WIFI IS A HUMAN RIGHT
so
i’m 18 years old and i walk into a bank
and
i stand online and i’m nervous my palms
are sweating
and the security guards are looking at
me giving me dirty looks
and i woke up to the teller and i hand
there a note
i want to make withdrawal she asked me
how do i want it
i say all 20s and the seller hands me 20
000
in cash and
i’m wearing baggy pants and a hoodie and
i
shove the money in my pockets and it’s
sticking out
and i walk outside of the bank and i
give the security guard one last dirty
look
and i feel like i just robbed the bank
so how did i make the money i didn’t rob
the bank
i made the money using wi-fi
so at that point in my life i was
selling cds
i was burning cds burning mixtapes and
then i was selling them online
and when i started i was just selling
them in my neighborhood i was selling
them to my friends
my family uh people that i went to
school with
and then i opened up an amazon account
and i opened up an ebay account
and i went from making fifty dollars a
day
to three thousand dollars a day and that
happened because i was selling cds not
only the people in my town
uh some people uh from europe from asia
from all around the country california
you name it
people from all around the world were
buying these mixtapes
and i did that by leveraging the power
of the digital economy i grew up in a
small town in jersey the population was
about 15
000 people uh back in 2005.
but i was able to tap into not the 15
000 people in the town that i lived in
i was able to tap into the 4 billion
people
all around the world that is the power
of the digital economy the power of the
internet is unlimited
so we have a huge problem right
coven 19 the quarantines the lockdown
and if you’re not making money online
right now you’re in big trouble
2020 is going to be one of the most
disruptive
times in history i mean this is bigger
than the great depression
this is bigger than uh 2008 this is
bigger than anything we’ve ever seen
people have been locked in their homes
throughout not only the country
throughout the whole world and here in
puerto rico where i live
the average salary is only
twenty thousand dollars the average
household income
only twenty thousand dollars here in
puerto rico so why
why is that well if you look at a makeup
of
the jobs here the most popular jobs one
of them is cashiers
another one is secretaries retail
custodial cooks chefs
teachers registered nurses now while all
these are
very very very important jobs they’re
needed for our society to
survive they’re all also jobs that rely
on the local
economy and if we look at puerto rico
what’s puerto rico’s number one export
it’s not uh our music even though our
music
is uh popular all around the world um it
is not
uh our culture or ideas
it is in fact our people uh in fact
there are more puerto ricans that live
in the united states and abroad
than that live here on the island um and
that number is actually increasing
so more puerto ricans are leaving the
island
and why they’re leaving the island
because they’re looking for
opportunities so 5.8
million puerto ricans live in the united
states in the mainland
as compared to 2.8 million that live
here on the island so that’s almost
double
and if i look at um why that is
it’s because look at the average income
in the united states the average
income in the mainland is 63 000 as
compared to the 20 000 that we spoke
about earlier
so automatically by you moving to the
united states
uh you’re gonna get three times the
income on average
you’re going to get a raise of three
times your income by moving to the
united states
but there’s a big problem the cost of
living in the united states is also much
higher
so we move to the united states
we move to places like california like
new york
like florida and we go there looking for
opportunity
but those are also the same places where
you’re most likely to live paycheck to
paycheck
so you go and you’re making more money
but you’re simultaneously spending more
money
so the big question is what can we do
about it
um there’s a lie there’s a misconception
they say that you have to be
born with money to have money um but i
love a quote from bill gates he actually
says if you’re born poor it’s not your
fault um but if you die poor it is and
that’s because
in today’s digital economy it doesn’t
matter where you’re born
you can be born in puerto rico you can
be born in africa you can be born in the
philippines you can be born in mexico
you can be born in latin america
you’ll be born in peru you still have
access to the same internet the same
opportunities um you know my ancestors
they had to migrate they had to
immigrate
from puerto rico and uh
and europe to come to the united states
to come
looking for a better land so look at you
know christopher columbus christopher
columbus got on a bunch of ships
came down here to puerto rico right came
down here to puerto rico looking for
opportunities
and then decades later and centuries
later
uh people from puerto rico are now going
to new york again looking for
opportunities
now if you’re connected to the internet
you have
at the opportunities the entire world at
your fingertips just like me when i was
selling my cds
so the three secrets to surviving in the
new economy the covid the quarantine
economy
so number one is never stop learning
so you can go to college and get a good
job right that’s the that’s the
narrative the old way of thinking that
we’ve been fed
but the new way of thinking is
that the school system cannot teach you
about money
the school system was designed to create
factory workers
and rich people actually don’t work for
money
entrepreneurs work for free okay
entrepreneurs
work for in exchange for the experience
and the people that they get to become
um so the new way of thinking is really
online education
it’s entrepreneurship it’s learning on
the job it’s never stop
learning and education is now on demand
uh you know it’s youtube it’s literally
like a netflix of education
where youtube has a million how-to’s a
million tutorials
uh you know more information than
harvard could ever
hope to have in their bookshelves is now
available on youtube it’s being created
every day
and it’s being created by doers so
education is now on demand you don’t
have to leave your home anymore to learn
and to thrive and to prosper
online education apps like zoom apps
like facebook live and youtube and
podcasts
um number two is to surround yourself
with greatness surround yourself
with the people that you want to become
and
you know sometimes that’s hard growing
up in in inner city or growing up in a
lower income neighborhood you know i
grew up a lot of my friends were
uh gang members and getting into all
sorts of trouble
um but as you separate yourself from
these circles of people you start
surrounding yourself with the right
people
um you know success leaves leaves clues
and those things
rub off and if you look at all our great
leaders they all have coaches they all
have mentors
you know um you know michael jordan had
a coach
uh bill gates was mentored by warren
buffett like
uh every single great leader that you
look at they have a coach they have a
mentor they have someone that’s helping
them along the way
so find the right mentors look for them
digital mentors that can come
in the form of podcasts that can come in
the form of apps like
the modi app like youtube like instagram
like
audible there are so many ways you can
have an online mentor it’s not just
face-to-face interactions anymore
that’s why i’m really happy that uh
puerto rico has
embraced entrepreneurs from all around
the world and investors to come down to
puerto rico
with act 20 and at 22 and all the other
laws that they’re putting in place
they want to bring talent they want to
bring uh new ideas new ways of thinking
uh because there is a great quote
from the former governor of puerto rico
he said we need to share in wealth
not poverty so we want to share
from we’re going to learn from
successful people because success
is more contagious than you can ever
imagine
number three is everyone is now a global
business your personal brand when people
google you
uh you are a business you are a brand so
the old way of thinking is to be at the
right time at the right place you have
to be
you know in the right rooms and x y and
z uh
but the new way of thinking is to think
global not local with this phone
this phone that has more technology uh
than the
uh mission to the moon there’s more
technology in this phone than the
mission to the moon
uh you can have access to every single
great leader
um you know if your business is not on
the internet then your business is going
to be out of business so you need to be
using this tool
to connect with your customers your
clients mentors
experts business leaders they’re all on
the other side of a tweet
they’re on the other side of an email
they’re on the other side of a message
and that’s all thanks to the digital
economy so think
global not local internet access
is the great equalizer and lack of
internet access creates poverty
and if you look statistically here in
puerto rico you’ll see that
um if we look at the areas that are most
affected by poverty
they are also the areas that are most
affected by either
lack of internet access or really bad
quality internet access
and that’s why today my new idea for
tedx condado
my new idea to uh disrupt rebuild and
innovate here in puerto rico
is that every puerto rican resident
deserves fast free internet access
and that wi-fi should be a human
right and if you look at this this has
been done before
this isn’t anything new if you look at
new york city they installed
super fast free wi-fi on every single
corner
and even in the subways and now it
doesn’t matter
even if you’re an immigrant it doesn’t
matter if you come from another country
it doesn’t matter if uh you know it
doesn’t matter where you are the
internet does not discriminate
and you have the access to uh get job
opportunities it’s actually impossible
now to apply for
a job if you don’t have internet access
you have the possibilities of creating
businesses
of networking with other people of
getting access
um so i think that puerto rico needs
fast
free public wi-fi um and you know this
might sound like a radical idea
but if we look back we didn’t used to
guarantee water
we didn’t use to guarantee electricity
but now uh if we told you that you were
not going to have water and electricity
we would say that
was inhumane and i think the same
way how we guarantee water and we
guarantee
electricity i feel that wi-fi should be
a human right
and i feel that lack of internet is just
as inhumane
because wi-fi creates money it creates
jobs it creates opportunity
it creates education and most
importantly
wi-fi gives you a voice and if we look
at what happened recently right here in
puerto rico
with ricky martin and tons of other
influencers
in puerto rico came together
and they removed the governor from
office
and they did this all through social
media
all through the power of coming together
or through the power of using wi-fi and
using their voice online
their digital voice and they created
real change real political change here
on the island
and that’s why i believe that wi-fi
is a human right thank you