Your Conflict iPhone

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“An ugly paradox of the 21st century is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity — smartphones, laptops and digital cameras — are built from minerals that seem to be fueling mass slaughter and rape in Congo.”

Nicolas Kristof has an op-ed in the New York Times about the relationship between technology and the really, really atrocious campaign of mass rape, torture, and murder — a disturbing amount of it of and by children — in the Congo. (see this or this, for example)

He also points to this kind of brilliant video mocking Mac commercials and this web site to try to ensure people can buy conflict-free electronics.

Seth Fischer’s writing has twice been listed as notable in The Best American Essays and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize by several publications, including Guernica. He was the founding Sunday editor at The Rumpus and is the current nonfiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown. He is a Dornsife PhD Fellow at USC and been awarded fellowships and residencies by Ucross, Lambda Literary, Jentel, Ragdale, and elsewhere, and he teaches at the UCLA-Extension Writer’s Program and Antioch University, where he received his MFA. More from this author →