Towards an Ethical Electronics? Ecologies of Congolese Conflict Minerals

摘要: This paper asks how coltan, casseterite, wolframite and gold ores mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo relate networked microelectronics to brutal warlords, what legal industrial actions have been enacted by activists, NGOs, politicians businesses aiming address this situation. Exploring these questions requires abandonment immaterialist rhetorics technology; tropes cyberspace, virtuality, cloud computing other discourses digital disembodiment, instead inviting materialist analysis relating geological, geopolitical, informational flows surrounding globalized industries. The applies media ecologies object-oriented ontology explore ethics electronics, particular focussing upon legislative action Dodd-Frank Section 1502 release Fairphone as moves explicitly designed Congolese conflict minerals which technologies that are ‘causes’ social ecological pathologies simultaneously being used mitigate their deleterious impacts.