After last year's suicide scandals, Foxconn and its most glamorous customer, Apple, are again in the news, and--again--not in the good way. The invisible people who make our toys are supposed to stay off our radar. Just like the elves who make toys for Santa, don'cha'know? A predictably boring supplier is a good supplier: That's just how it works.
After reading--by which I mean deep-skimming and yes, I do consider that a distinction--the article, the Inner History Major snorted awake and mumbled, "Right. Basically we're talking the Irish Potato Famine. Got it. Zzzzzzzzzzz..." The IHM was mainly thinking of the monoculture component of the famine, what with the concerns about consistency and timing in the supply chain. Not to mention the overhead cost associated with putting the screws to multiple suppliers to insure that one doesn't chisel you out of that fraction of a penny on a three-figure tablet or smartphone: Quelle horreur... (An economy stacked in favor of absentee landlords and de-facto colonialism...that historical parallel pretty much speaks for itself.)
But IHM had a point, and the leftier-brainier part of me couldn't help but wonder: How scalable is scalability itself? True, macroeconomics has reams to say about the virtues of specialization. But even the most greasiest of gears can't avoid some grit. Or--more ominously--flaws and stress-points in the metal itself. Or--as this week has demonstrated--random acts of freakish nature.
(Then, too, the contrarian part of me--smirking sarcastically at every other part from its snarky digs--likewise couldn't help itself and wondered why anyone would shell out half a grand on a tablet to be like every other slavering fanboy/fangirl. Doubtless, the next iPhone/Android phone could easily get away with the schtick so common to '90 boutique catalogs: "Due to the natural variations in outsourced manufacturing, please allow us to select one for you." You can't tell me the Kool-aid swillers would pound that down...)
The geek in me just knows, though, that if you rely on disasters to test your failover plan, you don't really have backup. Which applies to people and their knowledge-sets just as much as it does to hardware and connectivity, by the bye. And baking in a certain amount of slack in lieu of stuffing more eggs into the same basket is, really, what it amounts to. Plus, I figure that if my own trade--programming computers--can be subjected to the ethos of assembly-line manufacturing...hey, we might as well make that botched metaphor a two-way street, no?
