Like any liberal, I enjoy believing that products I buy are made under decent working conditions. Even though I rarely have evidence to support this. 

So the cell phone has been a real challenge for me. About a year ago, Nick Kristof wrote a piece called “Death by Gadget” about the blood trade in Africa for minerals needed to make our smart phones and digital cameras. And over the years I’ve heard reports that the Apple products are made in factories under terrible conditions. 

But I didn’t know what to do about this. Living without a cell phone didn’t seem like the solution. Basically I just kind of hoped someone else would do something about the problem.  (Which is exactly the kind person I dreamed of becoming when I was a little girl.)

Fortunately, that person exists and his name is Mike Daisey.

This weekend, I had tickets see his one-man show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at the Public Theater. Daisey is a self-described Apple geek who wanted to learn more about how his beloved gadgets are produced. So he went to Shenzhen, China, the industrial capital of the world, stood in front of the Foxconn factory, and interviewed workers as they left.

What he learned is that many laborers are children (as young as 13), and sometimes work shifts for 26 or 34 hours straight, in the days before a product launch. He interviewed a man whose hand is now mangled “into a claw” after working on the iPad. After the accident, that man was fired—without any insurance or benefits—for being too slow. He’d never even seen the gadget he helped build until Daisey showed him an iPad during their interview.

“It’s like magic,” he said, when he saw the iPad all lit up and glowing.

To describe The Agony and the Ecstasy as a monologue about labor practices would be like describing The Book of Mormon as a musical about religious history.

True, but they’re so much more entertaining and thought-provoking than that.  This was the most incredible mix of storytelling and journalism I’ve ever seen. It’s like a live-action version of the best Atlantic cover story you’ll ever read. 

The biggest revelation about this play was that it’s not ultimately about Steve Jobs. I mean, it is, of course, on a surface level. It traces his rise and fall and return to Apple—and manages to reveal truths about this complex man, despite the fact that I thought I’d heard everything there is to hear about Steve Jobs. 

I’d bought tickets to see the show after reading Daisey’s op-ed in the Times about Steve Jobs. It was the first piece I’d read in those early days of his death that took a critical (but still reverent) look at his life, pointing out that he chose to ignore the nuances of life at Foxconn.  Of course the man obsessed with details knew the details of how his stuff was made!

And after the play, I still thought that the play was an indictment of Steve Jobs.  

But then I heard Mike Daisey on the local news and realized I’d missed the point. He explained that “the agony and the ecstasy” in the title doesn’t refer to Steve Jobs—it’s about us, the consumers. It’s about the joy and pain that his creations mean for us.

And now I get it. Steve Jobs got us the design and the technology; it’s our job to show that we care about labor conditions. The answer isn’t necessarily that we stop buying these toys—it’s that we demand better.

And fortunately, Mike Daisey leaves us with solutions. (I mean this literally: there’s a flyer when you exit.) The tips below are not verbatim from that document, which is clever, more detailed, and better worded. But here are the main points: 

* Speak to Apple. He recommends writing to the new CEO Tim Cook, but not abusing his email address. Send him a clear, thoughtful message asking for independent verification of labor standards in Chinese factories.  

* Consider not upgrading immediately. “Choosing not to participate is not only ethically defensible, but economically sensible,” Daisey writes on the flyer. 

* Tell others. Seriously. Talking about this helps. “It can be the first seeds of actual change. Do not be afraid to plant them.” 

* Keep learning. Websites like ChinaLaborWatch.org and SACOM.hk track corporations, which routinely abuse Chinese people in order to make electronics. 

And do yourself a favor if you’re near NYC, and see Mike Daisey’s show. But hurry! It ends December 4.