The future of Foxconn

At TechCrunch, John Biggs presents a series on the future of Foxconn, a major supplier for western consumer electronics companies such as Apple. Made infamous by a series of suicides, the truth is more complex, found in the statistics of China's economic rise and the countless human stories that add up to it. The firm's vast campus city is home to thousands of workers, many of them living in company dormitories. Just feeding them is a massive, industrial-scale operation in its own right. In Shenzhen, home of its HQ, the median age is under 25. And while conditions are in fact better than other firms like it, its sheer size makes its problems so much bigger.

jasonjayr

I saw foxconn, and then that picture, and figured it was an image of a processor. After a double-take did I realize it’s an overhead shot of their campus.

I wonder if that design is deliberate ….
- jasonjayr
  
  And now my comment is out of place since Rob’s updated it. D’oh.
Richard Brennan

Unfortunately… in your lead photo, you’ve picked buildings on the WRONG side of the expressway!
That’s Huawei Technologies’s F-building complex at their Shenzhen Headquarters…The rectangular F2 building at the lower right is one of Huawei’s own multi-story cafeterias…
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Thanks, Richard! Huawei has a much prettier campus from space.
Cole Cabler

Efficiency such as this gives China a huge advantage if there ever is a world war using foot soldiers.
anansi133

“Everything follows from our own unwillingness to pay for the true cost of a device.”

In the short term, fortunes are to be made by offering us the deep discount ripoff, letting us in on the con, and externalizing our gain to someone else’s loss.

In the long term, the books must balance. The only reason such things are allowed today is because this is perceived as normal. 150 years ago it was normal to own slaves and be enslaved. What will normal look like in another 150 years?