Something to blog home about
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 by kwatt
A twenty-five year old Chinese man named, Sun Danyong, committed suicide on Wednesday, 22 July, because an important iPhone prototype in his possession went missing. Danyong, who worked for Foxconn Technology Group in the product communications department, was said to be responsible for sending 16 fourth-generation iPhone prototypes to the major computer and communications company, Apple Inc. According to a story on foxnews.com, the man apparently had his house raided by Foxxcon’s security company after he reported the missing prototype. The man then told a friend that when the security officers couldn’t find anything they beat him up. Although the security official in question, Gu Qinming, denied the allegations, he was still suspended by Foxxcon. Interestingly enough, the article also noted that employees dealing with the new products have to guard them quite closely as there are many journalists and competitors who would like to see what Apple has next in store. So how did the employee, Danyong, get caught up by the pressure of keeping this prototype a secret, so much so, that he thought it was worth more than his life?
To start off thinking about it, the situation is not actually as bad as it seems. In other words, it was just a prototype that went missing, it seems highly unlikely that the designers would not have kept a record of the new tweaks they had made to the phone. Even more, the prototype was a communications device not a nuclear missile, so it could not have been that death-threatening. Danyong could have committed suicide because of the pressure put onto him by the security company; maybe fearing greater repercussions would result if the prototype had actually been stolen by a member of the media or competitor. If this premise is taken as feasible, then that means that at a really basic level his death was due to the fact that Apple Inc. could not create a buzz around the iPhone’s new features. It is interesting that this story implies that if there is no buzz over a new product, it could cost the company quite a bit. And that the cost could be more than a financial price. Can this incident be associated with the master-slave binary that Luke proposed in class? Although this could be an extreme case, it seems that technology is making us it’s bitch more and more these days. No one can really know for sure why Sun Danyong killed himself. No one can really know for sure if it had anything to do with technology. But it does sound suspiciously similar to the plot of many movies (iRobot). And I don’t want to end on a conspiratorial note, but the security company’s involvement does cast a big-corporation-like shadow over the whole incident.
To start off thinking about it, the situation is not actually as bad as it seems. In other words, it was just a prototype that went missing, it seems highly unlikely that the designers would not have kept a record of the new tweaks they had made to the phone. Even more, the prototype was a communications device not a nuclear missile, so it could not have been that death-threatening. Danyong could have committed suicide because of the pressure put onto him by the security company; maybe fearing greater repercussions would result if the prototype had actually been stolen by a member of the media or competitor. If this premise is taken as feasible, then that means that at a really basic level his death was due to the fact that Apple Inc. could not create a buzz around the iPhone’s new features. It is interesting that this story implies that if there is no buzz over a new product, it could cost the company quite a bit. And that the cost could be more than a financial price. Can this incident be associated with the master-slave binary that Luke proposed in class? Although this could be an extreme case, it seems that technology is making us it’s bitch more and more these days. No one can really know for sure why Sun Danyong killed himself. No one can really know for sure if it had anything to do with technology. But it does sound suspiciously similar to the plot of many movies (iRobot). And I don’t want to end on a conspiratorial note, but the security company’s involvement does cast a big-corporation-like shadow over the whole incident.