day infomercial with an Apple product that we've seen happen like 14 times at this point. But that's what they're hoping to channel. And it really continues to astonish me that this event where they unveiled a new iPhone or the new, you know, MacBooks or whatever, the iPhone is still the big one. It's the biggest product in Apple's catalog by far. It's the biggest revenue generator, as you said. Every year, even if it's not a brand new model, it is still deserving of this huge sort of event.

And we lap it up. It trends on Twitter. People watch the live stream. The auditorium is packed. And I'm not the first to comment on this, surely. But it's one of these rare situations where even like more so than say the White House press core, you have a bunch of journalists who are allegedly, you know, non-biased, you know, supposed to be there objectively applauding every new product that they bring out on the

stage, you know, demonstrating sort of a fealty to the new products coming out. And, you know, I won't pretend to be immune to that because there's a reason why they do this, right? I had never really participated in the whole apparatus before I was doing the book. So I figured I should, you know, wade in to the front lines of the show when I was doing the researching. And it really is a powerful thing that that sublime is no joke. You're sitting there with hundreds of other people, you know, they dim the stage, they're experts at presentation, it's showmanship, it's salesmanship. And then, you know, the screen lights up and they have these really beautifully done ads and it's high resolution. It's all so

tightly choreographed. And like, I felt myself wanting to applaud along with everybody. I don't really I didn't care half an hour ago. But now it's like, yeah, Apple, like, oh, a new black rectangle. Hooray. And it is a strange phenomenon. And they have really tapped into it powerfully. And we can talk more about how they did that specifically and how they sort of built a system that would get there if we want. But it was a very concerted effort. It started by cultivating press. It started by closing off their access to hostile reporters.

It started by really controlling their information ecosystem, which now they're really known for, and then making these events and these dispatches the primary source of where everybody would get their information. And they figured out about 20 years ago that they could do this because people love Apple. People love their products. People love the software. They love the hardware. And if all they had to do is do one of these events a couple times a year, release a few statements, and then a whole ecosystem of blogs and dedicated tech bloggers and Apple bloggers would serve it basically of their own volition. They would try to hunt down the leaks. They would speculate.

They would post the pictures. They'd post the videos, and then the knock-on effect would lead to other more mainstream reporters covering what was going on in this blogosphere because it was generating all this ruckus. So from that sort of lineage, they got to where they are today, where it's a company that is, at any given day could be the most valuable company per market cap in the world. And they feel like they're really accountable to nobody. You know, they play ball with regulators, maybe a little bit more than someone like Amazon, but not meaningfully so. And they don't, you know, feel like they have to talk to the press. They don't feel like they have to, you know, give up any information they don't

want to. It's all about these Apple events. Yeah, you know, I think what you're describing there is fascinating. And, you know, obviously, it brings me back to the days when I was like, you know, a big Apple fanboy and checking those blogs to see what was going on. And like, I even remember back in the day, when I I was younger and I would go to Mac rumors, but I'm in Canada. So sometimes I would type the URL in, this was like, you know, back in the day. And I would type the URL in and put the U in rumors and it wouldn't come up. And I was like, oh, is the website down today?

And like not realize what I had done. But yeah, that's a bit of a digression. But I think what you're talking about with the keynotes and with the presentations and like being in the room like it was built kind of in a church-like kind of way, the way that the seats were built and all that kind of stuff. It's just fascinating to see how they kind of emulate that kind of style, right? Right. The cathedral of technology kind of. And yeah, and it's all intentional. And Steve Jobs sort of adopting this uniform and the turtleneck and sort of it kind of paints him as this messianic figure where he's bestowing progress unto you. It really is fascinating. And to see, again, to this day, how much that that ripple effect is discernible. I mean, Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, her trials was just in the news and she was, you know, people were commenting on how much she emulated Steve Jobs down to the uniform and a lot of tech. I mean, sometimes some of them try to pick their, they're not all just doing the same

turtleneck, but it's the same sort of like minimalist, you know, repetition, you know, Dorsey has his beard now. It does have all these connotations in the way that they present themselves and how they choose to sort of address their crowds in this limited way. When I was interviewing some of these guys who were actually working at Apple, sort of the rung below or like three or four rungs below the Messiah figure, they would say that even when they were at work on a given day, people were just walking around with the turtle. Like they just they weren't asked to, as far as anyone know, adopt this. There's no uniform, but they were just wearing the same clothes as their as their acolyte.

Just the way that, you know, a priest would don a robe. It really is wild how much it did and still does kind of seep into that part of the culture and its presentation. That is a fascinating example. I guess I'll put it that way. But what you're talking about there, especially with people wearing the same clothes as Steve Jobs, even at Apple, brings to mind the way that these products were associated with the image of Jobs, right? It makes me think of a quote from Chris Garcia, the curator that these products were associated with the image of jobs, right?

It makes me think of a quote from Chris Garcia, the curator of the Computer History Museum that you spoke to for the book. And he said, I really don't see the iPhone as an invention so much as a compilation of technologies and a success in smart packaging, you know, getting back to that kind of marketing element of it. So can you talk a little bit about how the iPhone is this kind of compilation of technologies that were developed over the course of, in many cases, many decades, and how there was also this team at Apple who worked at putting them all together into this really sleek package that we now call the iPhone. But then when it is presented to the public, it is presented as this is something that came from this one man, Steve Jobs, who, you know, as you say, is kind of bringing it down to us, you know, regular folk from above the symbol of progress. Can you talk about that

kind of difference in the reality of the creation of the product? And then, you know, how it is presented in these keynotes and in this kind of really stage managed way. Yeah. After Apple had a really rough 90s and Apple had kind of, to his mind, made the mistake that a lot of computer companies like Microsoft getting into too many markets, getting into sort of just kind of becoming more of a GE where you have all these models and all these different categories. And he really sort of decided that everything was going to be simplified.

You know, what products they were going to offer, how they were going to look, the sheer number of products. And he was also going to simplify and cut off the approach to giving press. And that meant in the previous sort of 20 years of Apple's history, especially early on, you can go back and read interviews and things. And it's surprising how open the technology industry was back then. I mean, it was really part of the ethos was that, like, we are freeing information. We're making these leaps in information technology. That was part of the program was to just sort of, yeah, you know, Steve Levy would walk in and they just kind of show him the stuff. And it was kind of this more freewheeling sort of situation. And in that case, it did benefit all parties because they got to look like sort of these

more, you know, progressive scrappy punks who are taking on IBM or whatever, who are doing the mainframe computers and sort of the old enterprise tech. But in the 90s, all the bad press Apple got about wrong moves and this and that, Steve Jobs decided that he'd had it. I mean, I don't know. I won't pretend to know his full thought process. But when he came back, he was really animated. He had taken a drubbing in the press for mismanaging the company in the past. And he was going to kind of come back with an iron fist. And in so doing, he set the precedent of sort of modern tech PR in that he just decided that, you know, it's simpler. And he would be pretty forthright about saying this. He's like, well, I don't want to complicate the story. I know the story of Apple and its products best.

It doesn't matter if somebody else invented it. I can tell the story the best. So he almost never invented anything technology wise. He made important product calls, I guess, and, you know, design, he thumbs up and thumbs down and people really respected his opinion, but he wasn't inventing much. He was sort of the tastemaker and the arbiter and the chief storyteller. And that was a big sort of moment, I think, in shaping how it was right about the turn of the century. And he says this in articles erasing the work of everybody else that had come before. I mean, when you're presenting a product, you know, it's almost always going to be the case that you're not going to. I mean, just given the dictates of modern capitalism, you're not going to just mention the lineage of everybody that you cribbed from. You're going to try to make the pitch for it being new and revolutionary. And that's another part of what Apple did to sort of

really move the game forward and really sort of cement the norms of modern tech commercialism. But, you know, the iPhone is really remarkable in that. And that's how the first chapter in my book that's not about Apple itself, looks at how sort of about 20 years before the iPhone, almost 15 years, there was another small secret team making a product that was going to be a smartphone with a touchscreen. It was going to have apps and games and do email. And it was early 90s, you know, and the idea for this product was just basically, if you're describing it to somebody who doesn't have any idea, they'd think you were talking about the iPhone. But it was IBM's early competitor into the arena. And it was, you know, it was too early to be useful to anybody. But the inventing part,

the part saying, hey, look, this is a useful conglomeration of technologies. Wouldn't it be great if we could do all this stuff? The inventing part, sort of getting the ball rolling, happened way early on. Even the packaging into sort of having email and having texting, having games, having apps, having a touchscreen that you would carry with you to do computing and use as your phone. That was super early on. You know, Apple didn't come up with that. What Apple did was really distill that. And they got lucky because they came along at the right time and they had the right crew having the right sort of ideas. I don't know how deep you want to go into the history of how the iPhone came about,

but Steve Jobs literally had nothing to do with it. The genesis of the iPhone itself within Apple was a secret project full of engineers and designers who were kind of itching to do something interesting at a time when they felt like there wasn't enough interesting stuff for them to do above board. So they were meeting secretly in a room kind of adjacent to the industrial design lab, and they were hatching out sort of the genuine sort of leaps that the iPhone would make, which is, to my mind, sort of the user interface design stuff. The stuff that really makes the iPhone the iPhone is when you're pinching to zoom, when you can

really move around media on the screen with your fingers in a new way. And that really proved crucial in sort of differentiating it from IBM's early phone that a guy named Frank Canova Jr. I always want to shout out Frank because he was like this early inventor. He was the guy who kind of came up with making the first sort of iteration of the smartphone. Nobody remembers him. When I wrote the book, he didn't have a Wikipedia page. He didn't have any, like nobody knew what Frank Canova Jr. had done, but he had invented the first smartphone. And he really deserved sort of a little bit of credit, I think, for making that leap. I mean, cell phones were kind of around, but he did the important work of just kind of like making it into a product. And then everybody in the nineties knew about it. It was called the Simon. It was the IBM Simon

phone. But anyways, so these guys inside Apple who were actually making the progress, who are actually sort of prototyping what would become the iPhone were doing so without Steve Jobs' knowledge. They had to keep it secret from him because they were worried if he opened the door and saw this thing that was messy, it was not beautiful at all. It was like, it was at one point, it was Mac software with a piece of paper put over a projector screen and they were doing the gestures and things that they were imagining would one day happen on a touchscreen. It just looked like a truly stitched together hunk of junk. And if Steve Jobs had opened the door and seen that, they all worried that he would just shut it down. And it really speaks to sort of the discrepancy between how we think what's going on at these tech companies where people are inventing all

the time magic. Most of it's desk job work where you get in your marching orders and you have to do this or you have to do that until sort of inspiration strikes like that. And so fortunately, they had that prototype lying around when it became clear years later that they were going to have to do a phone. And they felt like they had to do a phone because they had the iPod, which was big, but cell phones could do MP3s in the early to mid 2000s. So they kind of got marching orders from the executives who were saying, okay, like, this is going to eat our lunch if we don't do something. So it wasn't again, it wasn't like Apple, or anyone at Apple, even not even the guys who invented the DNA of the iPhone were like,

a phone is the thing that we need, it'll be a smartphone, that's the future. They were like, a touchscreen computer, that is going to be cool. And then it was the dictates of the business that were like, well, actually, we need a phone and we need it now because otherwise, you know, Motorola or somebody is going to come along, put MP3s on the phone and wipe out our iPod business. So then they had this prototype there. And yeah, again, nobody knows the names of those guys. It's Boss Ording, Imran Chowdhury, Greg Christie, Freddie Anzures, all these guys who like really contributed to the actual building of the iPhone history.

You know, part of the reason I did the book was to try to restore a little bit of the veracity to the narrative of what actually goes into making this stuff. The narrative not given by Steve Jobs, which is simplistic. I mean, you could argue necessarily so, but also, you know, harmfully so. I do feel like it's distorted the way that we think about building something, which is almost always a massive collective achievement. And it sort of helped further enshrine this absolute bullshit myth of the lone inventor, which has always been bullshit, always been bullshit. But now it's part of the culture with these noble entrepreneurs. And we sort of associate this weird sort of hodgepodge of inventor and businessman and entrepreneur. They're all of these things into this mythic

figure that can conquer markets and inspire investor confidence and give great things to the world. And it is, it's totally mythic and it's totally silly. And it erases the work of, you know, the thousands of people who are actually making it happen at every step of the supply chain below them. One of my favorite examples from the book is that the guy who actually has this great inspiring story, Wayne Westerman, multi-touch is kind of his, you know, he didn't invent multi-touch, but he furthered it in some very meaningful ways. He had repetitive strain injury when he was doing his dissertation and it hurt his hands too much. He's from the Midwest, no real deep history with computing or association with the tech world.

This very bright guy figured out how to sort of do multi-touch so he could have an alternative to the keyboard that wouldn't bust his fingers. A lot of that technology, Apple eventually bought that technology, piped it into the iPhone, kind of put him in a dusty corner and just said, OK, you're working with Apple now. And I mean, I'm sure he contributed a lot here and there, but even Apple was so swept up in its own mythology that they forgot to invite him to the actual Apple event. Not only did Steve Jobs say up there that, oh, we invented multi-touch. Well, no, this long lineage of inventors going back before the 80s and into the 90s and some of these really important companies who were figuring out neat ways to do that on alternatives to the keyboards and other things. But one of the pioneers that you hired at your own company, Wayne Westerman, he's there. You could have said, hey, you know, Wayne, Wayne did some great, great work on multi-touch. And here, no, it has to be just Steve Jobs. We invented it. Apple did it.

I did it because I'm the one on stage pointing to the word multi-touch on the screen. You know, some of it's marketing, some of it's ego, some of it's just sort of the beast of modern tech commercialism sort of that by necessity one would argue, but it's still totally flattening. It's just not in any way a reflection of reality. And it is just poor Wayne Westerman. Yeah. Not that, you know, he's fine, but it is just, it is a funny thing. Yeah. I'm happy that you brought up the story of Wayne Westerman, because if you hadn't, it was actually what I was going to prompt you to talk a bit about, because it is just so shocking, right? Like they acquire his company that was working on this technology. It becomes key to

the iPhone. And then he doesn't even get an invite to the announcement ceremony. And then Steve Jobs takes the credit. Yeah. Classic. Even before that happened, they were joking about how Steve was going to take credit. The way that they talk about Steve Jobs is that it goes beyond just like recognizing the strategic business advantage of saying that to the fact that there definitely is some deep, deep ego in there. The reality distortion field is famous because, I mean, people usually talk about it like a good thing, but it had the effect of totally aggravating hundreds and maybe thousands of his underlings over the years. But they were like, oh, you know, Steve is actually going to

think that he invented this. And sure enough, the way that he talks about it within Apple, not publicly, it's as though it's his, that it kind of sprang out of his idea. And maybe that's just what happens to executives who've been at a company for 30 years or something, and they're just used to taking credit for everything. And they really just have to tell themselves this story about it, that it is theirs, or they're so used to doing it that it's second nature. I don't know. But it is now one of the foundational sort of elements of the modern tech landscape, whether it's Elon Musk, you know, everybody thinks they associate him with the Tesla, he just acquired the company, like it's, you know, all of the things that he's

most known for, you know, Elon isn't an inventor. Even his biggest fanboys would probably see that, I guess, but it does have this impression that he is the animating force behind all of it. And it really is a toxic thing that we need this older white male guru in order to like bequeath the technology onto us, that it's not possible without them. And it's such a disastrous way of thinking about things for any number of reasons. But I think the last 10 years have really shown that it is ultimately more often than not a toxic and harmful vessel and model for innovating or for bringing a new technology product to market. We've seen it time and again, whether it is Musk or whether it's Amazon or whether it's the newer wave with Uber and Travis Kalanick. It comes with all of these things that

we should know better by now. Yeah, you know, I completely agree. And I think it's an important thing to bring up, right? Because what you're talking about there, kind of the culture of this tech industry that we have become familiar with, especially in the past 10 years, you know, really demonstrates these significant problems with the way that the tech industry is built right now in the kind of white collar part of it. But as you mentioned, you know, there's also a whole supply chain here that gets kind of downplayed or ignored. You know, when you look at the keynote, Steve Jobs is there taking credit, but usually, especially with Tim Cook now, he shouts out, you know, the workers at Apple who did this, blah, blah, blah, even if he doesn't

usually name who many of them are. But, you know, there are also a whole ton of people who don't even make it to that kind of very small acknowledgement stage who play a key role in getting the iPhone to the stage that it is at, you know, when it reaches our hands or whatnot. And that is also a key part of the book that I really wanted to get into. And so there's a few areas where I think that plays out that are important to discuss. And I wanted to start with the Apple stores because, you know, Apple has outsourced a lot of the things that it does now, you know, manufacturing,

things like that, that used to be in house, but stores is something where, you know, this is still part of what they do. It's, it's not just selling it through third party retailers, though they do that as well. But, you know, there has been a lot of talk for a long time now, I'd say since the stores were even set up or not long after, about how the pay that these workers receive is very low when you consider the amount of money that they make for the company, the value of the products that they sell, and how Apple, like many other retailers and tech companies, have also fought unions when workers at these stores have tried to form them. So can you talk a little bit about the retail part of the Apple conglomerate, I guess?

Yeah. As you said, these workers are extremely productive. They generate more revenue per head than the industry standard a couple times over, if I recall. Again, I don't have the figures at my fingertips here, but it was remarkable how productive these workers are, how many sales they're making. And at least when I was reporting the book, they weren't making commissions. They weren't making bonuses. And they were being really sort of pushed to the brink. They were working a lot.

They didn't have a lot of flexibility. And they didn't really have benefits or anything. The most famous incident of this, and he was ahead of his time, really, I think his name was Corey Maul. He tried to organize Apple. I mean, now it's kind of slowly seeped in. And it's great to see a new wave of sort of union drives among digital media companies, tech companies. It's become a little bit more familiar now. But back in 2011, I want to say it was, when he was trying to organize, I think at the time, there was 30,000 employees or so that worked at these Apple stores. I'm sure there's a lot more now. He got a lot of interest.

You know, it was a flawed campaign for a lot of reasons. And a huge one was, I don't think they were prepared for sort of the might of Apple sort of mustering its forces against them. But it really does kind of speak to how there is a tiered system in the way that technology companies think about who really works for the company, who is really part of Apple. And it really comes down to like, well, if you look in the bottom of the product, they put designed in Cupertino. Like that's sort of the important part, right? Like it's the people at the headquarters who are like really responsible for all this, you know, made in China, maybe sure, whatever, like sold in stores around the country. Yeah, whatever. But the thing that matters is where

this was designed and who it was designed by. So it does create this kind of a caste system. And, you know, if you talk to Apple store workers, they're extremely skilled. They know these products inside and out. They can identify your issue with your phone or with your computer. They are an immense value to the company. And especially 10 years ago, they were not treated that way at all by anyone really. I mean, the press mocked them for taking part in sort of the company, you know, they would have to do like, you know, workplace team building exercises that like people found to be cultish or something. It's like, well, you think like most of those folks are like super excited about having to do all those team building exercises.

No, this is, it's a wage job where, you know, you do what you have to do to keep your job and to, to, to try to do good work and try to make your supervisor happy. And, you know, on the other side, Apple is mistreating them. And it really, it was too early, I think for, for a union drive to be successful, just maybe like some tech products arrived before their time to catch on. I wonder now, I mean, with Amazon sort of union drives accelerating around the country, with tech companies really sort of making drives towards unionization more and more commonplace, I would not be surprised to see that come to Apple as well. And I do wish that I'd have more of a pulse on it over the last couple of years, because my guess is that there are things

afoot even now, because Apple store employees do kind of view themselves a little bit more tightly aligned with Apple than a retailer at Best Buy or something would, because they take pride in being able to understand these products and to make the systems work, to have the technological knowledge necessary to help the customers. And I think that was part of what made, to the extent that it was successful, that earlier Union Drive sort of catch on, is that they really did feel like they were being spurned by the mothership, so to speak. So yeah, I do think that it's a really interesting area. And I think Apple stores are ripe for unionization. I think union should be talking to Apple stores. Yeah, I remember when I was at Best Buy, you know, obviously, it's different than working

at an Apple store. But even then, you know, they would force you to take part in these kind of team building activities and stuff like that. It was just like an expectation of the job. And, you know, that's just what you have to do to kind of keep your job and keep in with it. You know, it's just like an expectation. Yeah, I work for Target, and I had to wear the red, you know, polo shirt. And we had to stand out and greet me like, it's not like this is what I would be doing with my free time. If I like it good. It's not my personality. It really does speak to how back then, even, even just 10 years ago or so sort of the press look at where the interests are aligned in the tech media, their cash. We could spend an entire episode criticizing the tech media, but the mockery was

at these, these poor employees, not at the company making them do it. And I don't think that that would happen today. A lot of people have wisened up, not everybody, but making them do it. And I don't think that that would happen today. A lot of people have wisened up, not everybody, but a lot of folks have wisened up. And it was really a process. And that, again, just to sort of tie it back to what we were talking about earlier, is part and parcel to this sort of environment of awe and of scarce information available to this ecosystem that Apple was able to sort of pull off tricks like that to align the journalists and the media industry with it and its goals over its workforces, over the people who are actually making the products possible and

aligning them more specifically with the C-suite and with Steve Jobs. It was really a remarkable trick and we're still paying for it today. Absolutely. You know, I think that's such a specifically with the C-suite and with Steve Jobs. It was really a remarkable trick, and we're still paying for it today. Absolutely. You know, I think that's such a good way to describe what happened. And just a final point on that, like it was fascinating to see that 10 years ago, you know, as we talk about unionization and organizing in the tech industry in the past few years, that 10 years ago, you know, there were people trying to do it at Apple, but, you know, unfortunately failed. But, you know, we talk about the Apple stores. Obviously, those are workers who are still within Apple, who are go in on the opening day, or sometimes Tim Cook or Steve Jobs would show up at one of the major stores and be there for the iPhone launch, right? But there are also a lot of people in that supply chain who we don't hear about very often, unless there's something really extreme that they do to make us

pay attention. And so the ones that I wanted to shift us, you know, as we move back through the supply chain, are the workers who manufacture these iPhones, you know, in particular, the workers at Foxconn factories in China, but now they are increasingly in other parts of the world as well, I believe, India, Eastern Europe, I think Brazil to maybe they're different companies, but you know, the manufacturing is spreading out a little bit over time. So can you talk a little bit about the experience of these workers who manufacture the phones and what the sites where they are located are like? Because you actually went into one of those kind of Foxconn facilities. So tell us a bit about that.

Yeah, the necessary context for anyone who isn't aware, this was about 10 years ago, we tend to only acknowledge supply chain issues when there's an absolute crisis. I mean, when there's tragedy, when there's death, I mean, anything short of that, our media will not pick up on. I mean, in this case, it was in 2011. Also, I believe it was that there was an epidemic of suicide at Foxconn. The main factory that was producing iPhones, the psychological toll of working at these facilities, so much was demanded of these workers. You know, it's repetitive, mind-numbing work where you're at a station basically doing sort of hyper-accelerated Fordism. You have your task and you're doing it over and over and over hundreds of times a day. And if you screw up, you are subject to getting shamed by your floor manager. They will stand

you up and then we'll say like, this is why we had to throw out this product. These workers are already in such fragile environments. Many of them at the time that this were happening were migrants from rural areas coming to Longhua, where this epidemic unfolded in Shenzhen, where they didn't have any emotional support systems. They were in many cases sending money home to their families. They were in dorms with three, four, five people that they didn't know, which they also had to pay Foxconn for a cut of their salary. So they were living on site with a factory, almost no recreation time in these bleak sort of brutalist urban environments. That's what I noted when I was able to sort of sneak into long haul with the help of a with a translator and bleak is what lingers in my mind long after

that descriptor it's just bleak it's just there's almost no green spaces almost no public areas or areas for recreation i guess none of it's public because it's all behind sort of the company doors, but there's up to a hundred thousand people inside these places at a given time. That's an American city, a hundred thousand people. That's a mid-sized American city. And they're all condensed into this sort of joyless gray urban area and working around the clock forced over time and if you screw up you get yelled at like my god like it just a crushing crushing experience so yeah there were at least 11 in a short period of time 11 11 suicides people would dramatically end their lives by throwing themselves off of the buildings um you know, in a final act of protest against these working conditions, basically. And that inspired a small burst of interest from the

media in the U.S. who did stories. Wired did a story. I think there was maybe a 60 Minutes piece or something, and Steve Jobs had to comment on it. And his famous comment was that, oh, you know, it's below the average rate, the background rate of suicide for other places. And it's like, well, you control everything about this, or you have more power over this environment than any other force. They're bending to your whims constantly. And that's what made it so brutal is that production was such that they had to match Apple's every order, which sometimes would be changed in a matter of hours. People would be roused from bed to come work on a new product. If something had changed in an element, they had to upend their lives constantly in this already grim environment. So all that had happened in 2011. And then as we do, the U.S. lost interest and I hadn't really heard anything about it for a couple years. So I went back when I was researching the book in 2016 and I was able to sneak in um yeah and i we we talked to workers basically we interviewed workers uh sorry i laughed because i remembered the way that we were able to do it as we just convinced this poor beleaguered guard that like we just had to use the bathroom i had to i had to go there's nowhere else to go i was gonna go and i was gonna i didn't want to have to go. There's nowhere else to go. I was going to go. I didn't want to

have to go in the bush right here. I don't know what the laws in China are. And then he's like, okay, just come right back. And me and the translator just ran off into the crowds. And we spent the next hour or so just kind of walking from one end of the complex to the other and trying to look into the rooms that were open. We couldn't find all of the floors, the factory floors of production for the iPhone that we were looking for, but we were able to talk to a lot of workers and learn about what life was like there. And the consensus seemed to be that it was terrible, that everybody knew going into it that it was terrible, but the pay was just good enough that it was terrible, that everybody knew going into it that it was terrible, but the pay was just

good enough that it was worth it. Everybody would plan to get out of there within a year or two, and then maybe try to find something better. Maybe at Samsung where conditions were a little bit better or somewhere else, just long enough to get their bearings in a new city. Again, a lot of them were still migrant workers. But two of these workers talked at length and they just were used really evocative language talking about how like it's haunted, but it's basically the ghosts walk there. Like the specter of death looms over Foxconn and everybody knows it because the suicides had not stopped when I was there. Somebody had just taken their own life after being berated, had a conflict with management that their peers were aware of,

and then took their own life in a very dramatic way. And I mean, since then, the workers know that this is among the only leverage that they have. So they would organize sort of protests or threaten a mass suicide if they weren't restored. Like, I mean, we're talking basic things that they were promised, like the overtime that they were due that was being withheld to them for whatever reason. And they were finally given the overtime that they were due and they came down from the roof in the most famous instance of this. But it's just remarkable. They weren't demanding, you know, even like an increase in wages or any protections. They were demanding what was due them. So it is remarkable just how grinding and

how brutal conditions were. Again, psychologically, we're not talking about people accidentally falling into open furnaces at a steel plant or something like that. We're talking about we're talking about misery, right? Your life just consisting of focusing on one rote motion that you have to repeat over and over and over and over and over 10 hours a day and then get up and do it again 10 hours a day and then get up and do it again 10 hours a day, wiping a little polish. And then if you screw it up, you get yelled at. I mean, think about how miserable that is for a second. And since I was there, wages have risen a little bit out of market competition is becoming real. They have had to raise wages a little bit, improve conditions marginally just to attract enough workers because there is enough competition among other factories, it seems like.

Most of production has been shifted into a place that's known as iPhone City. And from what I've heard, when I read about it again, I haven't been digging as deeply as I had then. But it seemed like a similar configuration with marginally better conditions. And since that big sort of, I think there was a New York Times feature on iPhone City a couple of years ago, a few years ago. But since then, we don't know. I don't, what's the labor picture like at an iPhone factory in China? Or I believe there, like you said, there was one in Brazil that's a Foxconn outpost or there was, it might have closed. I don't remember. But, you know, they try to move the production facilities to where they can get the most sort of the dedicated workforce that's skilled enough or tolerant enough of these conditions to do it.

And that has remained largely China. I think they've had less success in other locations because you need all of these things to come together. You have to have workers willing to put up with these conditions at low prices. And a lot of workers won't for the obvious reasons. So that's why when you see sort of talk about moving some production facilities back to the U.S., those discussions become so fraught. It's like, we've experienced decades of outsourcing. These menial jobs are so miserable. I mean, we still have some of them, but maybe politicians think that it'll bring jobs here. But watch the language around what they're actually promising, especially since this fiasco with trying to bring

Foxconn to Wisconsin, and that never materialized. It's really hard. It's really hard to do what China's workforce has been historically for the last 20 years or so, 30 years or so, willing to do. And that's put up with this very mentally brutal and rigorous work regime. It's a very singular thing. It has made Apple's success possible to an extent that Apple would not probably want to admit. I mean, again, changing product orders on the fly. What other workforce can you rouse at the middle? That's the example that they always give. When people say, hey, bring jobs back home, they say, are Americans willing to wake up at three in the morning to go put new screws in an iPhone because something has changed about the internal architecture of the phone? I don't think so. We have labor laws that preclude

us from doing things like that. So as long as that's the case, I think Apple has partnered with China in a very durable and very sticky way for the foreseeable future. Yeah. I think those are all essential points. And I would just add a few to add on to what you're saying before we talk about the next part of the supply chain. And you know, you're talking about how quickly Foxconn can bring these workers to, you know, the production line. So I would say to listeners, you know, think about the discussions we've been having about Amazon in recent years and the way that they put pressure on their workers. And then think about how this is like even many times worse than that.

And think about how we're talking about how that makes the injuries so high at the Amazon warehouses with the pressure that people are under. And think about what that is actually going to mean for these workers in China who are subjected to even higher pressure and longer shifts and things like that than these Amazon workers. And I would note, you know, if listeners want to know more about the suicides, and I believe even the situation you were talking about where the workers were on the roof and kind of had to negotiate for their overtime pay and eventually came down. I spoke to Jenny Chan last year, episode 27, September 2020, who was a researcher in Hong Kong, who spoke to these workers, spoke to one of the people who survived a suicide attempt at VoxCon. So you can get more information on that by listening to that

interview and also reading Jenny's book, which I can't remember the title of off the top of my head, but I can put it in the show notes. I think that's a really good point. When you think about how what Amazon is doing is they're working within sort of the, you know, as sparse as they are, we have, you know, labor regulations, you can't, you know, without paying overtime, you have to do a certain amount. So Amazon is working within those confines of an eight hour or a 10 hour shift, and then doing everything they can to gamify, to, you know, monitor, to surveil, to sort of go to workers to do within those parameters. Yeah, but you're, but you're right. Look at China, what they have to do, they can be dragged out of bed without, without all that apparatus necessary. They are subjected to this regime that is just

as punishing, if not, if not more so. So it's a useful analog just to consider, you know, how important just these even – I mean, we bemoan our lack of labor protections that we have, but even having some, they're so precious. And we've seen a few fits and starts in China to try to make some pushes towards addressing some of that. But it is, from what I understand, it's just it's such an uphill climb. These workers have such a journey ahead of them. It's really rough. But hopefully, I would it would be great to see some some solidarity between the two groups as well. I wonder if any labor groups are working on that at

all. I think it's a good point. And I believe in our interview, Jenny also touches on that kind of solidarity piece as well. When you think about what's happening in these factories in China or other parts of the world that don't get much attention during the pandemic, there was also a story out of India where an iPhone factory run by Wistron near Bengaluru was completely smashed as workers rioted because they hadn't been paid in, I believe, a couple of months or something like that. So it's just to show that these things still happen. And in this case, it's almost like, you know, Luddism in action. But, you know, there's a final piece of the supply chain here

that you also visited while doing the research on this book. And that is the mining, you know, where the minerals come from for these phones that, you know, make them all work. And just to set up some context, you spoke to David Michaud of 911 Metallurgist to kind of look at the minerals that go into the iPhone. And he kind of broke down the minerals in that iPhone to see what was in there. And you wrote that based on his analysis that a billion iPhones were sold by 2016, which translates to 34 billion kilos or 37 million tons of mined rock, which is a whole lot of earth. And each ton of ore processed for metal extraction requires three tons of water.

So that means each iPhone polluted around 100 liters or 26 gallons of water and producing 1 billion iPhones fouled 100 billion liters or 26 billion gallons of water. And, you know, you go on about the chemicals that were also necessary for that, the cyanide, you know, all of these things that are necessary to go into making these phones. So can you talk a little bit about the mining footprint and then also what that means for the workers who are pulling these minerals out of the ground to make our electronics work? Yeah, no, it was really remarkable. That was a fun project. He pulverized a brand new phone and analyzed the elements. We were really able to distill down how much of each sort of mineral and element was contained inside the phone, really to kind of truly get it back to the basics to see what it started as.

That is just to say that each phone, even, you know, that's not as much of a footprint as a lot of other things, making a car or whatever. But it's this tiny little consumer electronic that we hold in our palm. And yet each and every one of them is just fouling so much of our natural resources. It's just, it's useful, at least for me to keep in mind that how much sort of, you know, controlled destruction has to take place and how much contamination, how much of a footprint we're leaving just to have one of these, which a lot of us are buying every year, every two years, every three years. I hope you're not, I hope you're holding on to it as long as you can. But that said, it is just a window into the destruction that we are not often aware that we're causing through our consumerism. of doing that destructing, um, up to a certain point, Apple was forced to comply with sort of this somewhat obscure provision of the, the Dodd-Frank act, which made them sort of publish their supply chains, uh, at least as, as it pertained to a number of conflict minerals.

I don't know if they still have to do that. That might have expired a few years ago. Trump may have helped it expire or something like that. But for a while, they were printing these really interesting documents that they were forced to sort of, you know, chase down. Oftentimes, each leg of the supply chain can involve many different forking paths where they're getting the minerals for each product, where, I mean, you name it, every continent, they have resources being gathered from, you know, whether it's tin in Indonesia, or it's the cobalt in Africa, or on and on. So you can really just kind of throw a dart at one of these maps and say, where am I going to investigate this part of Apple's supply chain today? Where would I go? And if I'm being honest, the one I chose was because it had some like poetic significance

to me in that it turned out when I was reading one of these docs, I saw that Apple was gathering tin for its devices, for its iPhones and MacBooks and whatever in the very same minds, the same network of mines that the Spanish Empire had used to mine silver in. The same series of mines, the same place, 200 years ago or so. The silver's been dredged out of there, but it continues to be active for other metals, and tin is one of them. So you can see on these reports that they were getting tin.

The reports tell you what smelter they were using, and you can start to deduce by following up the supply chain or which companies are moving materials from the mine to the smelter, where they came from. And at the time I was doing the book, they were getting tin from, from this mine in Bolivia that was coming from, it's called Cerro Rico, the rich mountain or the mountain that eats men, has tons of mythologies. Historically, just one of the worst places in history, in human history, the Spanish conscripted indigenous populations to do the labor there. And who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people died over the

decades working in those mines. I mean, some people estimate the figure is way up into the millions even, which is just staggering to think of that sort of loss of life in the obtaining of a metal that they could use to print their money. So for me, I was interested in it because it kind of put these two sort of bookends between, you know, this was sort of the beginning of the global currency system. They're printing money using silver to sort of establish their currency. And that helped them secure sort of their economy and they had helped them gain dominance over other economies. And then today we have at the other end of capitalism, Apple going in there using the tin that it mines there to create the most profitable product. Some analysts think maybe in history, the profit margins they're able to extract from these devices.

So maybe arguably another pinnacle of capitalism using the same techniques as the Spanish Empire did, including child labor. There was a report that had come out that had identified these mines as being home to child laborers. And that certainly seemed to be the case when I was there. I heard stories from miners. I didn't see any children there. i went into the mines uh with a colleague a shout out to to jason kevler who uh is now the editor-in-chief of motherboard but we went in there and it i mean it's so dark and so dank and they light a little cigarette or pour some beer onto an idol for good luck in the mountain and And then you, in you go, uh, and light disappears pretty quick and you can't stand up, which is why it's easier for children to get in there who can

carve out some, some minerals. But I mean, I don't, we were not in there long before Jason basically had a panic attack and we had to get out of there. People are in there every day. Kids are in there every day. The story we heard was that two kids had, they drank really strong moonshine, basically. And they suggest that as a gesture, if you visit the mines, you bring some of it to give to the miners to sort of soothe their, but this is stuff that, you know, this is just stuff that'll break your brain. It smells like rubbing alcohol. But the story that we heard was that the week before we got there, two kids had gotten drunk in there and had gotten lost and they had frozen to death overnight um and this report had found that there were child miners who were active um and it's because it's you know in bolivia the mining

industry is not heavily regulated it's at all it in fact there's like a movement to just kind of make child labor completely legal because it's so rampant anyways. But it's a very loose system where you basically have these collectives that kind of mine, they pool it, then they sell it to a smelter. And then the smelter sells it to whoever and then who then sells it to the next manufacturer who that makes a part for Apple. And then they use the one piece and then they sell it. You're talking six or seven steps away from Apple at least. Uh, so that is why Apple and every other consumer electronic company, right. Can sort of hide behind, um, this claim to, to not having accountability over this because it's, it's so far down. I mean, in their defense, it is difficult to police because they have to be proactive about it. But they're using that labor, all the various products that they're

profiting off of, all the extracted minerals and so forth, are being done so as humanely as possible. And yet, it's like whack-a-mole. When I asked Apple about this, they refused to respond. And then I wrote an op-ed in the LA Times about it. And then I tried to get them to comment again. And they said, oh, we've stopped using that one. So whether or not they stopped using it after it was brought to their attention, whether or not they stopped using it at all, there's some ambiguity around that. But the other famous examples have been, I think Bloomberg found that they were, it was also tin in Indonesia in just these horrific sort of mines that were made

of sand. So people would be chipping away at the side of a wall and then it would just cave in on them and people were just dying en masse because there was no real protections. And it was again, one of these completely unregulated situations and that was where they were getting their tin. You have other child labor across, you know, I think Cobalt was one in the DRC in the Democratic Republic of Congo where they had kids just going into the earth. And, you know, accidents were rampant there, too, a situation where mines are controlled by warlords and tribal sort of extraction infrastructures. And it's almost impossible to police. But every time it seems one of these is discovered, like, okay, then we're going to stop using that.

We're going to do better. And then a couple of years later, yeah. And it's hard because these stories, unless they reach that fever pitch of tragedy and horror where you can't look away, they don't really interest the American public all that much. So it's hard for newsrooms with their constrained budgets and whatnot to justify sending reporters on this beat. So it remains sort of a criminally under-examined element of

sort of the production of the, I mean, that goes for not just Apple, of course, but every single consumer electronic manufacturer, every single product manufacturer. It's definitely a bleak side to the reality of producing these. There was an attempt, I think it was called the Fairphone. Their aim was to sort of make their entire supply chain ethical. And they were just having a hell of a time doing it. It's been so normalized to use the cheapest, the most dangerous, the most unskilled and disposable labor possible that it was so hard for them to find. I don't know if they were ever able to make a fully fair phone. I think they maybe said like, well, we're going to do this much fair or something like that. You know, I haven't seen where they're at now or what has happened with that. But it was a really interesting project to try to highlight how very problematic and atrocious those supply chains are.

Yeah, you know, I think what you're describing there is essential. And it stands out to me, because it's one of these elements of, you know, the production of these products that, like, I would say most people don't even realize like happens, right? Especially when you think about, you know, the manufacturing piece, but also the mining piece, I would say, if listeners are interested in learning more, you know, I spoke to Theo Riofrancos, who, you know, is an expert on mining, especially lithium mining in episode 24. So if you want to learn more about, you know, the impacts of this mining, you can go listen to that episode. Brian, I kept you longer than I had expected to, than I planned to. But I want to ask you one final question. You know, we started by talking about how these keynotes, these Apple keynotes, you know, present the products in a very specific way. And so, you know, you don't find out about, you know, the manufacturing element, the mining element, what's happening with these workers, even so many of the white collar workers who go into

making these products, and how Apple developed this media relation strategy that was really designed to limit the amount of information that journalists receive. And then, you know, one thing that really stood out to me in And then, you know, one thing that really stood out to me in recent years, you know, as I've been learning more about this element of these products is, as you were saying, how little reporting is also done on it. And, you know, especially when you read the reviews of the iPhone and all of these consumer products, when they're released, like, you know, they talk about the new specs, they talk about the new design, but there's so little about these workers who, you know, are essential to making it.

So I wonder what you make of, you know, how much is hidden from the process of creating these devices and what the effects of that are. Yeah, a number of things here. First, I want to shout out anybody who does this, who does do the work, the labor reporting of this and gets in there. It's such hard work to do. And there are great reporters who do it whenever they can. So there are absolutely people doing it. I don't want to make it seem like nobody is. It's just an uphill battle to get the resources and to get, you know, the mind share to do that. And to groups like China Labor Watch, who like are toiling in some of the most difficult sort of environments possible for continually trying to shine a light on this stuff. So just there are people doing unimaginably great work there. But our conversation took an interesting arc because it, to me anyways,

really kind of helpfully laid out the way that so much of this is in service of an executive class or one guy, one guy or a few guys, and they're calling the shots. And this is exactly what happens when you have this model of technological development or product development. You're making a thing that is in service of making as much money as possible for a few people or one person as possible for the glory, for the profits. It really is that simple. And then you have so few people who are capable of making decisions about making different parts of that process more equitable or more humane. It's harder and harder to get time to do that if everything is stemming from the decision making, the thumbs upping, the thumbs downing, the egomania of the CEO inventor hero, this one person who, again, we have all been sort of cultivated to associate with that process. And it flattens the whole enterprise. And it really does sort of lay out how toxic our model of technological development itself is. is what might happen if a lot of these questions were asked before we went ahead and plunged into

making a new device whose sole purpose was to make as much money as possible, the highest profit margin possible, while exploiting as many people as possible to make all of that possible. I was listening to an early book on Amazon, Brad Stone's Everything Store. It's one of these hagiographies of Bezos, but it does capture some interesting moments. And one of those was Bezos is sitting there in the 90s and he's looking at the adoption rates of the internet. And he's not thinking like, oh, wow,

like how can I get the most books to people? He's literally just equating it directly with profit, with wow. If you look at the adoption rates and you can just assume that you can make money, the more people that are adopting the internet, he's just immediately extrapolating pure profit. That is his first thought, not of providing any service or any sort of benefit to the public. He's just thinking about extraction at the highest rate possible.

And that is the founding of Amazon. Like that's where it begins. And then everything that Amazon became is in service to him. All of the supply chains, even if he's not making all of the individual calls, they all have to think about making the guy at the top happy. The guy who's going to go these absurd decisions and ruthless sort of demands on efficiency and human labor. It's all in service of that. Not any benefit or not any great progress, not any even single product. It's all in service of that. So I appreciate this arc that we've traced out with Steve Jobs kind of as an example, as sort of in many ways the archetype for that figure. I mean, Jobs is the model for folks even today.

And that's where a lot of this sort of comes from, I think. I think that is a fantastic point to end the conversation on, like to cap it off, because that model of technological development is a serious problem. And I would say to listeners, if you want to know more about the issues with Amazon, you can go back to episode 14 with Brian, you know, the first time that we talked on the podcast about the Amazonification of the economy back in June 2020, to get more on why Amazon sucks. I would say, Brian, I really, really appreciate you taking the time, even the extra time, to discuss Apple, to discuss the history of the iPhone and all of the people and elements of this device that we are so reliant on that we forget. So thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I'd love to do it. Thanks, Paris.

Brian Merchant is the author of The One Device, The Secret History of the iPhone, and the forthcoming book, Blood in the Machine. He's also the founder of Vice's speculative fiction outlet, Terraform. You can follow Brian on Twitter at at BC Merchant. You can follow me at at Paris Marks, and you can follow the show at at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, and you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.