Prove Me Wrong: Civil Debate Not Hate

Prove Me Wrong from Joy Meredith

Royalty clashed all over TV and social media last week. It started with Meghan and Harry and our queen of TV, Oprah. Then it bounced back over the pond and exploded with Piers Morgan (often considered a royal PITA 👑).

This exchange led to Piers leaving the show:

The attempt for Alex (GMB's weatherman) to try to explain things from Harry and Meghan's perspective could have led into a fruitful dialogue- but it didn't. When asked about Piers' departure from the show Alex said he hadn't wanted him to leave just to listen.

I disagree with Piers' take on many many things but it does no good to have him go off and echo to his supporters when it just divides us more and nothing gets accomplished. He's a powerful voice and I've appreciated it when used to support gun control, which he strongly advocates for, or when he's called on politicians to be open to the urgency of the climate crisis. 

Ignorance needs to be called out, people do need to be held accountable for their words and actions and I'm all for ostracizing truly evil people so they can do less harm if necessary. This is not that. 

Of course we all love to think we're right (myself, very much included) but if we're not simply open to being proven wrong that doesn't make us smart and superior it makes us uninformed and ideologically stuck. 

And, if we keep dividing ourselves into pools of only people we agree with we will have a hard time uniting to fight real battles to come. If we can't civilly discuss royalty and race how are we ever going to get to the even touchier topic of religion and our environmental crisis. 

Truly strong people and ideas do not fear scrutiny and challenges- that's how things can be proven solid and correct. We need to be able to talk about politics, princesses and problem solving without righteousness but instead a resolve to listen and consider what others are saying. If not, things will get even more tribal and more toxic and we'll be in real trouble. 

So above is my attempt to come up with a solution 💡📺

Because what our world needs now is less bullying and bravado and more honest debate without all the hate 

🤓... 🧐

[btw: I'm pro-Queen, pro-Meghan & Harry and think the main problem is Rupert Murdoch (and the likes) and money-grubbing tabloids that use race as a way to stir things up and make profits. But who knows, maybe I'm wrong 😬]

911Cam: See the Emergency

911Cam: See the Emergency from Joy Meredith

PROBLEM 

The Jetsons lead us -at least me and my generation- to believe that we'd have flying cars and robot housekeepers by now. Even as far as technology has come much of it has yet to be developed; not because it's not ready but because we haven't harnessed and deployed it with the urgency it warrants. 

If I have to wait on mobile-modernization, can we at least take on the currently solvable problem of accurate emergency information getting to our first responders?!

At a time when we can amazingly see NASA's Perseverance actually land on Mars, and have millions of Zoom meetings a day, we are still way behind in utilizing these technologies to protect and save our own citizens.

SOLUTION

The solution is to have 911Cam data-transfer (updated E911 / NG911) available to anyone who calls for help. The technology is already available. The stumbling block is federal funding and the leadership to shepherd a big endeavor from an old territory hot-potato to an innovation success. In the past, states/counties have had to fight for extra funding and support to role out any upgrades to their 911 system. There is no reason why we as a nation shouldn't support this as both a homeland security step and at a minimum as a public service provided to keep our citizens safe and alive. 

OPPORTUNITY

Since we are in the middle of handling one of our nation's biggest challenges with COVID-19 we should take this as a prescient warning that we have failed at adequately building infrastructure to deal with national emergencies. The good news is we are now ripe for taking on big challenges. 

911Cam is a perfect test project to unite many government agencies (federal, state and local) in bringing together resources, innovation and leadership. There are other natural disasters,  defense challenges and domestic threats to our safety, security and wellbeing ahead. Now is the time to show what our government, technologists and leaders can do. 

We spend billions on fighter jets that never fly a mission- we can spend some of that on infrastructure for our emergency services. And if we are to thrive as a nation and reclaim our status as the clear global technology leader we need to take on big projects and not just on Mars... but on Main Street. 

So here is me, just Joy-Citizen imploring our government to rally the resources and resolve to build a 911 system that allows every citizen who needs help to be seen.

I refuse to believe that Hanna-Barbera has more imagination and vision then our leaders (at least in the "real world"). 

We might not be ready for flying cars but if we can send video from Mars and communicate with colleagues around the world we can certainly get a 911 Operator our identifying information, our location and video of our emergency. 

911Cam life-saving technology is coming and the leaders who move to make it happen will be seen as national Heroes who will be ready to solve even greater challenges to come. 

Who will answer this call? 

Full disclosure: Jetsons was supposedly set in 2062 but no one told us that, and you get my point 😉