Happy Holidays!

May you find peace and joy

A little over a year ago, I took a giant leap. I left a job I loved, one at which I worked with some of the most extraordinary people I know. The reason was because while I truly believed we did great work both in helping good people and stopping the bad ones, I also knew I possessed the potential to do more, across a much wider landscape. To that end, I applied some of the skills I acquired while working toward the development of a mobile application designed for mitigating the harm from natural disasters. One fateful morning in January 2023, I came to realize that in order for that application to work and for people to use it, I needed to be on the ground in its target area—the Himalayas. Here is a video I produced about that project:

Now, nearly a year later, I write this from an apartment in Kathmandu, Nepal. My non-profit, EALS Global Foundation, partnered with two entities to see the project through and, while not yet a total success, it has advanced considerably. Check out our website for some of the research and other activities that are happening. Also, forgive the somewhat sporadic attention the website and social media receive from us. We are a small operation and manage those things in between everything else.

Fate had more in store for me than just EALS, however.

While navigating the complex waters of the non-profit world, I developed a very strong relationship with Softwarica College of IT and E-Commerce. It made sense, after all, because that institution brought forth volunteers to assist with the complex problems associated with developing my early warning system. As our friendship intensified, the chiefs of that college and I began brainstorming. For quite some time, I had imagined that Nepal—a place for which I have long held a special feeling—could become the next tech hub of the world. It possesses some characteristics that align with Bengaluru, which accomplished that feat some decades ago. But in this changed world, Nepal also brings to the table a certain creativity coupled with an eager work force, perfectly suited to introduce revolutionary ideas in a seemingly saturated climate. Bengaluru’s peak has passed, I argued; Nepal’s rise is only beginning. See here:

The leadership at Softwarica holds these same beliefs. To bring belief into reality, we fully joined forces. Today, I not only teach cybersecurity, ethical hacking, and digital forensics there, but I also oversee those curricula. Our mission is to steer technology education in such a way as to not just make Nepal globally competitive, but to make it a world leader. Students from the school have performed remarkable feats in recent years—many of which I intend to highlight in a future piece—proving Nepal’s next generation’s potential. In any case, I mention it because the motivation behind the establishment of EALS—employing modern technology to solve an ancient problem—parallels my motivations for formulating a superior technology education environment here. Moreover, I feel strongly about crafting young, tech-oriented minds into benevolent developers and innovators. I have written extensively about my disgruntled attitude about the flawed, amoral deployment of otherwise extraordinary technologies. In my current capacity as a program director, I can now convert my opinions into actions. But education alone is not enough.

I have also partnered with some of the keenest minds in technology to turn a local Nepali company into an international champion. Big tech companies have co-opted critical technologies that could help so many people and used them instead as cash machines. Data-mining and other forms of customer exploitation have led to what one blogger has coined, “enshittification.” Enshittification is when “platforms go from being initially good to their users, to abusing them to make things better for their business customers and finally to abusing those customers in order to claw back all the value for themselves.” What my team and I seek to do is to chart a different course. We create websites, mobile applications, digital suites, and platforms, but with excellent service as our priority. For us, the customer is not the product, but the source of our success. People have grown tired of serving as mere data factories, their every move commodified. They are sick of relying on frustratingly stupid chatbots to solve even simple problems while apathetic companies reap billions off their very lives. All of us are done with the “licensing” model of business where we don’t even own the very things we “buy.”

At Digi Technology, we want to harken back to the days when businesses served people, not the other way around. Come see what we do at our website or Facebook page. My reason for taking the reins rests in several areas. First, I love the creativity and skill showed by the Digi Technology team. The company employs some truly gifted people in both the United States and Nepal. We have expert marketers, developers, graphics designers, and more. Working among these folks engenders the same positive feelings I enjoyed during my law enforcement career. Second, I do not believe it helps anyone to sit back and complain—as I often do on this platform—about our world transforming into some digitally-driven, capitalist dystopia without making some effort to change that. Building business solely for profit leads to exactly that Orwellian result. For my partners and I, the goal is to create a financially stable life for ourselves while ensuring that the true architects of our company—the workers—follow suit. My view holds that no CEO, President, or other executive should enjoy all the spoils while the workers receive the crumbs from the table. I have minced no words in my contempt for those who boorishly espouse the opposite.

This morning—Christmas Day here, Christmas Eve back home—I spent some time pondering my absence from my family, my dog, my house… wondering if this path is worth it. Through a video chat, I said hello to everyone sitting around the Christmas tree, laughing together, enjoying cookies and coffee, while opening presents. My wife-to-be made sure to carry her device around the room, so that I could say hello to everyone, some of whom I see far too infrequently as it is. A crushing wave of sadness poured over me as I recognized that one important moment of a fleeting life was passing me by. But then an unexpected warmth filled me back up. It occurred to me that I had not completely lost the moment. Indeed, the very fact that I could look upon and talk to everyone exhibited a small miracle that just a few decades ago would have been inconceivable. That, although some thousands of miles away I could still experience the event, even if in some diminished capacity. Technology gave me back what distance had taken.

I also realized that many across the world do not share even this simplest of fortunes. ‘Progress” has left a large portion of the world behind, unwilling to extend any olive branches to places deemed unmonetizable. Despite the fact that people in many of those places perform the most grueling tasks to mine the resources needed to enable the digital utopia the rest of us enjoy, those wielding the levers of power otherwise couldn’t care less about them. The digital age has developed in many ways like the industrial one of the past—led by robber barons and corruption—exploiting and then discarding anything and anyone that no longer provides any further quantifiable value. Rest assured, I entertain no grandiose delusions that me and my small team can change that. Without a society-wide rethinking about how things should be rather than how they are, I’m afraid that maintaining hope appears almost futile .

But it is not wholly lost.

One thing we can do as individuals is to lead by example. We can show not tell people a better way, one in which we rise, stagnate, or decline together. A beautiful, well-lived life does not require wealth, and is not enhanced by the pursuit of it. Unlocking such satisfaction comes with accomplishing whatever it takes to make life better for ourselves and those around us. Finding comradery among people of different cultures, religions, or beliefs engenders so much more fulfillment than chasing bottom lines. Diminishing the struggles of our companions through successful ventures that bring joy to yet others (customers) fosters peace and happiness all around. All of us have seen the results of the way society has been doing things—climate degradation, wars, abuse, violence. And some would happily keep it that way. If we are to marginalize anyone, it should be them. But we can do so without violence or vitriol. We can do it by forging ahead in our own, positive way.

Yes, I miss my family and friends from whom I have been apart for so long. What I am doing these days unfortunately requires it. But I know that this separation need not exist forever. I know the day will come when the successes of these ventures have reached the point that they will bring me back to those I hold most dear, as often as I want to. And when I have achieved that success, if it is a byproduct of some larger contribution to society, one that instills even just a benefit to a small piece of the population who have been forsaken in one way or another, then I will know it will all have been worth it.

Have a very Merry Christmas. Cherish your time with loved ones. I know I do, no matter the means by which I am able to do so.

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I am a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Certified Crime Analyst, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Financial Crimes Investigator with a Juris Doctor and a Master’s degree in history. I spent 10 years working in the New York State Division of Criminal Justice as Senior Analyst and Investigator. Today, I teach Cybersecurity, Ethical Hacking, and Digital Forensics at Softwarica College of IT and E-Commerce in Nepal. In addition, I offer training on Financial Crime Prevention and Investigation. I am also Vice President of Digi Technology in Nepal, for which I have also created its sister company in the USA, Digi Technology America, LLC. We provide technology solutions for businesses or individuals, including cybersecurity, all across the globe. I was a firefighter before I joined law enforcement and now I currently run a non-profit that uses mobile applications and other technologies to create Early Alert Systems for natural disasters for people living in remote or poor areas.

Find more about me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Mastodon. Or visit my EALS Global Foundation’s webpage page here.

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