I thanked my driver for finding me. I did not plan my morning well at all, mainly because it was actually raining, so I had to wait under the eaves of my building until it was nearly time for the driver to pull up. It wasn’t pouring, thank goodness, but I’m sure I was a little bedraggled.
My driver and I passed a construction site which I believe is an extension of Arizona State University. He wondered why anything was being expanded when really, college could be attended via online classes instead of in person. My driver’s approach was to treat college strictly as a business venture. But then we discussed college as an experience as opposed to a business. For instance, my first year at college was on a campus of about 10,000 students, and I lived in a dorm that had pie-shaped rooms. I also met friends that I’m still in touch with on a monthly basis. When I returned to college for nursing, I tried online for some classes, but they proved to be difficult for nursing – because when you are a nurse, you don’t take care of patients online (especially if you are in a clinical or hospital setting) – so I finished my courses in person. I mean, I worked on a cadaver.
My driver and I also discussed this idea that employers require degrees – any degree. The degree doesn’t necessarily have to match the job. Right now, 87% of employers demand a degree. Why? And college tuition is costing tens of thousands of dollars. So employers can make this demand, but it doesn’t cost them. Sure, some places may have education incentives, but they can limit those to a few thousand dollars. They can demand “a degree” but only pay for job-specific credits.
My driver wanted to know what my current job was. I told him that I was disabled because of major health issues. I asked him what he was doing before he started driving. He said that he was actually in the process of losing his business that he had because of the pandemic. He was filing for bankruptcy. I don’t know what the actual nature of the business was, but that can be a painful process. No one goes into business thinking it’s going to fail.
My driver then immediately perked up and said that as of Sunday, he had a business partner and he was starting a new business venture. They were selling body cams and access to online storage and sharing for the footage. He basically pitched it as being able to record just about anything, like crime or injustice. There were certain things that I couldn’t vocalize, like what about rape, or assault, or abuse? What about committing crime and the criminal wanting to have bragging rights? But the one thing I did ask out loud was, what about editing? My driver said that his partner was more into tech than he was. And he said he was the “idea guy.” But then my driver said that I asked a proprietary question and he wouldn’t answer. So I was stumped. My driver hinted that someone at the company would have access and be able to edit. So if a crime is committed, is there something that protects the video before someone goes in and decides to edit? These are kind of the issues that we are running into with police body cams, because we already can’t get cops to turn on their body cams.
My driver told me that the first 25,000 people to sign up would get access for life for $99. After that the price would go up quite a bit. I told him I would be interested to see where the company would go, because I did ask about things like security, and he didn’t have an answer at first, but then would say it’s proprietary. I wasn’t asking for particulars, I just wanted to know if they were set up for everything. My hope is that if they didn’t think of something, someone in a meeting with them did.
Cameras On A T-shirt
Gold Dollar Sign travel mug
Woman Butterfly sun shade
Thanks For Finding Me 