Sunday, February 12, 2023 Change the game, or change channels – it’s THE NFL game of the year, or at least, the last game of the season. A game that makes this Sunday each year important for some but doesn’t change much for many.
Like a new gadget, the innovation nobody thought of, the fresh approach to develop a new market or repurpose a commodity – those are marketing, business-as-usual with unique products often boasted about as new and improved.
That’s what the first Super Bowl was, now repeated 56 times, with today being the 57
th.
Lots of things have changed, but this is NOT a game-changer, as I understand that term.
The attention of sports media and sports fans is focused today on a game – Super Bowl #57) being played in Glendale, Arizona. Chanel switchers can watch the Phoenix open too, and Phoenicians with fast cars can hurry from one to the other …
But first, some different kinds of
game theory ~What is the most significant game changer, then?
The printing press, the steam engine, or alternating current?
The game changer label
could go to the people behind big changes, such as:
Jeff Bezos - Amazon
Sarah Blakely – Spanx
Brian Chesky – Airbnb
Reed Hastings – Netflix, LinkedIn
Travis Kalanick – Uber
Larry Page – Google
Elon Musk – Tesla, SpaceX
Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook
The better question might be, what constitutes a change to living as we know it, creates value as we understand it, or impacts the quality of life as we feel it?
Two other factors command my thinking; are these game-changers for good or not?
For instance, Roe V. Wade? Or overturning Roe v. Wade?
And, when the game changer changed the game, was that by accident or as a by-product of an,
“Oh, that’s interesting …” observation that produced the X-ray or Viagra?
Gandhi spoke of trying to be the change you want to see in the world. That’s a great litmus test for us each time we feel full of ourselves.
Game changers, people and innovations have become a media-frenzy focus in a social media-frenzied world that celebrates the next big breakthrough, stumble or blunder. Just this past week, Alphabet
(umbrella company for Google, YouTube and many more ventures all sprung from the invention of Google as THE top search engine) suffered a
US$100.0 billion loss in market valuation because it hastily brought BARD to market; their answer to Microsoft’s revised
Bing + ChatGPT was showcased to the marketplace, but haste makes waste! Or, in this case, cost shareholders US$100.0 billion in value loss. That’s likely to be recouped, but the collective views of the investing world took it as an instant negative, down 7% on the day …
Is A.I. a game changer?
Possibly.
Maybe more so than search was – but, seriously, what game did search change? It accelerated the speed and efficiency of searching and sifting through information immeasurably, but it didn’t do more.
But did it sequence the Genome?
My take; some of the best game-changing things must include the microchip, fuel cells, insulin, printing press, and the wheel.
For instance, people who changed the game – Galileo, Hawking, Jesus, Jefferson – didn’t invent anything. Still, they changed how many people saw/see life, the earth, the universe, and the challenges of how mankind governs mankind.
I found some giggles searching
(using Google with BARD!) to search for a definitive list of top game-changing people (
100 people who changed the world) – not surprisingly, it is mostly a list of men, but some were ranked ahead of others in ways that make you wonder what the factors were …
For example, Guttenberg ranks above Lenin, Freud, Gates and Hemingway. He ranks ahead of John Lennon and Keynes. Who, in turn, ranks ahead of Faraday. Orwell was ahead of Edison, Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Tesla, and Henry Ford.
And they all ranked higher than Princess Diana, who was ahead of Steve Jobs. Who, in turn, was ahead of Beethoven, who was ahead of Ben Franklin.
Mother Teresa ranks ahead of Gates by one position, which is interesting. He made many fortunes for himself and for others. He’s been the world’s richest man; he’s promised to give it all away, though he still sits atop his still massive post-divorce fortune. On the other hand, Mother Teresa had nearly nothing, gave it all away, lived a purposeful life in and around poverty, and died with nothing. One day, if Bill Gates keeps his word and gives it all away, he too will die with nothing – and in that, they will then be equal. Until then, she’s ahead at #77, and he’s #78.
This is all brain candy, but my point in thinking about this or that celebrity; doing great work is essential - not being rich or famous. And most of those on the list were doing things which, in their time and viewed through the rearview lens of time, have lasted, and their work has endured. Did they change the world?
Jobs said he wanted to put a dent in the universe, and for all of us carrying a smartphone around, we agree his work was magnificent, be he’d have been nowhere without Wozniak.
From the time early humans first stood erect, we’ve been trying to find better ways to do everything – and all of us have touched or been touched by tremendous changes in our world during our lifetime. Each innovation stands on the shoulders of so many game-changing events, experiments and innovations of the past.
Consider that A.I. ChatGPT, LGBTQIA2S+, cold fusion, and dolly the sheep are all part of a human continuum to a better life, and each year we hear of so many remarkable breakthrough innovations,
While some obsolete ones are left to collect history’s dust, most of those game-changers on that top 100 list aren’t going anywhere in the rankings, whether dead or alive.
Also on any list are many infamous bunglers, fools, scoundrels, and villains whose inventions
failed to change the game along the way.
We must also the significance, sometimes very harmful people and events along the crooked path of history without including Lenin, Marx, Hitler, Nero, Stalin, and
(insert name of your least favourite human).
Or Bobby Riggs v. Billy Jean King; Gloria Steinem or Hugh Hefner – or Karim, LeBron, Namath, etc...
The list goes on because so many people changed the games of life for so many who follow and benefit. But we
can’t drink the Jimmy Jones kool-aid to swallow whole what others feed us as ideas, opinions, dogma or who shove it down our social-media- thirsty throats through marketing their petty politics, voodoo economics or hateful stereotypes.
Today is Superbowl day,
a small-G game changer, but it hasn’t changed much or the world.
It’s a big deal, with big money and big media, but Gandhi would not be impressed.
Gandhi is #19 on the list, behind Socrates (#18) and ahead of Marx (#20), Napoleon (#21), Darwin (#24), Confucius (#26), Nehru (#30), and Moses (#33).
That list of game changers, if you look through it carefully, does have notable names attached to changes in history – but consider nobody on that list invented game changers like Tang, the fuel cell, corning ware, artificial limbs, insulin pumps, dust busters, LASIK surgery, wireless headsets, freeze-dried foods, camera phones, baby formula, CAT scans, memory foam, ear thermometers, portable computers, LEDs, the computer mouse and many more; none of those game-changing products could have unfolded without a moonshot speech. It was JFK’s moonshot speech, which likely would not have worked in terms of political and public support if not for the brilliant speech writing of Ted. Not a TED talking, but a Ted the speechwriter, who was the architect of that speech, Ted Sorenson.
Football is a dangerous sport to play and also an incredibly popular spectator sport, but the players all look the same. To tell them apart, you need a program to find their #s.
Behind everyone one of these significant people and changes were these mothers and fathers of change, and their mothers and fathers, without whom they have been born and lived to do their meaningful work to change the world.
I remember, from one of Sir Kenneth Robinson’s talks – he was speaking to a convention of teachers, and he wondered aloud what it might have been like to be Shakespeare’s (#6) English teacher. Everybody laughed. This begs the question of whether Mozart (#47) or Beethoven (#99) had music teachers. Did MLK (#8) or Lincoln (#9) have speech coaches?
It is clear from that list, or from any other lists of greats, of the many billions of us who’ve lived and died, when we go beyond our sphere of family, work, and communities – very few reach the top of pursuits in their fields, leading and changing the world. Imagine having a dinner party
(or a Superbowl party) with any group of 10 from such a list. We would be genuinely in awe, not of their collective brainpower, talent, money, raw power and their following – but of their humanity. Yes, they worked and played, had families and reared children, cooked dinner and washed up afterwards, but in each of their ways changed something important.
Some did it on purpose, while some discovered something by accident or as a by-product of something else they were pursuing.
They did it by no single act, and in many cases, a single action by the assassin who ended their life, which appears to have triggered
(no pun intended) change, but we all know many of those changes were already in progress.
Some of those
‘top game changers’ changed many things, failed at many things and got many things wrong, but they got some extraordinarily right. That’s something we can all relate to whether we wrote a best-selling something, cooked a great meal, built a sandcastle on a beach or one in our imagination – whether we raised a child or two, had a marriage or two, had love, had losses, failed at many things, and with many people. And kept, gave away, or lost favourite things; it could have been a chair, a comfy old sweater, a best friend or two, a go-to book or movie.
Best of all, the times we’ve had, the places we’ve been; as much as I am a loner in many things, my best times have been shared with others.
Too numerous to mention here
(I’m confident that if I took the time, I’d have more than #100 on my list); the best ones are not the ones that changed the world for others but changed us because of where we were, who we were with, and what we were doing. For example, how many people have walked the catwalk on the roof of the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York
(spectacular experience, but who would want to do that alone – then it’s just something you do, but when you have that experience with someone, it’s a game-changer; as I’m sure today’s game might be for people who watch it together or attend a party); ask my daughters, and they’ll surely remember they were each up there with me, took in carriage rides, UN tours and Broadway shows. Or breakfasts with them on my weekends with them as children, those game-changing moments always came mid-conversation when we least expected them to show up ~ and imprint themselves in our hippocampus for life.
That, as I’m coming to learn in this phase of my life. We too often recognize change and its impact well after an event, and our powerlessness to stop it, change it, or impact any outcome except for the actions we take and the reactions we manifest. We can all change the world and the game, but almost always, that change is only for ourselves.