Post 5: Global Impact

Once I had deconstructed the scanner as much as possible without power tools, I then decided to look up part numbers. I spent several hours cleaning the inside and attempting to write down part numbers. Many were faded due to the age of the machine as well as without company names.

I then took the part numbers and company names and began searching on Google. Many of the companies do not exist anymore so this made it incredibly difficult. Furthermore many of the companies websites were in other languages with no English option.

A few of the parts were relatively easy to locate. For example, the belt assembly had a company name and product number. From there I looked up the company and its manufacturing factories listed online. From these I looked at the date of the buildings and the types of manufacturing produced. Based on the year, type of product and location I was generally able to surmise which plant it came from.

Another issue that arose was even though the addresses of the plants were on websites, when entering them into google maps they did not appear. Part of this has to do the Western ideology of Google's technology. Because Asian countries often number streets differently than Western based countries, Google had a much harder time locating them. Therefore I would first search for the city. After I would find the general area or district. Then only by scrolling could I find the street and locate the building.

For the companies listed on the global impact page, it took approximately seven hours. Some are more guesses than fact; however, in general I tried to factor in information such as dates of the companies and their production output.

Below is an example of a table I created to keep track.