"Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery." — The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin
In her short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin depicts a utopic city so blissful and pleasing that even the narrator has difficulty accepting its existence. There is a cost to their utopia though, that people do their best to ignore, minimize, or justify, as a necessary trade off for their prosperity — a child kept in the basement.
The affordances of today's smartphones are stupendously marvelous. We can record and send voice and video memos in near real-time, not just at home but on the go. We might leave the house with little else and be able to tap on and off buses, in and out of train stations, read e-books, stream films, get navigational directions, find a date, schedule an event on our calendar, go down a wikipedia rabbit hole, and the list goes on.
At the same time, smartphones, while still a significant cost for many, remain similarly priced. When accounting for inflation and an increase in purchasing power, an iPhone 14 in 2022 costs $29 more than the original iPhone in 2007 on average globally.
However, as with many contemporary products and services, price tags are artificially deflated by social and environmental exploitation that underlie complex and obfuscated global supply chains.
Consider how 10-15kg of ore needs to be mined to gather enough material for each phone. As rare metals become rarer and ore grades drop, mines are expanded, causing massive deforestation, increasingly dangerous working conditions, the displacement of communities relying on affected agricultural and coastal areas, and the spread of toxic pollutants into bodies, whether human, plant, water, or soil.
Consider the 5 to 10 grams of cobalt in the smartphone you might be reading this on. The suffering Omelasean child is not simply evoked as metaphor or analogy, but actual children among workers using hand tools in mines in Kolwezi, Congo, where they make $2 on a good day by risking injury, death, and exposure to toxic metals leading to breathing problems and birth defects—90% of China's cobalt comes from this labour, which then goes into the batteries that Apple and virtually all other smartphone manufacturers use. These brands publicly advertise a zero tolerance policy for child labour, but accept the Omelasean status quo.
Consider that, to focus on making new phones in a more 'environmentally friendly' manner while maintaining the business as usual of extraction and exploitation, is to in effect say that we can make this child's life better while we pretend it is not suffering. Electronic waste is generated at a rate that outpaces the recycling of it fivefold. This is in line with Jevons paradox, which observes how, within the profit-centered status quo, efficiency gains do not correlate with less extraction or pollution. As resource extraction and use becomes more efficient, states and businesses do not extract or use less, but as much as the increased efficiency allows. We see this also with energy production and use — increases in renewable energy production continue to be heavily outpaced by overall energy production and consumption.
If, however, those of us who do not think this perpetual suffering of a child these marvels hinge on is justifiable, let alone desirable-
If, we are not able to delight in increasingly superfluous 'innovation' of the smartphone, when planned obsolescence continues to be viewed as commercial necessity-
We can walk away from the Omelasean glimmer of the new.
Alternative smartphone companies like Fairphone provide a return to days where we could easily purchase and replace our smartphone batteries without throwing away the entire phone. Marketplaces like GetGreenr and Back Market help to provide quality assurance in buying refurbished phones. Even just continuing to use your smartphone for a year longer than usual can move the needle.
Let us play our small but important part in weaning our dependence on the cult of the new, the misery of children both metaphorical and actual.
