I have decided to partner with a few different groups for my advocacy project. First, I have chosen to do it as a partner project and partner with Luke Pagan.

I also feel that I have a lot of experience in the Ecommerce realm. I happen to know that the mask supply is not that small and that the price of masks is way inflated. Every site, including Amazon, is selling these masks at outrageous prices. I find this to be extremely wrong and something that should be changed. For that reason, I will be partnering with Shopify, Google, and Facebook.

First, I will be using Shopify. Shopify is the platform that I use to create all of my Ecommerce stores. It will allow me to sell the masks to consumers and integrate various other technologies to help this process along. It will also allow me to connect with my supplier which sells the masks for very low costs.

I will also use Google. Google ads is the top ad service in the world. They serve billions of ads each and everyday and it has become a very crucial part of my business. I will partner with Google to serve ads to interested customers. I will also use their advanced tracking to track the costs of advertising and base my prices off of advertising and wholesaling costs. Therefore, the price will be exactly what I pay to get the item to the customer which will be well under half the current prices.

I will also partner with Facebook. Facebook ads is another top ad service in the world. They are also another crucial part to my business. I will use them to serve ads to interested customers. I will also use the Facebook pixel to track customers actions and price out what it costs to advertise and get the item to the customer. Facebook pixel also uses artificial intelligence which will get me customers at a lower cost and at a more efficient rate. That can even further lower prices.

I am a firm believer in actions speak louder than words. That is why, for this project, I will be advocating with action to help in the pandemic response effort.

“Advanced” Society

It is amazing to look at common and mundane technologies that are apart of our every day lives and ponder what life would be like without them. No car to drive, no plane to fly, no refrigerator to refrigerate, and so on. These technologies are crucial to everyday life and the very thought of the world without them is almost incomprehensible. Therefore, one would think that when these technologies were invented, the whole world changed, and life took on a new direction with no thought of return. However, even in our modern day, we are facing a societal plague that hinders our “advancing society” from advancement and progress.

“Acceptance doesn’t prohibit growth; rather, it fosters it.”

Marianne Williamson

This quote embodies the widespread “disease” of our society which is the inability to accept and implement worthy technologies due to society’s inability to change and take risk. One might find it surprising to hear that automobiles were not widely accepted for decades, commercial flights took over a century to become mainstream, and trains were originally thought to be ridiculous as compared to month long expeditions by foot or by ship. The modern person would look down upon society in “those days” and think our society today is far better at accepting technology and pushing it forward into fruition. However, we are equally as blind.

There is no denying that our society today is considered to be advanced; however, when it comes to innovation, that is only a relative statement. Advancement is based on what has come before. What has come before and what is continuous in our modern day is our blindness to new technology that is better and far more efficient than what has come before. The true cost of this issue is that our advancement into the future, as it pertains to technology, is merely at a constant pace rather than at an accelerated one. The ability to accept technology quicker would allow us to move forward at a faster rate. Think about what cars and planes have allowed us to do in terms of research and accessibility. Where would we be now, as a society, if they had been accepted decades earlier? The term “advanced society” would take on a whole new meaning.

Society

“Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity – not a threat.”

Steve Jobs

So, what can we do to fix such injustices that are slowing our advancement into the future? For one we need to extend our acceptance of change to technology. In recent years there has been a surge in the social aspects of change which include gender, sexual orientation, and various other characteristics. While these are becoming more and more commonplace, technology has remained stagnant. We should use the education system to advance students understanding of new tech and promote acceptance of future new tech. We must also, as a collective, take new tech head on and promote it with the more relevancy it has to us. For example, people in the banking and financial industry should take initiative to promote such products as the one Ripple Labs has created. This will serve the best interest of society and push us towards the future at an increased rate.

Law Making

Also, we must stop the blockage and monopolistic tendencies of already established companies towards new technology and ideas. Google is a prime example of this. They have numerous startup foster programs that help new tech companies receive funding and they provide resources to bring their ideas to implementation. From there, Google may either invest or completely buy the new technology and further develop it or bring it to market. They are a heavy investor in Ripple Labs and have joined in the uphill battle to get it widely accepted and implemented.

We must establish laws that prohibit companies from engaging in the purposeful blockage of new technology. This is similar to anti-trust laws that were created in the 1900s that disabled large corporations from destroying other competition due to their already established power. The Office of Science and Technology should propose a law to congress that outlaws all those who try and stop new technology from entering the market.

Impact

The impact of these changes will lie in multiple fields. First and foremost, we will see life through a whole new lense at an even quicker rate. We will come to know and love new technology and, inversely, expel technology that we do not need or that is outdated. Technologies such as Ripple will enhance our lives to the magnitude that trains did back in the 1800s. New and never before thought of tech will advance our lives by never before seen levels. As previously stated, advancement is relative and based on what came before. Therefore, this new wave will spew innovations at us and give opportunity to inventors for change.

The change of mindset will further expand our society’s ability to accept change. Not only in social but now in technology we will push forward as a collective towards the acknowledgement and acceptance of change in our world. The inflow of tech will broaden our horizons and provide for following innovation; therefore, accelerating the cause. Quicker adoption and quicker implementation mean more time to advance and further create.

Conclusion

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” John F. Kennedy

Change and risk have long been deep fears of our society. They are two of the hardest things to accept and face. Innovation comes about because the world needs it to. Innovation is a product of short comings and is a direct response to inefficiency. It takes those that look around their everyday world and see a better life for not only themselves, but for the collective to truly create something special. That innovation is the hardest part. To recognize something is wrong and fix it in a way that has never been thought before is some of the most difficult work imaginable.

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”

Albert Einstein

Therefore, the question truly is not why should we accept these impactful creations? Rather, the question is who are we? Who are we to stop them? Who are we to deprive our self, our community, and our world of the wonders that are just in front of us. All that is to come has to be imagined somewhere. It takes one of us to think of it, it takes some of us to accept it, but it takes all of us to let it enrich us to its fullest potential. That is exactly why it is very unfortunate that in today’s “enlightened” and “advanced” society that we allow ourselves to be afraid of technological change and even purposefully block it. We allow ourselves to remain stagnant and be resistant to change even to the point of harm. This may be our greatest downfall in the modern day and if it is not changed it will hinder our ability to advance ourselves and will therefore hold back all of humanity for the foreseeable future.

For my advocacy project I will most likely work with Facebook. Since they are such a large social networking site, they are using their power and service to spread up to date news on the pandemic. Their goal is to keep people safe and informed by using Facebook to communicate from person to person and institution to person. They are using their business setup and streaming services to broadcast live news.

However, I will be using them in a different way. With such a high demand for masks, there are people who are taking advantage of the demand for profit. I find this to be morally wrong. I know what it costs to source and advertise these products, and almost every site I see has a strong markup on their products. Therefore, I will partner with Facebooks advertising service to bring masks to the consumer at the literal base price. They will pay exactly what it cost me to advertise and bring them their masks. I will also donate the 10% per sale commission that I get on every product to a support group of my choice. This is similar to Facebook because they too are accepting donations.

What this will do is allow people to allocate their funds to more meaningful causes. People will be able to buy more food and necessities rather than paying over a dollar per mask. Out of the scope of this assignment, I am also partnering with many of the nation’s leading hospitals and office-based labs to bring millions of masks to their professionals and patients. This again will allow for better allocation of funds to fight this virus and promote better public health.

This quote embodies the widespread “disease” of our society which is the inability to accept and implement worthy technologies due to society’s inability to change and take risk. One might find it surprising to hear that automobiles were not widely accepted for decades, commercial flights took over a century to become mainstream, and trains were originally thought to be ridiculous as compared to month long expeditions by foot or by ship. The modern person would look down upon society in “those days” and think our society today is far better at accepting technology and pushing it forward into fruition. However, we are equally as blind.

There is no denying that our society today is considered to be advanced; however, when it comes to innovation, that is only a relative statement. Advancement is based on what has come before. What has come before and what is continuous in our modern day is our blindness to new technology that is better and far more efficient than what has come before. The true cost of this issue is that our advancement into the future, as it pertains to technology, is merely at a constant pace rather than at an accelerated one. The ability to accept technology quicker would allow us to move forward at a faster rate. Think about what cars and planes have allowed us to do in terms of research and accessibility. Where would we be now, as a society, if they had been accepted decades earlier? The term “advanced society” would take on a whole new meaning.

Through the years we been clouded into thinking that we promote change, when really, in technology, we run from it. It may be hard to see now, but our inability to accept and implement new technology inhibits technological innovation and societal advancement. The respective governing bodies in the technology fields should promote implementation of new technology and establish laws that protect new innovations from mainstream exclusion.

History

Ultra-Modern

Over the past few centuries, we have been introduced to advancements that were previously unthinkable. Inventions like the television, oven, and even the lightbulb are so commonplace that it is hard to imagine what it was like without them and what that transition was like. Look at an ultra-modern example: the smartphone. There is this oddly accepted false fact that the first smartphone was created in 2007 and it was called the iPhone 1. After its unveiling, everyone purchased it and since then the smartphone has taken the world by storm. However, it may be surprising to find out that the first smartphone was actually created in 1994 by IBM. This was similar to new smartphones in that it could send calls and receive emails and faxes. It also featured alerts and other amenities like a calendar. Not only did it take over a decade before the smartphone hit the mainstream, but even the king of smartphones, the iPhone, was not widely accepted in its primal

days.

Figure 1 shows that iPhone sales had not even reached twenty million until almost four years after the iPhone release. That is compared to recent sales that gross well over triple that. This was a result of consumer skepticism and fear that smartphones, a new and different technology, would not integrate with society. Again, it is amazing to think that a technology that is so crucial to our everyday lives was scoffed at in the beginning. The true cost lies in how much further we could be in the present day if we had taken this new tech head on and exploited it to its fullest potential.

“Old Tech”

“The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines from one city to another, almost as fast as birds can fly, 15 or 20 miles an hour…. A carriage will start from Washington in the morning, the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup in New York the same day.”

Oliver Evans, 1800.

It is somewhat funny to think that even trains, the first vehicle to make direct trips across the country, was not always widely accepted. We seldom use trains today, as cars and air travel have become increasingly more viable and efficient. However back in the early 1800’s many visionaries such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and others found it hard to convince the public of the train’s legitimacy. Trains also brought about various other aspects of our society. Notably “The railroads gave us standardized time zones” (Maranzani). This is another example of an accelerating technology. The train allowed humans to not only ship and travel, but it brought about a wealth of information and experience of different culture with its ability to deliver people and news across the country. This brought about development of newfound areas and literally connected the entire USA. Even though it cut travel times from months to days, many people still despised the idea of the train in the early days.

Right Infront Of Us

Hindsight is always 20/20, so it is easy to sit and critique our blindness in the past and think of what could have been. Therefore, we must look at what sits in front of us today and how it could be extremely useful to our practices and society as a whole. There are heavy projected increases the in technology fields such as “Employment of computer and information research scientists is projected to grow 16 percent from 2018 to 2028” (BLS). Therefore, software-based innovations will most likely be at an all-time high. So, what technology are we overlooking today.

One of the most major overlooked cases is in the financial system. According to business insider, over five trillion dollars are transferred every single day (Scutt). However, the transfers of those funds take between three to five days with the current system in place called Swift. This is a system of banks that facilitate transactions in a very complex way. This system was created in 1973 and has since been the standard (Seth). However, there is a new company called Ripple Labs Inc. that has come out with a new technology that increases the efficiency and security of these payments. This payment system is based on a new, not widely accepted, technology called blockchain. This is another way to facilitate transfer of information and value, but it does it in seconds. The transfer is distributed across thousands to millions of computers which leaves no single source liable for the transfer. This distribution makes this system robust and far more efficient than the current transfer system. As seen in figure 2, XRP, which is Ripple Lab’s new technology, transfers in just four seconds as compared to the current system’s three to five days.

This new technology has clearly been tested and is amazing to say the least. It has the ability to make billions of transactions in minimal time and could even bring us our paychecks in a few seconds rather than days. Many payment services now offer instant payment, but that is not with this technology. They actually rely on liabilities and some faith that the money will make it to its destination which is why only so much can be “instant deposited”. With this new system, which came out in 2014, the money would be transferred and secured in seconds.

Despite the major ability of this technology to improve our lives and extremely enhance our financial system, it has only been beta tested and not fully implemented. This is due to two major reasons. First, blockchain technology has come under fire due to the fact that Bitcoin is based on blockchain and has been a currency for crime. However, it is unfair that this extends to such technology as Ripple. That would be like saying the U.S. dollar is bad because it is used as a currency for crime. The second factor is businesses blocking this technology. Since over five trillion dollars are transferred every day, there is a lot of established infrastructure and special interests that depend on these transfers to make money. Therefore, they have lobbied law makers and bonded together with banks and other institutions to block this technology from taking over the transactions.

This is extremely unfair and destructive to progress. The monopolistic tendencies of these financial corporations are seemingly unlawful and it is killing an inconceivable amount of opportunity. This technology is similar to that of the train in that it connects and facilitates. Not only does it serve its purpose to increase transaction speed, but this increase in speed could have ripple effects that allow humanity to allocate time and efforts to other causes such as increased stock efficiency and reporting transparency.