Read it at The Atlantic
The tech giant might have just introduced a new educational paradigm.
A Brief History of Textbooks, or, Why Apple's 'New Textbook Experience' Is Actually Revolutionary
by Megan Garber
I would call this not only revolutionary (paradigm-shift) but also evolutionary (the digital person).
Plus, it is super-green. Think of all the trees that won't be turned into pulp for paper, and all the energy expended dealing with the mass. Remember how heavy textbooks were to carry back and forth from school. Well, they have to shipped and stored, too. Lots of energy is involved that will not longer be required.
BTW, the text book industry is a two billion a year operation. It's going to be transformed, too.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteOn a matter of principle, I would have thought that you would have been one of the first to boycott Apple products. I would not consider Apple to be a "Socially Responsible" comapny. See Yves Smith's -New York Times Tells Us Only Chinese Near Slave Labor Could Handle Steve Jobs’ Demands
Clonal, once one goes down that road, one cuts oneself off from almost all production, and I don't think that boycotts like that are all that effective.
ReplyDeleteWhat I do do is avoid buying new what is not produced in a holistic fashion and to favor holistic producers.
But it is very difficult to be a good firm in a bad system and make it against competitors that are taking advantage when you are not. I am not a Luddite.
I do question the morality of investing in companies that profit from exploitation and negative externalities, however.
IMHO, the better way is to protest specifically about where a company is going wrong.
Another thing is that assembling iPhones/components is NOT what I would call a "good job".
ReplyDeleteThis is not hard to do. Not challenging. Not creative. All it really takes is an organization/jurisdiction/culture that is happy to take the lead in a race to the bottom.
This type of race is what the parts of the world outside of the west seem happy to take the lead in over at least the post WW2 period.
I guess the question for the west is whether we want to continue to allow them to do this (to the extent we think it is voluntary on their part); or as it seems lately our moron "leaders" seem to want to actually get in the race with them...
Resp,
Matt, I saw this up close when I was in the Western Pacific during the Vietnam era. Pier One was started by a couple of junior naval offices like myself when they got out. I was in a position to do the same sort of thing with importing and was encouraged to do so by contacts I had. But I knew the conditions under which the goods were produced and declined. A lot of the detailed work was done by child labor, for example.
ReplyDeleteBut at the time, this was a very small part of the US economy. Unions were strong then, for example, and insisted on their not competing with people working in brutal conditions for a pittance. The rest is history.
BTW, a fundamental assumption of neoliberalism is that virtually all significant economic problems are traceable to wages/compensation being too high, and "free markets" means no regulations or protections. Go figure.