In 2008, a British man found that his new iPhone contained photographs of a smiling woman on an iPhone assembly line in China. The photos quickly spread across the internet; the worker was dubbed iPhone Girl; and her factory promised she would not be punished for this ‘beautiful mistake’. New media criticism has a major stake in user-embodiment but has largely neglected this other set of bodies: those that build our electronic gadgets. Attending them can enrich histories of new media and challenge consumerist framings of digital aesthetics. Recent excitement about gestural interfaces suggests that our aspirations for intimacy with computers have informed the design of emergent devices. To idealize gestural control as an escape from technology’s disciplinary effects, we elide the suffering that gesture occasions on the factory floor. Meanwhile, digital culture represents the Asian female as a vessel for fantasies of sex, submissiveness, and adventure. Such fantasies deeply inform the reception of electronics assemblers, including iPhone Girl.
AppleInsider Staff (2006) iPod City: Inside Apple’s iPod factories, Apple Insider, 12 June. URL (consulted December 2009): www.appleinsider.com/articles/06/06/12/ipod_city_inside_apples_ipod_factories.html
2.
Baker N. ( 2009) A new page: Can the Kindle really improve the book?The New Yorker, 3 August. URL (consulted December 2009): www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker
3.
Bazin A. ( 1958) Ontologie de l’image photographique. In: Bazin A, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma?Paris: Éditions du Cerf , 9-17.
4.
Bazin A. ( 1960) Ontology of the photographic image (trans. Hugh Gray) . Film Quarterly13(4): 4-9.
5.
Bogost I. ( 2006) Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
6.
Braun M. ( 1995) Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
7.
Caldwell J. ( 2008) Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
8.
Chang LT ( 2008) Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China . New York: Spiegel & Grau.
9.
Corwin S. ( 2003) Picturing efficiency: Precisionism, scientific management, and the effacement of labor. Representations84: 139-165.
10.
Cusumano MA ( 1991) Japan’s Software Factories: A Challenge to US Management . Oxford: Oxford University Press .
11.
Derrida J. ( 1973) Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs (trans. David Allison). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
12.
Doyle R. ( 2003) Wetwares: Experiments in Postvital Living. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
13.
Fahey M. ( 2006) Wii: Classic controller adapters for the Wii. Kotaku: Gossip, News and Leaks for Obsessive Gamers, 30November. URL (consulted December 2009): http://kotaku.com/gaming/wii/classiccontroller-adapters-for-the-wii-218242.php
14.
Francaviglia RV ( 1991) Hard Places: Reading the Landscape of America’s Historic Mining Districts. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
15.
François A. ( 2003) ‘O Happy Living Things’: Frankenfoods and the bounds of Wordsworthian natural piety. Diacritics33(2): 42-70.
16.
Fraser JA ( 2002) White Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work and its Reward in Corporate America. New York: WW Norton & Co.
17.
Gil J. ( 1998) Metamorphoses of the Body (trans. Stephen Muecke). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
18.
Gill P. ( 1997) Technostalgia: Making the future past perfect. Camera Obscura14(1-240-41):161-179.
19.
Hansen M. ( 2006) Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media. New York: Routledge.
20.
Haraway D. ( 1991) A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In: Haraway D, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature . New York: Routledge, 149-181.
21.
Harris J., P. Taylor ( 2005) Digital Matters: The Theory and Culture of the Matrix . New York: Routledge.
22.
Hayles NK ( 1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
23.
Haywood T. ( 1995) Info-Rich - Info-Poor: Access and Exchange in the Global Information Society. London: Bowker-Saur .
24.
Henry M. ( 2002) I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity (trans. Susan Emanuel). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
25.
Henry M. ( 2008) Material Phenomenology (trans. Scott Davidson). New York: Fordham University Press.
26.
Hong C. ( 2008) Cute Face of Beautiful Mistake. China Daily 27August. URL (consulted December 2009): www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-08/27/content_6973364.htm .
Husserl E. ( 1991) On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time - 1893-1917 (trans. JB Brough). Collected Works of Edmund Husserl, Vol. IV. Boston, MA : Kluwer Academic Publishers.
29.
Hutcheon S. ( 2008) Net mob search for iPhone Girl’s identity. TheSidney Morning Herald 28 August. URL (consulted December 2008): www.smh.com.au/news/iphone-insider/net-mob-search-for-iphone-girls-identity/2008/08/28/1219516602946.html
30.
Janicaud D., J-F. Courtine, J-L. Chrétien, J-L. Marion, M. Henry, and P. Ricoeur ( 2001) Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, No. 15). New York: Fordham University Press.
31.
Jones S. ( 2008) The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies . New York: Routledge.
32.
Kurzweil R. ( 2006) The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology . New York: Penguin.
33.
Lahti M. ( 2003) As we become machines: Corporealized pleasures in video games. In: Wolf MJP and Perron B (eds) The Video Game Theory Reader . New York: Routledge.
34.
Lévinas E. ( 2006) Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other (trans. Michael B Smith and Barbara Harshav). Continuum Impacts. New York: Continuum.
35.
Loader B (ed). (1998) Cyberspace Divide: Equality, Agency and Policy in the Information Society. New York: Routledge.
36.
MacDailyNews (2007) Apple debuts new iPhone ‘god phone’ print ad (with image) Mac Daily News, 12 July. URL (consulted December 2009): www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/apple_debuts_new_iphone_print_ad_with_image/
MacForums (MacRumours Forums) (2008b) iPhone factory worker girl still has her job. MacRumors: Forums, 26 August . URL (consulted December 2009): forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=551170 .
39.
Massumi B. ( 2002) Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
40.
McKendrick D., R. Doner, and S. Haggard ( 2000) From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Location and Competitive Advantage in the Hard Disk Drive Industry. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press.
41.
Merleau-Ponty M. ( 2002) Phenomenology of Perception (trans. Colin Smith). New York: Routledge.
42.
Miller T. ( 2006) Gaming for beginners. Games and Culture1(1): 5-12.
43.
Nakamura L. ( 1995) Race in/for cyberspace: Identity tourism and racial passing on the internet. URL (consulted January 2009): www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/syllabi/readings/nakamura.html
44.
Nakamura L.(2009) Don’t hate the player, hate the game: The racialization of labor in World of Warcraft. Critical Studies in Media Communication26(2): 128-144.
45.
Nakamura L. ( 2011) Economies of digital production in East Asia: iPhone Girls and the transnational circuits of cool. URL (consulted April 2011): http://www.mediafieldsjournal.org/economies-of-digital/ .
46.
Ngai P. ( 2005) Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
47.
Nintendo (n.d.) NES Game Pak Troubleshooting . Nintendo - Customer Service. URL (consulted June 2009): www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/nes/trouble_game.jsp
48.
Ong A. ( 1987) Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Workers in Malaysia. Albany: State University of New York Press.
49.
Redmon D. ( 2005) Mardi Gras: Made in China. Directed by David Redmon. USA: Carnival Esque Films. [Video: DVD].
50.
Rosen P. ( 2001) Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
51.
Ross A. ( 2003) No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs. New York: Basic Books.
52.
Rotman B. ( 2002) Corporeal or gesturo-haptic writing. Configurations10(3): 423-438.
53.
Sahay S., B. Nicholson, and S. Krishna ( 2003) Global IT Outsourcing: Software Development across Borders . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
54.
Schaefer P., MG Durham ( 2007) On the social implications of invisibility: The iMac G5 and the effacement of the technological object. Critical Studies in Media Communication24(1): 39-56.
55.
Sharpe C. ( 1999) Racialized fantasies on the internet. Signs24(4): 1089-1096.
56.
Slattery B. ( 2008) iPhone Girl becomes internet superstar. PC World, 29 August. URL (consulted December 2009): blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007631.html
57.
Sliwinski A. ( 2006) How did you blow your NES cartridge?Joystiq, 28 October. URL (consulted Decmber 2009): www.joystiq.com/2006/10/28/how-did-you-blow-your-nes-cartridge/
58.
Springer C. ( 1991) The pleasure of the interface. Screen32(3): 303-323.
59.
Stallabrass J. ( 1993) Just gaming: Allegory and economy in computer games. New Left Review198: 83-106.
60.
Swalwell M. ( 2007) The remembering and the forgetting of early digital games: From novelty to detritus and back again. Journal of Visual Culture6(2): 255-273.
61.
Vestberg N. ( 2007) Technostalgia and tangibility I. The Memory of Photography: Medium, Materiality, Archive, 27November. URL (consulted December 2009): www.memophoto.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/technostalgia-and-tangibility-i/
