See No Evil

UCLA information-studies professor Miriam Posner traces how supply-chain software (SAP, Oracle, custom ERP systems) makes global capitalism feel reliable while quietly making large parts of it invisible. The essay opens with a Dutch minibar bar of Tony's Chocolonely — founded to be the first chocolate produced without slave labour, and sued by a competitor allegedly claiming such chocolate was "impossible" — and through Fairphone, Apple, and Samsung argues that the data models inside supply-chain software literally don't have fields for the things companies don't want to see. The code conceals the labour.