Digital has become our lifeline. When our analogue hearts have no longer been free to roam around the world, our digital minds have still been able to connect, exchange ideas, and care for one another. Imagine lockdowns without Whatsapp, Facetime, Zoom cocktails, TikTok, and eCommerce deliveries. A few times each week my 3-year-old son Lucien's storytime is via Facetime. My mum, physically on the other side of world, still has the same great webside manners and soothing voice when she reads Margret Rey's book 'Spotty' (Pricken in Swedish)for Lucien as I remember from my childhood when she was at my analogue bedside.
While us humans have been hibernating and forced to slow down in many parts of society, machines and robots have been learning. They are increasingly taking on both menial but also dangerous tasks. Drones have been delivering medicines and COVID19 tests in regional areas around the planet, robots have been deployed in essential hospital roles, and AI has been decoding the genetic sequence of the virus. If there was ever a time to endure a pandemic, technology and science is making it a little more bearable.
Machines are learning at exponential speeds and they are fast mastering left-brained, STEM skills. Process, analytics, data input, mathematics and regulatory tech are cognitive aspects they are fast 'getting their heads around'. What does this mean for humans and the types of skills and cognition we must nurture? I believe we are seeing the early dawn of a 2nd Renaissance - an era of flourishing human creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and humanistic thought. Just like previous pandemics like the Spanish Flu and the Black Plague led to massive labour force changes, social mobility and investment in labour-saving technologies, so today's pandemic is leading us into a future 2nd Renaissance.
In this video I unpack and decode tomorrow and the shift from the analogue to the digital world, how technology can be impactful not just for information, but also for transformation, why all business models are being digitally hacked, how digital dissemination changes the game for conferences and education, and how human intelligence and artificial intelligence can collaborate to create a more meaningful and ultimately, humane tomorrow.