Back in December, Don Tapscott wrote an opinion piece for the Toronto Star entitled “Canada’s online beehive“, in which he argued — begged, in fact — for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to “reinvent itself for the digital age” in order to remain relevant. I applaud Tapscott for making the argument; I’ve made it myself, too, both internally and externally during my time at the CBC. But I’ll be frank: I don’t share Tapscott’s breeziness. To achieve such a goal, the broadcaster must shed its staid bureaucracy and develop an internal culture of technological innovation to drastically reinvent how it does business. Continue reading
Should we feel bad about working conditions at FoxConn?
Lost in the uproar over Mike Daisey’s significant fabrications about Chinese working conditions is what Ira Glass calls the “normative question underlying all the reporting… as somebody who owns these products, should I feel bad?” As I’ve stated before — and as the New York Times’ own investigative report showed — the story about working conditions at Apple suppliers is essentially true. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether any of this is acceptable, keeping in mind that, a century ago, working conditions in America were equally if not more harsh. Let me view this whole episode through the lens of another product that’s just as valuable to New Yorkers as smartphones: the subway system. Continue reading
What’s it like to interview at Google?
I recently had the opportunity to interview at Google for a position in their New York office as a Technical Program Manager (TPM). I found out today that I didn’t make the cut. But in the process of interviewing, I found out a lot more about the company, how it does its work, and ultimately concluded that the role was probably not a good fit for me anyway. Here’s some information about what my experience was like, and also what I found out about the company while I was there. Continue reading
This American Life retracts FoxConn story
Just as I was out doing research on a long-delayed blog post about working conditions in Apple’s factories, the news that This American Life is retracting its episode “Mr. Daisey Goes To The Apple Factory” hit my inbox. While it’s regrettable that — if it’s true, because at this point, who knows what to believe — Daisey fabricated parts of his account, the whole episode overshadows the fact that many of the conditions described in his piece are actually true. They’ve been reported elsewhere, including the New York Times. FoxConn workers have committed suicide over long hours and low pay. Many other companies in China do employ the same labour practices. And, of course, it’s obviously true that Apple has outsourced manufacturing work to China exactly because the costs are lower, even though Steve Jobs used to be proud that Apple Macintosh computers were manufactured in the United States.
The public (and This American Life listeners) will now be left with an hour-long, self-flagellating examination of how authenticity and credibility in journalism has yet again been ruined. Mike Daisey will be branded as just another John D’Agata, someone who invents facts for no better reason than that it makes for a better story. (I wonder what kind of service he’ll get now when he calls AppleCare.) And, as iPad 3 sales exceed sales records, Apple’s share price will hit $1,000 in the next six months and be a better capitalized company than the lowest 50 countries on the Human Development Index combined, while everyone forgets about the actual issue that was being addressed here: appalling labour practices in overseas factories making electronic widgets for the developed world.
Shame on you, Mike Daisey. Not being a “journalist” is no reason to lie. And now you have done more damage with a bunch of fabrications than if you had just stayed home and not “reported” this story.
Best iPhone apps for New York City Transit
Being both a transit nerd and an iPhone user, I’ve tried out a bunch of iPhone apps to help me make the best of my New York City transit experience. There are 51 iPhone apps listed on the MTA’s website, but there’s little indication which ones are good and which are bad.
Keep in mind that I’m strictly a subway user, so I haven’t had occasion to test any of the bus-related apps.
No post tomorrow: SOPA strike
In support of the Stop American Censorship movement against SOPA & PIPA, this site will go dark tomorrow. If you need a quick introduction to why these pieces of legislation are harmful to the future of the Internet, this video is a great:
I’ll be at the NY Tech Meetup rally in front of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand’s offices at 12:30 p.m. If you’re in New York and concerned about the future of the Internet, I’d encourage you to join me there.
The fine line between publicness and narcissism
I’ve finished reading Jeff Jarvis‘s “Public Parts“, a book that advocates and celebrates publicness as a force for good. While I agree with some aspects of Jarvis’s argument, I find that too often, living one’s life in public is just a more polite name for narcissism. And on occasion, Jarvis himself crosses into that territory.
Chef, devops, and the death of system administration
Last night, at a meeting of NYLUG, the New York City Linux Users’ Group, I watched Sean O’Meara whip through a presentation about Chef, the system configuration management (CM) tool. I was impressed. The last time(s) I tried to play with automation tools like cfengine and Puppet I got very frustrated at their complexity. The folks at Opscode have definitely succeeded at bringing simplicity (as much as can be had) to the CM space.
But what struck me after hearing Sean had nothing to do with Chef. Instead, I came to the conclusion that pure systems administration is eventually going to die out as a profession. The developer is now king (or queen), and that’s not a bad thing. Continue reading
Piling on Arthur S. Brisbane, unfairly
It’s not easy being the New York Times‘ public editor. At a recent talk I attended, Arthur S. Brisbane said, half-jokingly, that few people at the Grey Lady want to have lunch with him. But the criticism from outside the paper’s 8th Avenue offices can be just as blistering.
Legacy of “Windows Phone” haunts Nokia’s new Lumia smartphone offering
Yesterday, Nokia released its new Lumia 900 smartphone, featuring the new Windows Phone Mango operating system. But the struggling cell phone maker is likely to have problems battling the image and branding problems of its operating system partner, Microsoft.