I have a strong faith. And very few things shake it up. One thing I do remember shaking and shaking hard was waking up on the morning of April 16, 2007 and turning on the television just to see a “special report.” There was some kind of shooting (ongoing) at W. Va. Technology, but the details were “still sketchy”. As always, I tried to think my best, and maybe this was some kind of hostage situation, and everyone would be fine. It wasn’t going to be. Of course, it turned out to be the deadliest shooting by a single gunman in American history, on or off a school campus. In an instant, the foundations of my faith had shaken. I try not to question God. For a long time I clung to that tired old philosophy (which I now often feel is a cliché ‘old-fashioned at best) which is, “Everything happens for a reason.” I didn’t find any reason for this. I found it nonsense and, if I was holding on to that notion of “everything happens for a reason”, to me, it is the lazy person excuse.
I sat at my home office desk for the next few days unable to focus or focus. I felt similar to how I felt after 9/11 and, interestingly, my first memory of such a “questioning of the universe” was in my teens, seeing the body bags coming home from Vietnam and entering college, actually losing friends in that war. It was like, even today, watching the news and hearing about youth body bags in Iraq, I have decided to drop the silly notion of using the term, or at least using it as rarely as possible “everything happens for a reason.” Too easily it makes me a non-participant in the world in which I live. It gives me an excuse not to write, talk about it, try an open democratic discussion about it, and pray that the right words fall into the hands of the right person, who can put an end to this “reasoning”. I still feel, at fifty-four years old, that as long as I’m alive and well, in a free country like this, it’s unreasonable not to talk, work, think, and try to find ways to make the world a better world. place for everyone. All of life is precious to me, and I value America’s ingenious democracy more than anyone will ever know, where someone is able to question, challenge, that notion that “everything happens for a reason.”
A few nights after the tragic event in West Virginia, I had a dream. I tend to have a pen and notebook by my bed, as being in cartoons and e-commerce, I feel like many of my best ideas occur to me in my sleep, when my consciousness is as open and free as ever. . to be.
Suddenly, in the dream, I was instructed to invent a product that had never been invented (or much less dreamed of). It would be a life-saving product. It would require high technology, knowledge of biotechnology, physics, etc., all of which I had no training (my training was in Internet Technology) which would be quite useless in this product, except for the commercialization of it.
It was a strange dream. I was in a science lab, with other scientists, and we were watching a big screen television. The funny “Life Alert” TV commercial, the woman “Help, I fell and can’t get up.” One of the scientists told me that this rarely happens. When serious emergencies occur, most of the time, the victim is unconscious or too disoriented to press a button and call for help. What was needed was a fully automated computerized bracelet, constantly monitoring vital signs (including proximity of oxygen), storing medical records, and actually “dialing and texting” the nearest 911 or emergency center. with a full explanation of the person’s name, medical history, location, etc.
In the dream, I was given a “crash course” in biotechnology and I designed the device. I even called it “Insert Alert” in my dream, even though it’s not actually inserted into the body, it’s non-invasive, and it has sensors that can “read” inside you.
It even controls my blood pressure, which brings me back to sleep. If only one child (as if that wasn’t enough) had been shot in West Virginia, 911 would have been alerted immediately, so the possibility of others being shot could have been diverted. Even if the single shot hadn’t been using the device, it would have raised the wearer’s blood pressure and heart rate fast enough to use the device and automatically dial 911 with the location of the emergency. If you recall, there was a lot of confusion and the police took too long to get there, giving the killer time to do his deed.
I woke up and took notes. Interestingly, I found myself illustrating the device. I downloaded the patent paperwork from the US patent office and received my provisional patent. I put up a website and started raising funds to build it. That’s not an easy thing, only about 0.001% on most seed inventions make some money from investors. I was contacted by an investor, not the other way around. He put in enough for me to hire an engineering firm to begin development of the device. Two PowerPoint presentations were made.
At the time, “Bluetooth” was the best satellite communications protocol for these devices, but today there are more advanced ways to communicate with satellites. So I made some major design edits, but left the previous path, just in case someone decided to copy it. Good for them. They would have sunk tens of thousands into a device that would barely have worked. I never said that all dreams were completely instructive. I was fortunate to have a good friend who has several PhDs, one in physics and one in electrical engineering, a senior engineer at IBM. We’ve been close enough to know, I could trust him. I kept being careful. I told him that I would tell him about my new invention, if he would give me a quote for my website. That would be enough protection for me, I thought, if I accidentally told a fellow IBM associate. I knew he would never steal the idea from me. He gave me an enthusiastic report and it remains on the front page of my website.
For several months, I had to withdraw from the project, as the technology changed a lot, and I knew that I was going to have to take advantage of 2-3 years of development even after raising the money to build the prototype, and then license it. to a larger corporation for mass production and distribution.
Still struggling with some minor (fixable) health issues, I’ll start that process of finding investors, licensees, etc. for the project to work.
It will work in central New York or high up in the Himalayas, I know this from my experience working in Washington’s largest independent satellite news production house in the late 1980s and talking to my friend at IBM .
Hopefully, the right investors will come. I know where to look and make presentations if not.
If you read Dr. Beiller’s comment, he generously called my work “ingenious.” I may or may not be, but I don’t consider myself as much of a genius as “a relentless street hustler with a late education.” For me, everyone has some kind of genius in them, and it’s up to them to figure out what it is and then use it, so that the following “something happens for a reason”, they can also say (if it’s a tragedy), “But it won’t happen again if I can help it!” You may not be a writer, cartoonist, inventor, or the things I prefer to do to expose my “genius,” but trust me, you do. (I was considered a “slow learner” and proved right. But that was academia, this is life).
The article may sound a bit like “bragging rights”, but it is not. It’s to drive home my point, and maybe change the cliche ‘”Yeah, everything happens for a reason, but if it happens, and we don’t want it to happen again, let’s fix it and let’s say it happened for a reason too.” .
