Business and ethics-Doct 2 BTS SP3S

Human wifi,

Not just part of the furniture

You know how it feels -- you're stuck in a city centre with an email to send and you can't get online. You
start to panic. The feeling of being cut off from your friends, colleagues and important task begins to nag at
you. You scrape together money you can't afford for coffee you don't want on the off chance that the drinks
stand has wifi.

5 At the South by South-West music and technology convention in Austin, Texas, a man called Clarence has a
solution to your problem. Video and photo footage show him standing outside the conference centre,
begging delegates with a hopeful smile to use him to fire up their smartphones. He wears a portable wifi
connection and a T-shirt that says "I am a wireless hotspot". Clarence has been homeless since Hurricane
Katrina destroyed his New Orleans house.

10 Turning homeless people into wireless hotspots gives an entirely new meaning to the phrase "get
connected". [...]Why [..] have these "hotspots" gather outside the largest assembly of technology and pop
culture journalists in the US?

Publicity stunt or no, however, the spectacle of real homeless people "making a connection" with the iPad-
toting privileged got half the developed world talking.

15 The frightening thing is that once you push through the initial shock of seeing human beings marketed as
glorified plug sockets, the idea makes an ugly sort of sense.[...]

The argument goes something like this: low-paid work is dehumanising anyway, so, this being an age of
austerity, why not objectify people just a little bit more and pay them a little bit less? [...]

The normalisation of exploitation is the real scandal here, and the fact that homelessness has become an
20 acceptable part of modern city living in one of the richest nations on an earth, rather than the fact that some
of those homeless people were on one occasion paid to wear wifi devices.

The New Statesman, 15 March 2012, by Laurie Penny

I. Read the title and guess what the article is about :

 A new electronic device  A ice application  A scandal
II. Find the following information:
 Who? Where? What they can do? Why?
III. In paragraph1, what’s the situation?
IV. In paragraph 2, say what we learn about Clarence.
V. In paragraphs 5, 6 and 7 , find words proving that this experience is shameful.
VI. Read the following sentence: “this being an age of austerity, why not objectify people just a little bit
more and pay them a little bit less?” lines 17/18.What’s the tone of the journalist? Explain.
VII. What do you think of the conclusion of the text?

Assignment:
Student A : you are a reporter. You ask Clarence about his new job.
Student B : You are Clarence
Your task :Act out this conversation.