12/30/2023 0 Comments Loom coin youtube![]() ![]() ![]() But in the Internet age, the sky’s the limit, which is why the Rainbow Loom trend has shown such unusual staying power in recent months. ![]() If this sweatshop-in-a-box had come along in my youth, the designs my friends and I made would be limited to those loom techniques described by the product documentation, or from store-bought crafting magazines my parents bought. And here’s how the Rainbow Loom brings us back to Thompson’s thesis about modern tech “changing our minds for the better.” If anything, in fact, the art of crafting has been enhanced by digital technology. But the Rainbow Loom phenomenon, like the 100 other crafting fads my kids have gone through, suggests that the urge to produce old-fashioned things out of paper, ink, clay, plastic, wood or rubber hasn’t been entirely extinguished by the profusion of modern gadgets. And certainly, those technologies can be addictive: I’ve seen too many kids get carried out of restaurants, screaming, because their parents demanded that they stopped playing Angry Birds during dinner. Twenty-first century parents spend a lot of time obsessing over the amount of time their kids play on iPads, gaming consoles and smartphones. (If these underpaid garment workers realized that privileged boys and girls in Western countries were spending their leisure time working a loom, I’m not sure how they’d react.) Indeed, the act of Rainbow Looming is basically just a rubberized, small-scale, hobby version of what millions of impoverished children and women are doing in sweatshops across the developing world. When my girls first came home with their Rainbow Looms, I figured they’d end up in the garbage within a day: Making a single piece of “jewelry” can take hours of tedious, repetitive finger-work. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |