My 40 year history as an inventor enabled me to earn nine worldwide patents on advanced light emitting technologies, associated solid state power supplies, as well as other technologies. During the mid 80’s I invented and patented the precursor to today’s compact fluorescent light bulbs, 3/8th inch thick glass plates of light that could last 50 years. However, these could not compete with cheaper fluorescent tubes and incandescent bulbs so instead of creating glass plates where the full face glowed, I incorporated graphics into the technology to create plates of glowing images. The technology, Plateglass Neon was acclaimed by the world’s most respected sign journal as the most significant advance in the fabrication of neon signs since they were first invented by Georges Claude in Paris in 1912. During the mid 80’s and 90’s, my company, Neon Technology, sold these around the world to major corporations in partnership, during some of that time, with the Japanese company ITOCHU , listed in 1992 as the world’s largest company. When the Asian economy collapsed in 1998 to 1999, my partnership with ITOCHU was impacted because of the effect of the collapse on them. They could no longer spend time on tangential technologies and returned to their core business. My company could not find investors to replace the financial backing we had with ITOCHU because no one was investing in manufacturers in 1999, they were all drawn into the dot com frenzy. So we spent a year trying to bootstrap oiur way through the problem and finally concluded, along with many of my advisers and employees, that we could not go on. After acquiring all of my employees jobs at a friend’s newly formed company, we closed the doors of Neon Technology. Thus no one lost a job — except me.
On Monday, August 30, 1999 at 12 noon, I turned the keys of the Neon Technology factory over to my banker, as is standard when liquidating a property with lienholders, took one last walk around the factory, then walked out the door for the last time. As I was walking down the hall, is remember thinking “God, I never want to invent another object, I want to invent an idea. No more weight, mass, freight or factories. I want an idea, something that can travel around the world in an instant.” I left the request open ended.
During the next five months I experienced what I have referred to as a “fog” composed of flashes of inspiration, a flurry of philosophical fragments, hints and hunches – all dancing within my mind. This “fog” finally coalesced into a vision of something astounding to me. I then began to understood it. It all made sense to me. The idea was a sustainable economic system and network that could embrace the planet, help to eliminate poverty, counterbalance inequities of wealth, reduce consumption, begin to heal the environment, help throttle back the current economic paradigm which has an insatiable appetite for profits and growth, and create a sustainable society where communities were as powerful as corporations and people were more valued than profits. That process was documented in my writings from the very first day I put the pen to the paper on January 1, 2000 at 11AM in the studio building at my home. That is how E2M was born. That is why I say E2M was not my idea. I found it. It is a gift to be passed on. I hope you like it.
Michael Garjian
e2m.org Weblog 