By Jun Miranda
Since man learned how to make use of the wheel, there were a succession of game-changing ideas and people that altered the course of history, for better or for worse.
In this piece, we'll take a look at these "game-changers" who lived throughout history and their significant contribution to the transformation of our civilization since the invention of the wheel up to the present AI era.
These game-changers, says Will Kenton in his recent work Game-Changer: Definition and Examples in Business, are those people who bring the force of their vision, will, and personality to bear on the sometimes unique, sometimes mundane ideas that can alter the ways in which we live.
To cite a few, he mentioned Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press, Thomas Edison and the electric light, Andrew Fleming and the antibiotic penicillin, or Alan Turing and the first modern computer.
Kenton added that game-changers compare what's possible to what's currently being done. They spur a shift in the status quo. The changes they pursue may be radical and difficult for others to understand. They drive change different from what other people usually think and operate.
He said that a game-changer is someone or something that can spark new concepts, inspire the desire for—and acceptance of—change, and create the change itself.
Game-changers are men and women who dared to blaze new trails where no paths have existed before.
Take for instance the amazing exploits of the likes of Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer who first circumnavigated the world during the 16th century. In those days, many people thought that the world was flat and they even laughed at anyone who said that it was round.
For some, it was going straight to the gallows for believing and saying that it was so.
In our time, we have the likes of Steve Wozniak and his namesake Steve Jobs who were probably laughed at too for saying that they could put music, movies, libraries and countless other stuff into those tiny phones in our pockets.
Both of them had the vision to believe that they can transform the handy phone into something else, and the rest is history.
Let us not forget the bulky telephone set Alexander Graham Bell had envisioned and created over a hundred years ago. It required millions of miles of wire to function.
Now here comes Elon Musk. He's telling us that all these wires will now be obsolete and replaced by suspended satellites in space to send voice and data signals through the ether above us.
In other words, what he's saying is that we can call each other, watch movies and do many other things out of thin air.
Welcome to the fascinating world of game-changers and transformers.
