A Hidden Life of Digital Devices Revealed

Abstract

Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller's book Greening the Media explores the impact of information communication technologies (ICTs) and consumer electronics (CEs) on our environment and on the lives of the workers involved in the manufacture or disposal of these technologies. In their book, the authors describe the environmental and human cost of mining and processing the raw materials needed to manufacture ICT/CE devices, the harsh conditions faced by those who actually make them, and the environmental crisis posed by the piles of e-waste generated as digital devices are rapidly made redundant by planned obsolescence. Lyell Davies argues in his review of Maxwell and Miller's Greening the Media that the authors have delivered a topical and important exposé of a “hidden life” of ICT/CE technologies.