A few weeks ago, Brandeis was treated to a visit. A friendly young advertiser-excuse me, "educational ambassador"-representing Google, the famed search engine, hardware manufacturer, social network and translation tool, came by to show off some of her company's newest products. A few friends and I decided to check it out. Upon walking in, we were instantly surrounded by a crowd of several dozen students, all crammed together to get a starry-eyed glance at the latest Nexus tablet. We heard rapturously about eTextbooks costing 80 percent less than paper. We took free Google pens, Google sunglasses and Google keychains, each individually wrapped in plastic.

What struck me as unnerving about the whole affair was how close the students all huddled together, how they couldn't bear to keep the customary respectful distance from the advertiser's table, how passersby literally had to push and squeeze through just to see what everyone was standing shoulder-to-shoulder adoring.

It was Google. Who doesn't love Google?

Scattered through the crowd were familiar faces, people I know to be highly socially- conscious, and frequently critical of the mega corporations on the same scale as Google and its competitors. And yet, when presented with new buttons to push, screens to touch and apps to use, all of us turned into walking advertisements, whispering about the high quality of Google products, singing the company's praises almost dogmatically. When the advertiser pulled out two Apple MacBooks she used to show off the videos, hisses and snarky comments arose from the crowd. "Traitor," I heard someone say. So fierce is the perceived rivalry between Google and Apple that not even a Google employee can be considered a friend if she uses the enemy's machine. Those same friends launched into practiced arguments about how overpriced Apple computers are, how they don't allow users to modify their tech, and so the debate rages on.

Though tech corporations like Google and Apple present themselves as irreconcilable rivals, almost all of their business models share the same darker sides. I wish I could say that the facts are secrets, but they are not. They are realities that we have chosen to ignore.

Google's newest piece of hardware, Google Glass, is currently being mass-produced at China's Foxconn Technology Group factory complex, the same factory that builds all Apple products. Foxconn has been in the news over the past few years because employee suicides are so frequent that the factory has installed safety nets under the windows to catch potential jumpers.

On Sept. 24, 11 people died in a mass riot within the factory. According to Business Insider, employees are docked pay for not attending meetings, and spend up to eight hours straight standing on the production line. Foxconn workers for the most part live in and around the factory's dormitories, which sometimes cram eight people into one room. Although they may work and live together for years, few roommates even know each other's names. Again, says Business Insider, "Friendship is a big problem in the factory."

The minerals that are modified at Foxconn to become the microprocessors powering Google and Apple technology are mined primarily in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Major armed groups and cartels sell the tin, tantalum and tungsten necessary to create smartphones and laptops, and use the funds to finance ongoing civil wars. Miners are physically abused, treated almost as slaves, according to the human rights group Global Witness. Economic conditions are so bad in eastern Congo that despite this treatment, most locals still mine because they can't find another source of income. The preferred weapon of enforcement by these armed groups is rape; women live in constant fear of their husbands displeasing the militias. The independent aid group Raise Hope for Congo reports that eastern Congo has the highest rates of sexual violence in the entire world. It is classified by the Enough Project, an aid organization dealing with issues in Africa, as the single most dangerous place in the world to be a woman.

In 2014, a component of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will mandate American companies to keep track of where their minerals are produced, but most corporations are already becoming more sensitive to the issue. Groups which follow and rate where companies get their minerals have found Apple and Google to be among the better groups in their industry; Apple reportedly receives 60 percent of its minerals from non-conflict areas. The worst-rated company is Japanese video game developer Nintendo. The gaming company, noted for its family-friendly public image, has no official policy whatsoever for monitoring where it gets its minerals.

Yet for all of the human rights violations perpetuated by these companies, for all of the modern developed world's moralizing about how it does not tolerate such evils, the newest products released by these companies turn us all into infants laughing at jangling keys. It is the great cognitive dissonance of our generation that we can protest, plead and beg for workers in the third world to be treated with respect, but cannot imagine life without the products that come from their exploitation. Even now, I write this article on my MacBook Pro, the first Apple computer I've ever owned. As I walked out of the Apple store, knowing full well where its parts and assembly came from, I was as gleeful as a child. All I was worried about was whether the Chromebook really was the better deal.