Course:HIST 104-99A/Assignments

The Era of Telecommunication Innovations: The Evolution of iPhones

Telecommunication reinforces interconnectedness and interdependence across the globe and plays such an important role in so many aspects of our lives, including social, economic, and political, that it is inextricably linked with societal systems. Communications systems date back to the dawn of civilization. Prior to the 1830s, methods such as smoke signals, torch signalling, flashing mirrors, signal flares and semaphore flags were used along the roads and over hilltops to convey messages from one point to another. These communication methods were replaced by the telegraph in 1838 followed by the telephone by 1895 (Seymour and Shaheen 2011, p.37). The modern technology that notably brings cultures into contact and accelerates transculturation through shared images and global narrative around the clock, is the iPhone. Although there were predecessor “smart phones”, the iPhone was the trigger of the accelerated transculturation through development of “Apps” for social media and sharing over the internet. The focus of this note is to examine the iPhone through the lenses of globalization, industrialization and colonization. The iPhone is not only a product of "cultures in contact", it is the medium for cultures contacting.

Colonization and the iPhone

The iPhone has become one of the most revolutionary products in the world. Since the launch of the iPhone in 2007, it has changed and still continues to change the world we live in. Whether you are sitting at a station waiting for your train, or at the desk of your work office, most individuals are seen glued to their smartphones. The iPhone/ mobile device, generally, has allowed people to stay connected to their families and friends, despite being in a different city or even a different country to say much further, due to the subsequent ease of access to the internet, making it much easier to stay connected using apps such as Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp and other significant communication apps mentioned earlier in this paper. This being said, the iPhone plays a great role in colonization; it acts as a colony of its own and allows one to stay away from ones place of origin without actually feeling “away”. The Internet is colonizing individuals physically, economically and emotionally.

In today’s world, the internet and social media play a key role in connecting individuals with one another from all around the world. It allows us to keep up to date with news around the world and also gives us the ability to share and exchange our thoughts with others and makes it easier to take steps to create awareness for important issues. In his article “The coming colonization of Hong Kong cyberspace,” Lokman Tsui claims that the internet “…has the potential to empower social movements” (Tsui, 2015). When it comes to protesting, exchanging ideas with others around the world and having your voice heard, the Internet and social media play “…an important role in the coordination and organization” (Tsui, 2015) for the individuals involved. It allows them to stay connected and share information freely through the internet, even though they might be thousands of miles apart from one another, in a different city or maybe even a different country. Since many are able to use the internet to help fight for rights in other countries, it allows us to connect the idea that the internet enables colonization of physical places through social media.

Just as the Europeans formally colonized parts of Asia and Africa for their raw materials, is there informal colonization of parts of Asia to create the iPhone? Although the iPhone is an American product, little of the materials or labour that make the iPhone are from the United States. When you purchase an iPhone, you are also “…buying a little of something that is maybe an LG, Samsung, or Sharp and myriad other commodity parts that are everything but American” (Finance Online, 2013). The iPhone impacts not only the U.S. economy and labour markets, but also includes China, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Europe. The rare minerals lanthanides, scandium, and yttrium are used to make the iPhone, “light, bright and loud (Finance Online, 2013). The colour screen, the glass polishing, circuitry, speakers and the vibration unit all are produced using the rare minerals that are found in Mongolia. The “smooth sensation of control when you swipe, pan, and zoom out and in the iconic iPhone touchscreen” comes from Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The gyroscope, which is used to track the phone’s orientation, is created in Europe. The iPhone is manufactured in China. Despite the overwhelming Asian contribution to the iPhone it is still an American product because “…its engineering and design are borne out of the ingenuity and skill of American developers and industrial designers in Cupertino, California, Apple’s headquarters” (Finance Online). It is evident that Apple, a very large corporation, exploits other countries for profit, thereby informally colonizing the countries economically.

Industrialization and the iPhone

Since the mid-19th century labour has shifted from manufacturing to the office due to the four stages of capitalist industrialization. In the period between1700-1900, the early factory system was born due to industrial revolution in Europe and America where technology’s role was minimal. In the 1940s mass production began in factories with fast paced assembly lines. Between World War ll and the late 1980s, labour began to move from factory to office and capitalism entered a bureaucratic stage. Since the late 1980s to the present, we have entered the internet era, or “iTime” (Agger, 2011, 119) an era that involves telecommunication through which the workers are connected to the office.

Telecommunication from laptops to smartphones now have compressed the workplace and physical space with laptops and iPhones as work stations that make us available anywhere and anytime, an opportunity granted to explore cultures, dialogues and information (Agger,2011, p.127). Physical labour has been transformed into e-mails, text messages and calls to supply services and the smart phone has become the factory that produces these services (Agger, 2011, p.120).The way we think about “culture” has evolved with the increase of industrialization and technology since the 18th and 19th centuries. While Darwin’s evolutionary theories are no longer as prominent, industrialization and the iPhone are polarizing people as commodity laborers (Sanghoon, 2011), and wealthy, educated consumers.

Workers were an abused commodity throughout Europe’s industrial revolution and the benefits of technology and productivity did not benefit people throughout the world equally. Foxconn’s factories in Shenzhen leverage “armies” of cheap labour where workers are machinery in the fully integrated factories in China where workers are little different than the indentured slaves of earlier times (Balfour, 2010). The copycat suicides in Foxconn’s massively scaled factories are reminiscent of those in Dickensian workhouses. The intellectual property is owned and maintained in a Cold War superpower, the United States, while the labor and raw materials come from the Far East. Even with the highly productive fully integrated factories and the diversified supply chains, the Asian labor countries keep only 5.8% of the iPhone’s profits, while the US keeps 58.5% (Sanghoon, 2011, p. 7). File:IPhoneValue.docx

Much like in the time of Europe’s industrial revolution, raw materials for iPhones are extracted from places like China and Mongolia with cheap labor and lax environmental laws. Planned obsolescence after 1-2 years drives environmental damage with consumption of raw materials, consumption of fossil fuels for distribution, and landfill (Rodriguez, 2015).

Globalization & the iPhone

The rise of the iPhone, and smartphones in particular, has been aided in no small part by the help of globalization. A small company from California enabled an unprecedented world of change thanks to a small, pocket computer released in 2007. Now, we live in a world where those fortunate enough are connected in an ever growing and changing number of different ways such as calling, texting, video chatting, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, LINE, and WeChat. A confluence of circumstances has brought this age of increased connectivity amongst individuals; for instance, the increased spending power by consumers, outsourcing of labour, falling costs of components, and global brand awareness, all are factors that have been contributing to the rise of smartphones and have been enabled primarily by one factor, the increasing power of globalization.

The evolution of the mobile phone in tandem with globalization can be traced back to "[t]he world's first electronic digital computer" and the ENIAC (Weik, "The ENIAC Story"). The ENIAC was so big that it went from floor to ceiling (TexasDex, "The ENIAC") (Freiberger, 2015), but as the years progressed, the computer was rapidly iterated. The line from the ENIAC to the smartphone really took off in the 1960’s and 1970’s, as "the most dramatic trend … was miniaturization" (Abbate,1999, p. 1695). Following this, the next important step was for computers to be present in every home, and in the late 1970s and 1980s the Apple II was one of the first computers to reach mass market success (Abbate,1999, p. 1696). However, the most important step was the evolution of the internet. The nexus of globalization is the internet. Everyone is instantly able to connect with each other and disseminate information through a variety of platforms. Whether it’s a user unknowingly live-tweeting the raid of Osama Bin Laden, to hailing a cab with Uber, this new form of globalization is enabled with the rise of the smartphone. Considering the explosions of applications and their impact on globalization, the evolution of computers has been nothing short of astounding, especially in the past 8 years.

Qualitatively, the attractiveness of the iPhone is quite intuitive. It represents a piece of technology that has the power to make one’s life much more convenient and enjoyable. Globalization has been the catalyst for a culture shift in the Western world where individuals are experiencing hyper-competitive professional and academic environments. With the rise of technology, and the ease of communication that followed, the market for talent is wider than it has ever been. Companies no longer have to hire regionally, as technology has greatly increased their ability to screen applicants globally. This has created an environment where every competitive advantage matters for the professional individual. In his book, iPhone for Work: Increasing Productivity for Busy Professionals, Ryan Fass (2009) reveals how many companies are integrating the iPhone into their businesses by providing them to employees (p. 17). It is clear that the popularity of the iPhone has been positively affected by globalization through the intense competitive nature of an increasingly technological world.

It is important that we distinguish between the iPhone and other smartphone models. The iPhone has long been the dominant smartphone among its rivals, in fact, as recently as 2014 Apple earned 92% of all profits earned in the global smartphone market. Furthermore, with an approximate 20% share of the global market for smartphone users, the iPhone is the most used smartphone on the planet. As the leading player in the smartphone arena, the iPhone has consistently been the blueprint that other smartphones follow. As globalization will undoubtedly continue increasing the demand for smartphones, the iPhone will continue to be at the forefront of this technological evolution.

Conclusion

People have always sought faster and more effective ways to communicate to one another. The internet is a worldwide platform for the world’s people to interrelate regardless of geography. The iPhone enabled the launch of Apps and put the power of computing and multiple forms of unilateral and multilateral visual, audio and print communications in pockets throughout the planet. Informal colonization of Asian states and peoples that supply labor and material by the Cold War power, the United States, whose post World War II wealth and war fuelled innovation enabled concentration of intellectual property. Transculturation and globalization are escalating at an unprecedented rate as a result of the iPhone and the internet in your pocket.

CITATIONS

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