After Tuesday’s discussion in class, I thought about what it really means to look at how poor the conditions are for manufacturing some of today’s most important products.  As was pointed out in class, Apple seems to be the company that gets picked on the most for this problem, but they have done a lot to help reduce the amount of child labor in factories manufacturing their products.  I feel that if consumers want to further reduce the problems in these factories that they need to raise awareness and start pointing fingers at all of the other companies that are in the same boat as Apple.  Then, you end up not just looking at the electronics industry, but all the others that have these types of plants across the world.

I don’t think that most consumers care that much to start demanding changes in their favorite company’s methods of manufacturing.  Nevertheless, those concerned take trips to these factories and make reports as described in the This American Life podcast, and even make games (Phone Story) depicting the events that have taken place to make our beloved electronic devices.  In the podcast, Mr. Daisey admits that he still loves his Apple products even after what he saw at Foxconn, and I’m pretty sure the creators of Phone Story use smartphones of some kind, or else they probably wouldn’t be interested in making apps.  My overall thought on the issue is that I don’t think the conditions are so bad that people will want to change their lifestyle to try to bring about a change to the factory problems.