Making Stuff Cheap

McDonalds Global Strategy. How it became such Global entity.

"more recognizable than the cross internationally?"

What are your personal assumptions about “Made in China”?

My initial thought about “made in china” is “hecho en mexico” then think about coca-cola 

and how much better it is due to the fact that they don’t use high fructose syrup as a sweetener. I don’t think much about it, other than we outsource so much and we personally don’t need to. we have an overproduction of products internationally. Furthermore, why do we need so much? Why do we put so much value on material things. I’m being hypocritical, I love my computer, i love my phone, but we really don’t need to put so much value if someone else has the same thing three feet away. It’s all bullshit. I can live without my phone, i can live without my computer. I’d rather spend my days creating music, drawing and painting anyways. Made in China just further exploits the United States as empirical consumerist society. We all (majority)participate and we all are guilty.

What is globalization, and how does it impact product manufacture and sales?

Globalization is the empirical way in which consumerist societies outsource their

manufacturing needs dominating a workforce internationally. Low wage workers providing high wage products. It has great revenue, but why does it have to

harm, devalue, and impose on people’s traditions, cultures, and ultimately way of

life?

What are the working conditions at foreign factories producing goods for the U.S. market?

from what we have read these foreign factories producing goods have horrible working conditions. places often have polluted water systems. horrible wages for living. and the societies that people are from are often corrupt. 

Why do factory workers in foreign factories work under the current conditions?

Pure opinion, but i believe they work there due to the fact that they need a way to support themselves, adapt to what society believes they should be doing and living a life of corrupt meritocracy where seldom do they move up. Pretty much being a workforce of slave labor. Not to mention children are taken and exploited for work. because they are children they can’t make the same amount of money as an adult.

What role, if any, does gender play in the U.S.-overseas production chain?

Does gender have a role in making profit? does gender have a role in neo-slavery?

How and why does a product become disposable?

a product becomes disposable because there is always something new, shiny, and “better” being produced. Electronics have a way of not being adaptable because it’s something to control the masses with. Products that are disposable are for people who are following the fads.

What are the economic and social impacts of globalization?

economic impacts show great revenue. social impacts include but aren’t limited to acculturation and assimilation of one society to another.

Gentrification in Silicon Valley

Gentrification is the shift in urban environments where an increase in wealth and property value weeds out crime, poverty, and the displacement of poorer people. Google bus and san francisco is involved through the use by residents commute.  Through gentrification, businesses try to raise the economy by creating work. Through work they are able to bring about a change that lower classes are often pushed away from. Because there is correlation between race and class, race becomes an undeniable factor. When people become displaced, awareness and activism becomes connected.

Google bus got involved by invading the bay area. Their bus does provide jobs for people, but they often do displace the people that live in areas where a bus stop was built.  According to Salon rent near the Google bus stops are rising. This is causing the gentrification. It’s pushing people out of their homes due to the rise in living costs. 

Furthermore, buses get away with breaking public street laws and codes. They are specifically targeting the latin community creating public discord and racial issues. They are making sure that the latin community has their fare tickets and when they aren’t officials are brought into the mix resulting in deportation of some. Legal or not they have families here in the United States.

Google doesn’t stop with buses, however. They are expanding their businesses to urban places where “there workers would rather work.” This creates even high living rates and pushes out the lower class of people. 

in my opinion if there wasn’t a problem, there wouldn’t be concern for peoples’ lifestyles. there wouldn’t be any awareness. i wouldn’t have to hear about it. it’s definitely good news for people who love bad news. 

what bothers me the most about the Google bus fiasco is that they are able to escape legal misconduct due to having the power. They have the power of corporate wealth and further concludes that wealth influences government. Corporate entities should have no power in government the same way religion should have no power in court.

All in all, I feel that gentrification is inevitable. People place too high of a value of their gadgets and tools to want nothing to do with them. The next great big thing might be made here or there, but it doesn’t have to force people out of their homes. It’s frustrating to me to think about the luxuries I have now compared to someone who has less. It’s something I can share, but not something I can yet change.

How the Internet Enables Intimacy

Stefana Broadbent exclaims that the internet has created a bridge between humans and increasing the amount of intimacy an individual shares between his or her’s personal sphere of contacts. The internet as a tool has created a vast web of communication between people near and far. However, we aren’t as connected to someone who is not already in our personal sphere of family and friends. We are more connected now to the people who mean most to us. People disengage from public to engage in communication with their loved ones.

I cannot argue that internet has connected people. But should this freedom be limited? I think so. How often are we distracted by the devices we use? quite a bit. I find it a problem both at work and at school. Even in social outings and gatherings. Why be distracted? There is a time and place for everything, i can’t make the choice for you whether or not you use your device to disengage; i just find it rude. I have often get after coworkers for hiding in the back to use their phone during work to text, make private phone calls, or play games. It would be easier for them to ask permission first and get set aside for them to do their business, just not on company time. 

The costs of intimacy often create it’s own barriers. Most often do I try to hang out with friends and family, but it’s not exciting as things used to be. People isolate themselves into their own world of Candy Crush or texting people they seem to be more engaged with. I have tried to make it a point of making my phone silent throughout the day and getting to contacting people back when I find most convenient. However, I sometimes find myself distracted during class and send messages here and there so I’m a hypocrite. It’s a privilege and convenience that we all don’t consider to put the people who made these devices into the picture. Nor do we care or are aware of the situations that brought our device to us.

In the article, Deadly Behind Cellphones and Consumer Goods, it’s brought to our attention that many people suffer to make a living. They are engaged in long shifts working and sleeping to make money to support themselves or people they care about. The harsh conditions of working long hours often drive some to suicide and others to isolation. In addition, most don’t speak the same language and it’s frowned upon so people are even more disconnected from forming and forging relationships with their comrades of work. 

It may be my realization that nothing is going to put an end to this because people enjoy their devices too much. People tend to brush the harsh reality of such events and conditions under the rug. It’s something that doesn’t seem to cross many people’s minds because that’s the mystery of the product. We don’t want to accept blood and suffering when buying products.

The World in "www."

*opinion based response

The society in which we live in today shows us that technology has impacted and created our sense of individuality. A large percent of americans have the capabilities to access the internet. We use technology so much that it seems to serve us as means of gaining our information quick and fast. We live in this world of capitalism. We engage in exchanging information fast. We don’t really seem fascinated with how it came about. 

Office Tigers by Liz Merman presents to us what it means to globalize our products and corporate well-being by outsourcing our work to “people who aren’t utilized.” I had a very hard time digesting this movie. It wasn’t as interesting as it was infuriating. Socioeconomic status and corporate imperialism threading across what we call “third world” countries. We are disseminating information and work we don’t want.

Not only do we give work to other places, we destroy their culture by infringing and invading our own. Call centers in India replace their own histories for fake ones. They recreate themselves for our benefit. We disvalue them with trainings for them to appear as american. They work with the discomfort of becoming someone who doesn’t exist. Their accents are covered, their identity is changed, and at the end of the day they are expected to return to their own lives.

We displace humans as a means of not having to do the work ourselves. 
Our readings tell us that racism permeates the digital world and shows us racism. We then cybertype people. We create a whole new world where we are able to see what was. It shows us the natives of places “conquered.” In addition, we create the labels in which cybertyping helps support the stereotyping of peoples worldwide. The labels which anyone now has the access to. A space which gives us new ways to transfer racism. 
this all for me is distasteful. however, there is no way i can change this at the moment. sure awareness is key, but so is action radical and not. we outsource so much work it would be detrimental to the economy to not. this is because we as a society are in such disarray we can’t even figure out what we want for ourselves. we let people think for us. we don’t go against a flow of information that is threatening an already established way of thinking. “why reinvent the wheel?”


What I disapprove most is the greed that disseminates as a result. By creating a world of materialism based on currency. People work so hard and want to earn so much when we have a world that can sustain itself and instead we worry about the person who is and should be number one. We as a society care more about selfish “needs” and “necessities” that we forget about the other people we trample on knowingly and unknowingly. We are creating the world of modernization and post-modernization where everything is becoming the same.



Not only that but how this fuels western society thought over the East encapsulating them in a world where they are unable to escape economic dependence. We keep societies other than our own where they are and continue by creating for them an inconvenient dual society where they start to become acculturated and sometimes assimilated destroying their ways of life.

Defining Digital Culture

The Filter Bubble

News feeds, news, Google searches, even advertisements have become tailored to you. Based on cookies, tracking cookies, even search histories and queries. Your internet experience is tailored to you. The information you see is individualized. This prevents information from reaching you based on things you click. 

“We get trapped in a ‘filter bubble' and don’t get exposed to information that can challenge or broaden our worldview.”

Pariser says that the internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not what we need to see. I agree with that. In personal experience, it’s a nuisance. Even on social networks it brings up statuses and things I don’t  really care for. What interests me the most is the time things are posted.  I don’t normally care for what top news is, just what’s recent. What’s trending to me doesn’t really matter? 

This is different from selected filter bubbles due to the fact that one is intentional while the other is algorithmically calculated. We don’t intentionally make the decisions for what is presented to us, but rather make choices that affect what we see.  The information we search for creates our “web of one.” We become disconnected from one another just as headphones, but then are we “trained” to do so? We certainly are enabled to do so. Over selected filters we intentional make the choice to do so. 

Pariser tells us to “beware” because the information we digest shapes how we as a society move forward or not. Do we as consumers become the cattle we drove or animals we domesticate? Or do we push forward use our  intellect and ability to think and challenge?

from brain pickings.org

There is a problem with what we are shown, so how may we ameliorate the problem if there is one? By becoming aware of the situation is the first step. Taking actions into your own hands is the other. There are preventative ways such as knowing your privacy rights given. Becoming literate with the tools we use. 

But who does this affect? It obviously affects the people who have access. For example, people who spend a lot of time on the web with personal access. Their information is skewed as opposed to people who have public access whose history and searches are documented with multiple people uses. It affects consumers in a general sense and provides a simple way for “capitalists” to invade the personal spaces created by individuals. It doesn’t matter what race, class, or gender, etc., you are. Your experience on the web is recorded.

There are spaces provided on web for people to act on similar interests. The internet provides spaces that we deem as virtual campfires. According  to Jenny Ryan, virtual  place regardless of race, class, or gender for people to interact and engage with like minded people across barriers of time and space. So filtered webs don’t need to impose on our lives if we seek out our information. But then again who’s to say what see isn’t already a product of who and what we are?

Brain Pickings: The Filter Bubble vs. Curator and the Value of Serendipity

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/05/12/the-filter-bubble/

Jenny Ryan The Virtual Campfire

http://www.thevirtualcampfire.org/conclusion.htm

TED: Eli Pariser

http://www.ted.com/speakers/eli_pariser.html

TEDtalk: Beware Online "Filter Bubbles"

http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

Unpacking 'Multitasking'

Can we, as humans, multitask? Does our technology and access to digital media help or hinder us in digesting information? Clifford Nass supports that multimedia multitasking is a hinderance to society and that it’s near impossible to multitask. However, many of us claim to.  I would have to agree to a certain point that we, as humans, are able to multitask to a certain point. Digital media is both amusing and distracting. Technology today allows us to “digest” information in different new ways than previous media such as print and video, but in all reality the same way.  Many people, especially youth and young adults, seem to be attached to their devices in a way scholars and journalists call “always on,” what does that mean? Is it a problem? Is multitasking only a skill set associated with technology and a not a social skill set?

Clifford Nass has conducted studies to determine whether or not people can actually multitask. He claims that classic psychology says we can’t. His studies show that we can to an extent.  The quality of work diminishes and in some cases some people are just terrible at every task of multitasking. “Results are lousy” People claim to multitask efficiently, yet his studies show differently. People can’t think well or clearly when it comes to multimedia multitasking.

People aren’t apt to focus, I feel. Digital multitasking hinders academic performance. The attention span of youth and young adults is deceasing because of an emergence of immediacy. Patience is no longer a valued trait. I find that the thirst of knowledge has become or evolved into the mindset of a consumer or customer at McDonald’s. It is a mirror of capitalist thoughts for fast, cheap, and immediate service. Or as JG Wentworth would say for you, “It's my money and I want it now.”

This proposition is both amusing and distracting. It makes me feel more self-aware of my habits.  It’s giving me motivation to change myself, however habits are hard to break. It’s distracting because of guilt. 

Internet as a form of digital media is relatable to content of that of it’s predecessors such as print and video, due to the fact that it presents information in a way that’s already been presented. The differences between them are how easy it is to access such information. Where as print media and videos have solidity based in objects we can experience with our senses (i.e., touch, see, smell, hear, and sometimes taste) where information in cyberspace can be limited, where here I feel it becomes a less of a physical-emotional experience form of learning and focuses on pure emotional experience (you can't throw the internet). I feel as though internet provides a revolutionary idea by providing information to areas where there may be a lack of knowledge. It becomes a primary source for people who don't have the access to people with knowledge or places with the knowledge they seek (inadequate library for example). For me this plays the game of internet vs. libraries, print vs. oral, and radio vs. television. 

Because of the urgency and immediacy of information people are encouraged to be logged on and “aways on.” People are engrossed in technology because of a development of hyper stimuli. We are raised to be distracted. People even go as far to immerse themselves in digital forms of social media; such as blogs, WoW, LoL, and ever growing use of smartphones and tablets.

“Facebook is amazing because it feels like you’re doing something and you’re not doing anything. It’s the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway” - Sam Crocket

Our brains are constantly stimulated and developed that way. So when is there a time for our brains to rest? Dr. Rich exclaims, “Brains are becoming habituated to distraction and switching to tasks, not to focus.

In personal experience I find myself distracted. I used to like to think about myself being a good multitasker. in the scope of things, however, I still do things linearly. My normal use of a computer is startup, open iTunes, open internet browser, type in Facebook, new tab, type in email, new tab, type in other email, new tab, type in bank, new tab, change window, start music, change window, login Facebook, change tab, login email 1, change tab, login email 2, change tab, login bank, change tab, check Facebook briefly, change tab, check email 1, close tab, check email 2, close tab, check bank info, close tab, look at Facebook in a zombie trancelike state. message a few people. 

In other experiences, for classwork I try to stay on task with few minutes between 20 min increments of reading and homework to check Facebook or look up a video. However, when my icon changes from Facebook to Facebook (1) I get distracted and have to get rid of the icon just as fast when a 1 appears on any app on my phone.

I live in a life of distractions. But it’s always not digital media that distract me. It's my interest in art. I can spend hours folding paper, drawing, playing piano, cooking, baking, or painting. My other distractions include cleaning and organizing. Getting into the mindset of wanting to work. 


Frontline
Digital Nation
http://www.thirteen.org/programs/frontline/digital-nation/

New York Times
Growing up Digital, Always Wired
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0