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Hello, everyone. It's that time for the JMOR tech talk show. Where we answer questions about technology. Explain the way they should work and why they don't sometimes. And now here's your host, John C Morley.
John C. Morley: Hey everybody, welcome once again to the JMOR tech talk show. We have got another great show for you tonight Friday, we always have a great show, but tonight we have some amazing personal stories that I think are just going to maybe open your eyes in a way that you didn't even think was possible. Marcus, it’s good to have you here again. How are you doing tonight?
Marcus: I am doing fine, John. It is quite the pleasure to be back on the JMOR Tech talk show.
John C. Morley: It's always a pleasure to have you with me and giving such great commentary. We had some great comments the other day saying, who's that wonderful gentlemen? I said, that's Marcus Hart, he is my co-host, and he does an amazing job. They said, you just have that right knack that just that right gift to be able to just compliment things which really does take a gift. So you're a great co-host. Thank you so much, Marcus.
Marcus: Well, thank you, John.
John C. Morley: So when we're talking about things right now, and I know everybody's thinking about the pandemic, but we're not going to go there right now. But India is supposed to review their new IT act. The central government has started international, internal discussions to revamp the two decades and old information technology act. Top officials said that the massive shifts in technology will call for changes in the regulatory frameworks. This is going to be pretty big Marcus, and I'm guessing it's going to cost some bucks too.
Marcus: Anything that comes with regulatory changes always ends up in some dollar increase, so expected.
John C. Morley: So it's another way that government can basically have an excuse to charge people and make a profit. If we did that in business, we would be getting fined or we'd be doing something illegal. But when the government does it, it's like it's naturally legal to do it. Do you get that?
Marcus: Exactly. This is why people don't want government to get too big and to get to their hands in all of your cookie jars.
John C. Morley: Yeah. I don't even want them in my kitchen.
Marcus: That's a good one John. I like it.
John C. Morley: So I know that this is going to cause a lot of challenges, not only for them, but I'm sure for the United States, because if the United States does a lot of business with overseas, I'm sure we're going to have to comply with these new changes.
Marcus: This is what people were kind of cautioning about shipping your business overseas and trying to grow large and people call them I guess kind of, they thought they was getting away with it, but now it's just your karma.
John C. Morley: Exactly. They were talking, you know, about the GDPR, the general data protection regulation, which has been in effect for a while, since May 25th, 2018 and companies in the United States were just starting to wake up to that this year. And the later part of last year, 2020, that if you did business with a company and they had an international presence, well, then that company had to be GDPR compliant. It was funny how they snuck that in, and that cost companies, not just thousands, but millions of dollars Marcus.
Marcus: Exactly. And this is not going to change. And being that this is India we talking about, India is a huge threat when we're talking economics here. And when we talking about in terms of the battles of the super poppers. They're going to be in that conversation very close here.
John C. Morley: Yeah. I think they're going to be very concerned, but I think they're going to dictate pretty much the way things go. Now, I know a while back it was speculated by our house and the president staying that we're going to be manufacturing everything in the United States. What do you think about them? And I think it's great, but is it really feasible immediately?
Marcus: It is not, it's not. When you got so many businesses scattered across the globe and when we are so kind of locked into this global economy and what someone does over here may effect this part of the industry, we have to be careful when we say that we want to put everything American owned, especially when we don't have the resources.
John C. Morley: I think it's a good idea. And I think it's a great goal to shoot for. But I don't think it's a goal for tomorrow or for today. It's going to take us some time. So we're going to have to eat Crow for a little while. Maybe not forever, but for a little while, until we can build our own ecosystem up.
Marcus: I agree with you.
John C. Morley: So I know in politics and we try not to get into that in our show, but they're just trying to give people a bunch of hogwash that everything's going to be okay tomorrow. And you, and I both know that's not going to happen. They're trying to sway voters and now possibly create a third party or a fourth party because there's just so much indecision in government right now, isn't there?
Marcus: It is. It's so much everything's up in the air right now.
John C. Morley: And not to get into politics, but the fact that they had a motion before to be passed, to have past president Trump impeached for the second time, the Republicans actually declined that at the Senate level. So that's really sending a message, isn't it? That's telling me that they're already planning or setting the wheels in motion to bring him back in a couple of years.
Marcus: Talk about trying to take a tough pickle out of the jar. You just leave it right there in the jar. And I think that's what they decided to do on this, on this move. The Republican's already had their Trump card ready.
John C. Morley: I think the problem was Marcus that I don't know all their personal business, but who knows what would've happened if they did that, you know, maybe there might've been some deals that weren't discussed publicly and who knows what could have happened to relatives, friends and nothing to their lives, but I'm sure things could have been made hard for them. And that might've been because of the Trump administration. I don't know, but we don't know what private deals were set. And I just feel that that was really the reason to why they didn't do it. It wasn't because of the party. It wasn't because they didn't want to impeach him. There's more to this Marcus. I really believe.
Marcus: You might just be on to something. And it's just something that we just can't quite put our finger on. And hopefully we might get the news sooner than later and not be surprised.
John C. Morley: So I think, again, the word I like to use Marcus is we have to be cognizant, we're aware of what's going on, right? We can't walk around with our eyes closed all day long.
Marcus: We're already doing that now John.
John C. Morley: Something that's been coming up to a pass a lot. And one of the past shows, you know, we talked a lot about telegram and some of the programs that people could use to keep their texting safe. Well, there's been some controversy about what's coming up with the WhatsApp. You know, what's really going on. You know, internal discussions are on with the IT ministry over implications of the recent move by the Facebook owned messaging platform. You know, what's going on, who's really controlling the data and WhatsApp, which has over 400 million users, get this Marcus in India counts the country among its biggest markets globally. That tells me that whatever India does, that's why this is so impervious. And what does it matter what India does, it matters. And it's one of the largest bases for this WhatsApp. And what if our data in the United States started, I don't know, just slowly meandering over there. And then it being used for things that may not be so ethical and other sources are saying that the WhatsApp policy of the update has to be evaluated in the context of the current legal framework. And that sounds like a lot of legal mumbo jumbo.
Marcus: The glass isn't crystal when we look at it, not at all. And when Facebook is the parent, who's to really say that your private messages is really in the end encryption like they say it is.
John C. Morley: I don't trust it. And you know, the IT ministry and what they're trying to do. And they're just saying right now that the decision right now it's really nothing has been made. And the development comes, you know, from the raging debate over the WhatsApp controversy about its new terms of service and privacy policy around how it processes user data. And it partners its data with Facebook to offer integration across social media giants products platforms. That's really the big kahuna right there, Marcus.
Marcus: It is. But I like the fact that you brought to our attention in the past episode is just the different options we got besides WhatsApp. And I got to pose the question to you again, and maybe many of the fans out there are wondering too, is this a good time to start looking out for more of those startups?
John C. Morley: So, you know, I think a lot of them are going to come out, especially we get more into the internet of things, but I think we have to be cautious because the thing about, you know, like telegram, they're not a for-profit company. So when you think of something like this, I mean, I always get leery Marcus because you know, even things like, you know, clubhouse, clubhouse, isn't turning a profit yet. But you have to ask yourself, so why is telegram form, if telegrams not a profit company why are they forming?
Marcus: Exactly.
John C. Morley: Yeah. That just goes, it does not generate revenue as it's stands right now, right now with the current agreement, keeping the company free of influence of any money. This is as of September fund 2019 funding is a hundred percent privately generated by Mr. Pavel Durov. Now this gentleman, this is what's interesting. Why would somebody like him do this and privately fund this? He is a Russian entrepreneur who is best known for being the founder of social networking sites and later telegram. So is he using Instagram to be an incubator for something else? I don't think he's going to compromise security, but I just feel that this isn't going to be free forever. There might be a limit, or he might be trying to build his own new social platform. And this might just be tests on how to get it to work.
Marcus: Regardless of the fact that you look at it, there's got to be some long game plan that's soon to be revealed. And if we had to take a basketball and spin it on our fingers, we know just how hard that is, but we can predict how many times it's going to spin around after a while.
John C. Morley: Exactly. And they're building up this thing called respect your users and the telegram founder. Pavel Durov slams that he says, he's happy to save Facebook tens of thousands of millions of dollars and give away their secrets for free, something just doesn't seem copacetic there, Marcus, I don't know. I cannot put my finger on it, but I would be really leery. And like I said, telegram doesn't pay for channels or groups itself. There's no monetization program inside it. However, telegram is one of the main and important parts of marketing or business itself. So people make thousands of dollars per month by selling their products, services or ads. So it sounds to me like, and I could be wrong. They built telegram to be a platform, very similar to PayPal because, you know, there's like a free version of PayPal. I feel like they built this platform as a conduit to allow communication and eventually Marcus to allow payment. I think we're going to see in the next year that telegram is going to start being able to connect to your bank account. I don't know if I'm going to jump on board with that.
Marcus: No, I don't see myself doing that either. And if you know anything about open platforms like that, you will know that that's a playground for bad actors to just pry themselves on to your yard and get to jumping with the rope that you were jumping with.
John C. Morley: Yeah. And pretty soon they're going to become a chameleon and they're going to blend in with the grass that you have, and you're not even going to know they're on your lawn.
Marcus: Exactly.
John C. Morley: So I think we've got to keep our nose to the ground and just kind of be mindful of what's going on. And now here's something also that I want to bring to your attention. And I quote "law enforcement agencies cannot make any sense of the telegram data they receive from the ISP because they don't have the encryption keys to telegram. The use of bots ensures that the identity of the user is not revealed." So it gets difficult, if not impossible to trace who is promoting any type of I.e., child pornography, terrorism, or anything else that may be considered bad or illegal or harmful to society. How about that?
Marcus: Sounds pretty iron clad. Yeah, It's ironclad. But I would bet that if that's going to allow, be allowed to continue to operate with the United States, somebody in department of defense you know, the FCC is going to have to have that encryption key somewhere. Just like, we all know Apple's encrypted. But if you forget something, they can't help you, but let's just go with push comes to shove. I bet any billions of dollars in the world push to shove that Apple could get any message. Now, they said they can't, but I don't believe them. There's a back door in there. Now they're not being mischievous and using it. But if the turn of Apple ever changed, we'd have to be mindful of who has the key to that, because I believe there's a backdoor into that data.
John C. Morley: Yeah. It has to, it's not like they make any stains and then they say set it and forget it. I think there is definitely a way, we saw what happened, I think it was years back with Apple and they had the back and forth with the government about it. So they're not really fooling anybody. And I don't think telegrams fooling anybody either.
No, I think it's good. What they're doing. And they're getting a lot of clout Marcus for being a public service platform. That's really what they're getting. They're getting a lot of free publicity right now.
Marcus: Yes. Good publicity. But sometimes you can run it out.
John C. Morley: Yeah. I think if they just do one thing the wrong way, they're done. It's like, we talk about this many time, Marcus, you know, you take years to build a friendship or relationship, but you do that one thing, and you can destroy the trust in a fraction of a second.
And I am very certain that telegram may do that in the future, if they're not careful.
Marcus: Yeah. I really would like to know what their long-term plans are, because it's just seems very generous what they're doing right now. And with all generosity for so long that the relationship gets a little one-sided.
John C. Morley: Yeah. It just seems very hard to understand. And you know that it's a hundred percent free. And the fact, like we said that they don't make money, but if somebody is using it as a conduit to make money, then they've just provided, let's say the vehicle to transport that message. Maybe they're transporting bank accounts on there. We don't know. They could.
Marcus: Yeah, it could be.
John C. Morley: I bet you didn't know this. We talked about the good of Telegram. I'm going to talk about the bad things of telegram right now. You should know, you thought that was bad. Well, that's nothing. Did you know that telegram is actually been banned in a few countries?
Marcus: Oh no, I did not. This is crazzy.
John C. Morley: Because of the end-to-end encryption strategy of telegram, which does not any outsider to peep into somebody's visits, the application has been restricted in a few nations. For example, Iran where telegram is the most popular.
Marcus: So, no terrorist activity or fun for that country I see.
John C. Morley: Yeah. So, I just feel it's going to be very interesting. And as it becomes a problem, I mean, they could be in anywhere they want. And the question you're probably asking me is telegram banned in India. I know that's what everybody's probably saying. Well, right now it appears that they're allowing access, but I mean, they could change that at any time.
Marcus: Yeah.
John C. Morley: So it's going to be interesting. It's not banned in India, but I'm going to tell you one thing about it. It's illegal to use in India. So explain that one to me, that's an oxymoron, right? It's not banned in India, but it is illegal to use.
Marcus: Yeah. It really sounds like a setup. I don't understand that. So, but how are they even monitoring or how would they even know if they even...
John C. Morley: That is the problem. They can't. They can't, you don't even go to an app, you could just go to telegram.org. It's a .org and you can download it right from there and the app store sure doesn't tell people whose downloading something. They certainly wouldn't do that. That's against the Apple's privacy and Android's privacy.
Marcus: No.
John C. Morley: So the telegram app has a global search feature that allows you to reach all the channels and all of its groups. And it shows a lot that's going on via share channels. And it was first launched in 2015 for broadcasting messages to large audiences at that time. Now telegrams biggest users, do you know what it is?
Marcus: Would be the UK.
John C. Morley: Go a little further, Hong Kong.
Marcus: Hong Kong really?
John C. Morley: Telegrams biggest user in Hong Kong is now considering censoring it due to its association with the recent protests.
Marcus: That sounds about right.
John C. Morley: Telegram has been banned in China, Pakistan and Russia, we knew that was coming and the app has had over 200 million users across the platform. And that was just after a while back. So now I think they're up to like 400 million and Pavel Durov who's now around 36, 38, something like that, roughly, maybe 35, he's a billionaire. And he's also known to some as the Russian Mark Zuckerberg. And he founded telegram and he made his establishing the Vkontakte, the popular social network in Russia. But he was exiled back in 2014, over his refusal to cooperate with security services. He created telegram in 2013 and he published the manifesto attacking competitor WhatsApp, which was his main motive they said for developing it, which lacks security. So telegrams encryption is one reason it's become so popular with the protest movements and why governments like Russia, Pakistan, and India. And so like parts of India, not all of India have moved to ban the application altogether. So it's got some issues, but it seems like there's no regulation.
Marcus: This right here is going to require some type of non-profit, another non-profit oversight.
John C. Morley: Ah, you took the words out of my mouth, just like we had the W3C and other associations to come up with security standards. We're going to need one for internet of things. I think we're going to need one for communication, messaging communication. And that might be part of the internet of things because the internet of things, the real issue, is communication, security governance, and who has access to that data and are we logging, controlling the data? So I think that's all going to be under that same...
Marcus: Yeah, just this fits right in there. And that, it's going to be a problem. I don't think users are going to be a hundred percent safe on here with just the content that they may get exposed to. And then you get dropped with some Kiddy porn and it's not even yours because you've open channels and then you get busted for it. And before you know, it gets all nasty.
John C. Morley: It's going to be a problem. But on other notes, we'll leave that here for tonight. There's been some rumor that Apple is launching a virtual reality set soon. So this product is not aimed at the mass market, Apple insiders, because the product will cost more than $300 to $900 estimated price tag of the commercial virtual reality headsets example like Facebook, Picco, Sony, etc. And it's meant to leverage the company's most advanced chips and display tech. Apple's VR headset could run as high as $6,000.
Marcus: Oh, wow. So you by yourself...
John C. Morley: Which is high as the Mac pro desktop. So upon a projected 2023 launch. So we got a couple years yet, I quote Bloomberg writes that "Apple might only go to 180,000 units a year," a far cry from Apple's typical product volumes that run in the tens of millions, like their phones and other devices. That's interesting isn't it?
Marcus: That is.
John C. Morley: Mark was trying to do that for a while. I don't know what happened, but he was trying to do something with virtual reality with Facebook, but it seemed like that sizzle didn't it, it was like he made this big thing and then it kind of like just fizzled out.
Marcus: Yeah. You hear nothing more about it. And you know, I don't know if Apple's trying to get their ducks in a row and get the most advanced technology they can get for this thing and just jam it in there. And that's why the ticket price is so high.
John C. Morley: I know the R and D for any virtual reality is not going to be inexpensive. And I think when Mark was working on this, there were two issues. One, there was a cost issue. People didn't want to pay it. And the second was, he really didn't have a network of developers because let's face it, he wasn't going to develop enough applications. What are we going to do? Have a Facebook application with virtual reality? What the heck is that going to do for us? So he didn't have the things needed to make this a success. Apple has developers, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of the developers, already, they make people sign non-disclosures. And we talked about this in other shows, how one company lost a big deal with Apple because they opened their mouth and they found out about it. So I believe that they probably have a good portion of Apple developers that are starting to work on VR deployment, right as we speak, programs. And I think that's why this has leaked to the media that somebody found out that they were developing these things. I don't think it was because we learned it from Apple. I think we heard that maybe a developer was doing something like, huh, who is it for? Apple and they just put one-on-one together.
Marcus: That makes a lot of sense. And that's typically how these types of stories get leaked, especially when it comes from the camp of Apple with them being highly secretive with so many projects. So I'm just wondering though, with such a high-ticket price like this, are you suspecting that it's just a way to get people eyes off of it for now?
John C. Morley: I think what it really is being done for is a couple of things, Marcus. One, we know that developing for virtual reality is not inexpensive, as we said, and I believe that this price, however they're going to sell X number is going to basically pay for initial R and D and put money into being able to lower the cost on the device. Because their big expenses R and D and also the manufacturing of these VR headsets, they have to get enough volume, same problem we had when we talked about the, remember the hands that had the skin on them? That allowed you to feel the game. And it would sense things. So when you touch things in a game, it would actually compress your hand. You could even feel moisture and stuff like that. Now the biggest problem they had was they didn't have a source that could make the skin, which is why that glove was so expensive if you remember. So they're doing this because you know, virtual reality, augmented reality, and I believe it's also going to tie into the new Apple self-driving car project.
Marcus: Yeah. That'd be great.
John C. Morley: That's where I believe they're doing it. Cause they're not doing this so people can go play video games. Apple's got bigger things to do than make video games. They are doing this for a real cash cow.
Marcus: Yeah. There's definitely some huge opportunity in this test outside of just the gaming world, as much as people can just only tunnel vision down the tunnel and look at gaming. There's so much other possibilities with this. And I think you're hitting the point right on the head with this one.
John C. Morley: Yeah. It's going to be interesting, but you know, they never really share the truth about things, but whenever they do stuff in the beginning, like let's take Wi-Fi for example. I buy a high-end Wi-Fi router for home. That's a Wi-Fi six, it's almost a $1,000, that router in a couple years is going to drop $300, $400 and then go a little bit further down the road when the next one is coming out. That same router is not even worth $200. It's supply and demand. Remember we said once before, and actually this comes from a quote from Mr. Bill Gates, that if we were as advanced in the car industry, as we are in the computer industry, we would be buying computers for a dollar to $10, cars I should say a $1 to $10 with the way we're producing them. But we're not that advanced. Now, here's something really crazy. There is a new market for the world's most expensive pet fish. Now some of these Fisher endangered, Asian Aravanas and how much you think this fish goes for? Beautiful little purple fish.
Marcus: I would imagine that fish is going to be similar to buying any other exotic animal. So let's give her $10,000.
John C. Morley: Alright can you multiply that times a 30?
Marcus: Oh man.
John C. Morley: $300,000 is what the starting auction price is.
Marcus: Oh, this is crazy.
John C. Morley: It's nuts. And people, federal agents are pulling over in unmarked cars, people that have these fish and it's just amazing what's going on, but really people are saying this is a status symbol.
Marcus: You know when we think about just what people with money would do just to have that thing that say, Hey, look at me. It can become sickening sometimes.
John C. Morley: Is it really worth $300,000? I could probably think of some other things to do with $300,000. You probably could too.
Marcus: Yeah. I could eat a couple of those fish.
John C. Morley: You could buy two medium end Teslas for a $100,000 apiece.
Marcus: Or my own fish market.
John C. Morley: Yeah. You could start your own business and start you know, breeding fish.
Marcus: Yeah. That's a good one.
John C. Morley: But it's going to be interesting what happens. And the Aravana was brought by Indonesian president Susilo Bambang. I'm going to kill his last name, Yudhoyono at a piece of 200 M rupees or 20,000 US dollars. And it swims during an exhibition in the Jakarta in 2008. So that was the low-end price. But the $300,000 fish started to get up in price in the mid-1980s. And I guess it's because of supply and demand Marcus, I guess that's what it's about.
Marcus: Yeah. It's definitely one of those things that if you don't have it, you're not in it in the end.
John C. Morley: But here's the interesting thing. A lot of the companies are selling these, they do around $3 million in us dollars in annual revenue.
Marcus: Oh wow.
John C. Morley: Their average fish sale is $3000 per fish. I guess they're all not buying that expensive fish. So again, that's going to be interesting. But I just thought that was, you know, something to share with everyone that, you know, would you go out there and, you know, go buy a $300,000 fish? I might think twice before I do that. How about you?
Marcus: Yeah. I'm going to say it's real fishy. There is something fishy about the whole price.
John C. Morley: It's all about the supply and demand Marcus. That's really, I think what it's coming down to.
Marcus: It absolutely is. And when you can play with that and you can get people to spend, people who got the money at least to spend on things like this, and it's just ridiculous.
John C. Morley: It's something you might find at doctor's office. And I know, I went to previous dentist a while back and he had a fish in that tank, and I went to the store and I was just curious, cause I just thought it was so beautiful and that one fish, he paid $6,000 for it was called a rainbow fish.
Marcus: Oh wow.
John C. Morley: So I get something like that. But not $300,000 for a fish.
Marcus: Yeah. Well either price, I'm going to have to back out of that deal.
John C. Morley: So lots happening with you know, stuff on Twitter and things like that. But you know, Twitter is now planning to decentralize social media as per Jack Dorsey. He said, he's committed to decentralization and everyone's asking, how do we know? Well, for one, his Twitter bio only says one thing, Bitcoin. That's got me silent.
Marcus: You know, it's just like, when you see someone just put the hashtag, you know, black lives matter, you know, does it really mean that you're going to be following through on what you're saying?
John C. Morley: Or they just do it cause they want to get the traffic.
Marcus: Exactly. So, we already know Jack has been hot water with the government already. And he's been called, got subpoenaed earlier last year. Well, late last year we talked about that on previous episodes. So, now that his fan base is kind of turning on him, I guess it would make sense to put hashtag Bitcoin to kind of get people riled up.
John C. Morley: So then he started an initiative called blue sky to create a decentralized web protocol for social networks. It's very similar to if we were to decentralize internet messaging protocols, like IMAP which are used by different email providers like Yahoo, Google, Gmail, and outlook to let you send and receive emails. I just don't see the point really. It seems like he's trying to get a certain audience and without centralized monetization, hate speech can run wild they're saying. So the question I have is, you know, I get that we may have to sensor things if they're going to cause a problem to someone's safety, I get that. And we never should say anything against somebody or, you know, put a bad comments about them or harm them in any way. We shouldn't do that. But to block people's thoughts that are not really about, you know, an attack on somebody. Cause that's what a lot of times these things are in politics. It was clear after Trump's ban that anyone can instantly lose their Bullhorn. And on that Wednesday, China's US embassy, Twitter account was locked for comments regarding it's a Euchre population. So it really makes you think, Marcus, are they doing it for everyone? Or are they being selective? It's like, if there's a rule for you and me, but now another kid comes down the street and well, it doesn't apply to him. Well, wait a minute, why doesn't it apply to him? Well, it just doesn't apply to him, but it applies to everyone else. Well, why? Well, because I said so. I mean, that's what it feels like, right?
Marcus: That's exactly what it is. It reminds me of being in high school. When you go tell the teacher, Hey, he was doing it, how come you didn't do it to him? And then the teachers tell you, cause I said so.
John C. Morley: Just like if there was a pet in the classroom, the pet was protected. So I don't know. So we'll have to see what's going on with that, but I think it's completely insane what he's doing. I think there is no validity in the concept of him, honestly, trying to decentralize social networks.
Marcus: I say to that, wake me up when he does it.
John C. Morley: It's going to be a while. And you know vaccinations all across the country, unless people are, you know, 65 or older, they're able to get them now. And it's still a choice for people, you know, whether they want to get the vaccination, not get it. And they're saying right now, 50% of the population wants to get it, 50% doesn't. But I don't think they have the right markets to be able to, you know, force somebody to do it and then prevent them from not flying or going on a cruise. It's unclear to me to whether they're going to be successful in that. What do you think?
Marcus: They're not going to be. There's going to be so many people going on underneath the radar. There's going to be people getting turned around and they getting upset, cause they got turned around.
John C. Morley: But then they're trying to put apps out, but that's going to go against people's privacy. They're now in some parts of California issuing cards to show that you've been vaccinated.
Marcus: Just another card to lose.
John C. Morley: Well that's right. But now they want to make it so it can go on your phone, be part of your Apple wallet.
Marcus: Oh. And what else is going to be allowed?
John C. Morley: I know, I think this is so ridiculous, but in bringing this all up with vaccinations, vaccination passports, they are a complete disaster Marcus. Nearly 150 years after the CDC gave students proof of vaccination cards to return to school because of smallpox outbreak, they're using the same playbook now. And this is going to be a big tech mess to clean up is what I think. You know, around the globe teams are working on COVID vaccines, verification programs. So we can go back to all the crowded spaces that we dearly miss. But here's the issue, Marcus, there is no benchmark. There is no standard for developers, manufacturers to use when designing a COVID passport.
Marcus: They're going to be trying to stick all different kinds in your face. And the question's going to be which one is going to be the most HIPAA compliant.
John C. Morley: So the government now is deciding to take matters in their own hands. Isn't that wonderful?
Marcus: We can trust them.
John C. Morley: I'm going to believe them like hold my breath that I am waiting. The LA County vaccinated residents gets physical CDC cards as well as digital cards for their mobile walls just like I was telling you and people in China are using a symptom checking app to access hotels and subway to say whether you're clean or whether you're infected. And they actually can know if they get too close to somebody by seeing the color indication of whether they're a red or a green or a mark on the screen.
Marcus: Sounds like a movie.
John C. Morley: I know, but things in China are like that. The European union is looking at a vaccine certification plan. Oh, that's going to be interesting. I mean, it sounds like they're kind of touching the issue, but really, they're not making any headway and it's ultimately going to fall back on big companies. And they're saying now that if a company requires you to have a vaccine, you can't go back to work. So now what do you do? Do you collect unemployment? Cause you can't go back to work, cause you need to get a vaccine. That's going to be a big mess.
Marcus: There's going to be so much more money lost than just the development of this and getting this right.
John C. Morley: I think the real magic is that there are no shortages of any challenges that they're going to face today and in the future. And if we don't come together, Marcus, as a society, I see us having big problems. This is just a minor blip on the radar.
Marcus: There's definitely some challenges along the way. It's going to be quite the bit of the doozy, trying to get the laws together, trying to understand, you know, how the platform works. And then training that you have to do to the people whose handling the technology.
John C. Morley: It's going to be fun. So now that we have our president office know President Biden, how's he going to handle tech differently? And there's a lot of questions around this. President Biden, I believe has his hands full and not just today, but in the coming years you know, the Facebook and the Google already facing the antitrust action lawsuits, the justice department outgoing antitrust chief support, house Democrats proposal to disallow any company with a 50% market share from making an acquisition in the same industry. The section 230 that both major the US parties want changes to the decades old section 230, which provides tech companies with liability protection for content on their platforms. Remember I told you that was coming, they want to do that. And it's for different reasons though. So the Democrats want the companies to moderate the platform or be held liable. Republicans want to penalize companies for censoring content. Can we all just get on board and come together as a country?
Marcus: There's a way to do both of this. Both what they asking for and what they want are reasonable wants, but you just can't have one without the other.
John C. Morley: No, I think it has to be put together in, it is a compromise. And now Biden has said the section 230 should be revoked. Twitter and Facebook have said they want it updated too. So we may just see some changes that might be detrimental to not the companies that have been around for a while, but the new startups.
Marcus: That's been the big conversation since the beginning of when the talk started to drum up again. So there's no surprise whatsoever that startups are already in dire fear.
John C. Morley: And when Biden was a Senator, he never supported or sponsored any bills that had to relate to net neutrality. The idea you know, it was all internet traffic could be treated equally.
Marcus: That's coming from a person who has just no concept whatsoever or what's going on behind the scenes which is why, you know, it's important to have good advisors to advise on these things.
John C. Morley: It sounds to me Marcus, like, and I’ve used this analogy before, so you're going to go to your surgeon or you're going to go to your barber to get something removed from your face or to have a tooth extracted. You're just going to go to your barber. Now I know that was very common a hundred years ago. That's where the red came from on the barber pole. I'm not sure if many people knew that, but that red came from the blood that actually would come out, because they actually did pull teeth many years ago. So that's an interesting little trivia fact, but a lot's going to change, and the China trade war Biden will also have to decide what to do with the executive orders on Tik Tok and bans on various Chinese apps. What's he going to do?
Marcus: Well, you know, we know that this was definitely going to be a big ticket. You know, everybody loves the tik-toking, and no one wants to see it go bye-bye. So I think there's going to be a huge, big pressure on him to just to get rid of those executive orders altogether.
John C. Morley: But I have a question when we think about clubhouse and that's new, are they going down the same paths? Because not too long ago, they were saying that they're not even moderating the rooms for content. Now I get that it's uncensored. I get it. But I’ll tell you something, there's nothing from keeping a child out of clubhouse.
Marcus: No, it's not.
John C. Morley: No age, there's no age protection. It didn't ask for my age or validation from my birth date or anything, nothing.
Marcus: Yeah. Guess so here we are again.
John C. Morley: The technology's here, but we haven't thought through the logical issues that could potentially cause risk and responsibility. As we've said before, Marcus, there's no governance. Everyone's out to make the fast buck. It's not nice to say, but they're out to make the fast buck. And they say, Oh, well, let somebody else worry about that. I hear you. But I don't think that's the proper way to handle this. Because somebody is going to have to deal with this.
Marcus: It's either going to be, they're going to have to deal with it or are they going to have to embrace the consequences of not dealing with it.
John C. Morley: What are they going to do, sweep it under the rug for another a hundred years? They can't do that.
Marcus: No, they really can't. So just prepare yourself with just the outrage is going to come behind the consequences.
John C. Morley: So there's a new growth happening, Marcus and it's in cobots. That's right. I didn't say robots. I said, cobots, you ever heard of a cobot before?
Marcus: This is the first I’ve heard of it. This just sounds very interesting.
John C. Morley: Okay. I thought you'd find it. So robots can basically exist in a 2D or 3D world, cobots exist in a 4D world. So you're probably saying, okay, so what the heck is a cobot? Great question. So it's an augment intelligence approach to physical robots or they call bots and the industrial robots that might come to mind when you think of physical bots operating in a 4D environment, such as when we need to separate humans to be safe in a certain environment. They're also coined the term collaborative robots and they're known by shorthand as co bots and they meant to operate in conjunction with, and to use proximity to humans, to perform their tasks. So let me give you an example. We all know that in the pharmaceutical industry, there is a couple of ways they can sterilize. They can use an autoclave. Some of them use you know radiation very dangerous radiation at that. And they use the rods. Well, that's nothing that a human should ever be part of, right? Or even close to. So now you could put a cobot there and handle that task in an unsafe environment while keeping the human way far away from that investment.
Marcus: That's very interesting.
John C. Morley: So, the first example actually came in the 1990s when general motors robotics center was put in where humans would provide the power to make the machines to move while the cobots would provide the control and the steering to place objects with precision. And this way humans were kept safe because they control the power of the robots while the gaining on the advantages, the assisted capabilities and getting to the actual nitty gritty of the work was being done by the cobot. So in many ways, a cobot is the hardware version of an augmented intelligence robot experience. So we know what artificial intelligence was. We talk about that before, but it's a robot that can use its sensors and use the artificial intelligence world. And it may even be able to learn. So I think what's going to happen. We're going to see that a lot of equipment out there that's being manufactured now can be manufactured in a much faster, but more of a safer way. Just being able to handle sterilization for rods in a pharmaceutical plant is something that takes a lot of time and effort. And several years ago I was sitting, waiting for a bus and there was a gentleman and he told me what he was making. And I think he was making something like, I'm going to guess if I had to guess he probably was making something like $50,000. I believe it was $50,000. I think it was a yeah, it was almost $50,000 a week.
Marcus: Oh, wow.
John C. Morley: Now that sounds pretty good, right? And there's taxes, I'm sure taken out of that, but that was his gross. So I asked him, and he wasn't really with the program. And I was just trying to talk with him and learn about his job and he didn't seem very happy. And I said, I know it's none of my business. I said, I'm just curious, you shared with me what you get paid. Can I ask you what you do? Oh yeah, Yeah. What I do is really easy. It doesn't really take much skill. So I was really intrigued. The bus was almost here, and we'll call him Brian for argument's sake. And I said, Brian, I said, so how long have you doing this? Oh, I’ve been doing this for six years. He says, but I really want to leave now because I want to leave before something happens because I want to have a family. And I said, I'm not understanding what do you do? He says I work for a pharmaceutical company. It still didn't click with me. And then he told me he worked in the sterilization department. Okay, so I still didn't find it yet. And he says, I work with these rods. And then he told me what these rods were, which are these, you know, these very dangerous rods that come from the earth and have radiation on them. And so you know, when you think about something like this, I said to him, how long have you been doing it? And he says, Oh, while he says, but my brain's starting to go. And he's, I get paid a lot of money. He says, but the problem is, I said, he says, I'm basically killing myself. I said, well, you should do something. He says, no, I can't do anything. He says, you know, they pay me a lot of money, but unfortunately, I had to sign a release that if anything happens to me or my family, I can never go after them because I chose to work here.
Marcus: Wow. That's a good story there. And this there's so much to peel back in the midst of that.
John C. Morley: But the light of the story I want you to understand is that now that we have these cobots, they can do things. So if you need to do like maybe a fumigation of a home, or you need to do stuff that could be potentially harmful to pets or to people, you have another device to do it. There was a time when they thought one of the buildings that we were working in had bombs in it. So they did the normal deployment to check, but they couldn't find anything. They got everybody out of the building, and they sent these little robots in, very small Marcus. I'm going to say, they look very similar to like a truck that you'd see maybe 10 times bigger than that you know, that you would play with when you were a kid. And they sent these in, and they had cameras on them. And they went around the whole building, which took them a couple hours. And what they concluded was the building was safe. And that there was a person that left a guitar case outside their unit. And they thought there might've been a bomb in that case. But because of that four hours of work, no human life was destroyed. And that's when I think technology is amazing. Now we never want anything to get destroyed, but if a robot or a cobot gets destroyed, it's just money to rebuild it. It's not a person.
Marcus: Exactly. You know, that's a beautiful touch to you know what the true power in us, good use of technologies, especially these cobots that they are called. And, you know, and I would definitely like to see more of these and as they can be very helpful to some of the things that just occur in our daily life here.
John C. Morley: We're starting to see them. I think I told you a while back, we weren't really calling them cobots, but they're kind of like cobots. Remember those little mini delivery trucks in China, in Wuhan China which is where the virus started. They're using these little vehicles to do delivery for touchless delivery.
Marcus: Yeah. I remember seeing that. And I remember I was talking about that and these things are really going to change the way life is and make life a lot more easier for some people, if not all of us.
John C. Morley: I think it's going to be a great thing. My only concern again, is, like I said to you is going to be the governance and what happens with the data. I mean, the manufacturers around the world are facing the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. And they're having huge challenges. So now we don't have to worry about a factory shutting down because now we have cobots that are manufacturing things. The bad thing about this Marcus in a plant is it gets rid of a lot of jobs. Let's just say we had a factory of maybe I'm going to guess several hundred workers. They only maybe need about four or five cobots, that's it. So I think it's a great thing when you can use a cobalt, but I think it should be used in environments where we want to spare human life.
Marcus: That makes sense. I like that.
John C. Morley: So they use these cobots can do things like welding, soldering, painting because the humans exposed to that too long, they might get dizzy and asphyxiated, right? So these cobots can precisely do the same task over and over again. And they never smell the paint. You know, it's supposed to be ventilated and things like that. And also, they can work with lasers. And now if the robot makes a mistake, which is very rare, cause it's precision nothing's really going to happen except maybe something gets damaged. No one's going to get injured.
Marcus: Yeah. So which again, you would identify some real heavy points and some key values as to what these things bring to just our lifestyles here.
John C. Morley: Human management is going to be the key as we move forward with these types of worlds and robot design, programming, maintenance, and supervision are going to become the new jobs. So that's what's going to happen. Hopefully it will help our world to produce things quicker, faster, cheaper, more reliable, and then maybe give jobs to people that are in areas that are not like I said, subject to any type of harm to people.
Marcus: I agree.
John C. Morley: So it's a very interesting story. Hopefully you enjoyed that. And I know when I heard that story from the kid, I was just, I was having a glass of water and I think I dropped the water over. Like I was like in shock when he told that to me.
Marcus: Yeah. It's definitely an amazing story. And this is what JMOR tech talk is all about.
John C. Morley: Bring you the stories. We bring you the truth. We bring you the real-life feelings of people. It's not just technology, it's the people behind them and how technology is impacting their lives. We don't just tell you how to fix something or how to plug something in or what to do when you're frustrated. We really get down to the personal matters that technology is affecting, which is our lives.
Marcus: Excellent there. And boy, I feel like I have grown a lot, you know, just in the amount of values, you know, that I get every week with you. So I know the audience is really appreciating this.
John C. Morley: Well, I love doing it. You know, this is my passion. I love being here with you Marcus, and being here with our wonderful audience that keeps growing and expanding every week. I feel so privileged to be able to do this and to not only share knowledge, but you know, I learn when I do this because when we do research, and we pick different stories. Even though I'm knowledgeable in this field, I find that I'm always learning something more every time I report on something Marcus. So this is an amazing growing point for me. And it just enriches my life so much. And I hope that it enriches everyone else's life, as much as you know, me bringing these topics to you guys and learning it myself. So thinking about these types of personal stories. Okay, we got a lot of personal stories tonight. We got two more. So I hope you have a tissue box handy. Social media damages a teenager's mental health. A teenager's mental health is being damaged by heavy social media use. The research came from the education policy Institute and the princess trust said, and I quote "the wellbeing and self-esteem were similar in all children of primary school age," still quoting "boys and girls wellbeing is effected at the age of 14, but girls' mental health drops more after that it's found. A lack of exercise is another contributing factor excavating by the pandemic, the study said. According to the research," and again, I'm still quoting, "one in three girls was unhappy with their personal appearance, by the age of 14, compared with the one in seven at the end of primary school, the number of young people with problem mental illness has risen to one in six, up from one in nine in 2017. Boys in the bottom set at primary school had lower self-esteem at 14 than that of their peers. The wellbeing of both genders fell during adolescence with girls experiencing a greater decline, the report had said," still quoting. "However, it is recognized that girl's self-esteem and wellbeing stabilizes as they move into their late teens, whereas it continues to drop for boys." And the problem is that people are getting so hooked I want to say in technology, but they're getting so hooked on social media that it's like they can't take a second breath. And to hear that teenager's mental health is being damaged, that is so sad, Marcus.
Marcus: That is, it's really a bad case here of just what, Oh my God. It is what we feared a long time ago. And then the social media apps, they play so much on the behavior. They study the behaviors of the user. And originally, you know, they don't care who it is behind the, you know, behind the app. You know, it's just, when they can gauge you it's helping them. But on the other side of that, there's someone who needs even, you know, even more help after they have walked away and, you know, been a vacuum for just...
John C. Morley: A long time, right?
Marcus: A long time, just, you know, just sucking it all out of them.
John C. Morley: This is the thing, you know, I feel that sometimes whether it's children or whether it's adults, sometimes Marcus, to be honest with you, I feel that technology is great, but it's important. One of the things I do every single day is I take, except when it's snowing, is I take a 60-minute walk and I think it's so important Marcus, to unplug from technology.
Marcus: I can't agree with you more. Sometimes you still got to just get away from it. But some, you know, the world, we live it in, and the pandemic has not made it even better. It's keeping us in front of the screen a lot more.
John C. Morley: But the truth of the matter is Marcus, you can get out, you cannot have to wear a mask if you're not around anybody and you can walk and there's plenty of room to do that. You don't have to go to a gym as people say, Oh, I can't work out, I do not have a gym.
Go walk, go get some weights at your local store and, you know, do some barbells or something, do some pushups. I feel that if you are glued to your phone, as much as the people in this story, it's going to cause a problem because you're looking for constant approval. And when you don't get it, it's going to make you more depressed, could lead to things like deep depression, suicide. Those are just a few things. So I think it's really important that we not only take care of our physical body, but we take care of our mental health as well.
Marcus: I agree. These are critical times here and the trauma that we all have experienced at large does require us to be a lot more mindful to just how fragile we are as people. You know, but the young people, you know, they had a hardest hit and we got to make sure that they get the proper care.
John C. Morley: I think what happens is, when you use technology, you know, you're alone, which is fine, but when you're constantly in front of a screen all day long and you don't interact with people in the world, I think it actually diminishes people's social skills.
Marcus: I agree with that. That's a huge point you raised there. And so we're going to have to figure out how do we get these kids to foster these important skills that they're being cut off from.
John C. Morley: Well, Nickelodeon does something which is quite remarkable. And I think it's for all ages, not just for teens. It's called, I think it's called get outside day or something. And basically what happens is you know, they call it national, that's actually, what's called national Get outside day, that's what they call it. And I believe it's on September 29th and there's a time, I forget what time they do it. They actually put a message and it might be different in the US, but this is what it is a, I believe it's in the United Kingdom. And when they do get outside day, they actually turn off Nickelodeon. So on the screen, it says, we're outside playing, and you should be too. Now I think that is remarkable. And then of course they let you know, later on that, get outside days sponsored by your local. But during the whole day, they just say, get outside and play, you know, use some of those muscles that you normally don't, whether it's walking, whether it's jumping rope, whether it's maybe playing basketball or tag or football or anything, or maybe it's not even doing anything like that. It's just being outside and becoming one with nature, meditating outside, maybe doing exercises outside.
Marcus: That's great stuff, you know, and this is all good stuff that can really be helpful and instituted right away.
John C. Morley: So if you thought we had a lot of great stories, we have one more. We have one more story. And this story is quite amazing. You know, a lot of times we talk about technology and people will say, you know, that that piece of technology is