John Nosta helps define, dissect and deliberate global trends in digital health. A thinker entrenched in the world of science, medicine and innovation. John is the founder of NOSTALAB—a digital health think tank. He’s currently ranked as the #1 global influencer in digital health and generally regarded as one of the top global strategic and creative thinkers in this important and expanding area.
No, today isn’t a Gutenberg moment. It’s been said that we are at another Gutenberg moment in human civilization. I would disagree—it’s really much more.
Today, we see several key drivers that are pushing humanity to new and unprecedented directions. And while Guttenberg and his printing press liberated information in a way Google has, we now live at a time where vast technological innovations are uniquely combined with global connectivity, individual empowerment and a level of social strife and unrest that, together create a “caldron of change” that makes moveable type seem like a bit of a fad.
Our current century—just taking shape in the 2018—brings with it one fundamental reality and that’s change itself. Our technology is changing, our worldview is changing, our empowerment is changing, and all these factors are moving to an inflection point in both human history and evolution. The confluence of invention and need are arriving at the speed of life and changing society almost on a daily level. And the defining element of this change is speed. From a simple rate of change to the processing speeds of super computers and artificial intelligence, the velocity of disruption carries a unique physical and cognitive momentum that establishes a powerful vector of change that had both magnitude and direction.
Obsolesce and innovation is the new yin yang of our century where this equilibrium is pushed and pulled against humanity’s comfort and complacency. And it’s this nascent point in time that very well may be our own tipping point into a fundamental transformation where looking back to Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century is akin to dinosaurs roaming the earth.