Recycling is a Last Resort

December 3^rd, 2019

Dear Reader,

This letter is long overdue.  I wanted to tell you about what's happening lately.  This is Ty – one of the co-founders at Shift Sight.

Shift Sight undoubtedly looks a little different than it did a month ago.  Missing are the pages describing the company, Jade, and materials under development.  Information of interest to investors has also been pulled.

I spent a significant amount of time in 2018 talking to impact investors.  These are the folks that could potentially fund Shift Sight, a triple-bottom-line (people, planet, profit) startup and allow us to build a full Jade prototype, carried all the way to production-ready.

These investors graciously spent time with me ...

• and told me that Jade should be an app because experiences are overrated.  (This is the root of e-waste?)
• but only invest in large, publicly traded companies.  (Huh?  CSR is not ESG.)
• and wanted Jade to be redesigned with minimal cost to get millions of them into schools.  (Minimal cost is disposable and not repairable.)
• while enthusiastically defining their ties with a supply chain full of rights abuses for cheap manufacturing.  (No?)
• but would like to invest once we have a prototype built and sales started.  (Catch-22.  Jade is akin to a medical device: it needs significant R&D before the benefits can be demonstrated.)

Perhaps the impact investors needed social proof – a warm introduction to skew their judgement and damage their objectivity.  Or maybe their expectations were in the way; Jade is a radical departure.  It takes time to savor Jade and Shift Sight before they can be appreciated fully.  Regardless, it was disheartening to see that the publicly-described impact was usually a veneer.

Enough about investors.

Individuals that I spent time with – both professionals and parents – showered Shift Sight and Jade with love and praise.  I would've likely had pre-orders on the books if a complete Jade prototype was built.

Some parents even understood and appreciated (on the spot) the vast issues that Shift Sight is working to remedy.  Others had no idea where their electronics went and became concerned that their only option is to throw out old devices.

Jade is not just a product, but a means to bring about a different future.  The goals we are working toward are directly tied to the inhabitability of our planet.

Consider the current interdependence of (a) people, (b) planet, and (c) technology:

1. Technology use increases our dependency on it.
2. There is more than 40+ years of unaddressed e-waste, poisoning ecosystems and people alike.
3. E-waste is the fastest growing, most carcinogenic waste stream.  (IEEE Electronics Goes Green 2016+ Proceedings, UN Reports, others.)
4. Jevons' paradox, observed in the electronics industry already, means that higher efficiencies lead to greater consumption and abuse of resources: green technology is not a categorical answer to our ills.
5. Infrastructure obscures the real cost of technology: streaming a video creates e-waste while renting physical media from a library does not.
6. Recycling is not a solution and needs to be treated as a last resort.  If you need a visual, think about removing a raw egg yolk from a baked cake.

Those interdependent ABCs?
(a) People are suffering.  Slave labor is ingrained in electronics manufacturing and resource extraction.
(b) The planet is struggling.  Electronics are treated as disposable, while energy and resource consumption increases for each new gadget.
(c) Technology, therefore, needs to change – this is Jade.

Part of Shift Sight's push in 2018 was to begin developing side materials, such as elementary school flyers for e-waste.  As investor funding was security for my family, there was not time to complete these in 2018.  (Funding would have allowed us to “relax” and perfect them.)

The side materials were mostly talking points for investors to understand how deeply Shift Sight is committed to both raising awareness of the problems faced by future generations and describing our proposed solutions.  With no audience today, the materials have been abandoned.

As we ran out of time and money in 2018, I began to look for work.  This may seem like an obvious thing to do, especially since startups are usually a side-job until they are paying the bills, but it was a great challenge.

If you don't know me personally, you may be surprised to learn that I am disabled.  This has been a stumbling block for me, as accelerators that help fund entrepreneurs do not help the disabled.  Conventional employment is out-of-reach for me, and it is only through the support of family and friends that my family is not homeless.

The full-time focus on Shift Sight faded by the end of 2018.  Food costs money.

Beginning this year, I advertised engineering services on Fiverr with the hope of earning a livable wage as 2019 passed.  I found that pay is not commensurate with experience / ratings: I am simply competing with people who can afford to work for nothing.  I have made about $1.50/hour while dealing with elevated medical problems associated with strenuous deadlines.

Something has to change.

Fiverr is going nowhere, and time on Fiverr is time away from Shift Sight.

I am making some significant changes for 2020 with Shift Sight.  We want your help building Jade.

1. The focus on investors is completely gone.  People that are profiting from the status quo are going to be its loudest supporters, regardless of their superficial claim of alignment to people and planet.
2. Shift Sight will offer training, courses, possibly interactive sessions, and pay-what-you-can software tools for creating durable electronics and firmware.  These pieces will directly contribute to Jade.
3. A book, embodying Shift Sight and outlining its need, is under development and will receive priority from time to time.  No release date is set.
4. My engineering and pedagogical expertise will be available for direct hire via this website.

A challenge I face with offering training is that there is no infrastructure for this purpose.  Jade is the tool and the infrastructure.  As such, some of the Jade simulator pieces may be developed further and offered as standalone pieces.  Your contributions would fuel Jade's development.  You learn, we eat, Jade development flourishes.  Win-win-win.

As the time approaches, I will announce the platforms and provide the links.  Think Patreon, but not necessarily Patreon.

If 2020 goes well, I would like to complete the layout of a prototype PCB and explain in detail its repairability and functionality on one of my not-yet-named channels.

Some of you may know the terminology for what is going on here: Shift Sight needs to bootstrap.  Through your support, we hope to achieve the poverty line while furthering Jade.  (That's not a typo: we are that poor.)

Does any of this mean that Shift Sight is unfundable?  Of course not.  The startup is a Zebra.

Some of you understand this unequivocally.  You know that Shift Sight is on the cusp of a revolution, a pioneer in not just what can be, but what needs to be. 

Shift Sight is seemingly the only counterbalance in a world where technology increasingly does not serve human or planetary needs.  Industry now builds things because it can – or because it wants to monetize some aspect of human behavior with no regard for its user.

I am pushing for repairable, responsible technology – not green technology.

Keep checking back for more, and follow me [personally] on social media.

Oh!  One last thing before you go.  The pages that were taken down will be revised and restored to reflect our 2020 priorities as time allows.

Ty