They're probably not what you think they are.
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But a series of product safety cases that have been brought against Amazon over the past few years makes clear that its rewiring of retail poses risks to customers as well. Above all, the cases highlight a significant gap between how most people understand the world’s largest e-commerce company and what that company actually does.
Conversations about Amazon tend to emphasize the company’s omniscience — the cutting-edge technologies that it uses to gather data on its competitors and customers and to discipline its workers. But in reality, as the scholar Miriam Posner has written, supply chains that drive global capitalism depend on “partial sight.” Companies are able to get customers so many things so cheap and fast because they know only what they have to; toward everything else, they often turn a blind eye. The fact that Amazon could not reach Mr. Hu is a straightforward consequence of the business plan.
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when you really want your phone
And if you think you've had a bad day.
05:07 in General Commentary, society and technology | Permalink | Comments (0)