Today in health, it, , look back into the future. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health. A set of channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged. We want to thank our show sponsor shore investing in developing the next generation of health leaders. Gordian dynamics, Quill health.

The site nuance, Canon medical, and current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. All right. This weekend, actually tomorrow. This is Friday show tomorrow. I'm going to be doing a talk. On living in the digital world. And we're going to look back, look forward and talk about a bunch of different challenges of living.

, opportunities and challenges of living in the digital world should be a fun conversation with a lot of, , Younger, , people from a younger generation. Who probably know more about living in the digital world than I , I just have more time in the digital world than they do. , as, as some of, you know, my, my journey started with Commodore 64 way back in the day, there's been roughly five major movements.

We talked about this earlier this week, five major movements, , during my lifetime. On the digital front there's, there's probably some others, but these are the ones that I really experienced. The first was the computer, the personal computer. And that's where the counter 64 came in. And then eventually we were, you.

Buying PCs for the desktop and then eventually laptops. And that was the eighties. The eighties was really the, the Dawn of that personal computer era of apples. IBM. And it was a million others. It was, , it was Dell, it was Acer, it was gateway computers. It was a ton of different players. It was, there was a massive of companies going after that space. And as you know, it shook out and there's only a handful really left, but that's the personal computer space.

That's 1980s. Nineties was really about the internet. I still remember being a. , technician back then going out to organizations and, , changing. Their network from IPX protocol to IP protocol, actually giving every computer. On the network and IP address for the first time and then installing a Mozilla browser so that people could get to the internet. I still remember one of the comments my boss made at the time.

Is, , back in the personal computer era, we had a solitaire and different card games on the computer. And people would spend hours and hours playing these card games, free cell and you name it. , and then the internet era, he looked at me and said, you know what? The, , the internet is going to make a solitaire look like a productivity tool. And, , he wasn't right. We now waste eight ton of time on the internet, but it also enabled all sorts of new.

, connections. , in society outreach. , social networks, you name it, , shopping, finance, you name it. It really revolutionized everything. So personal computer in the eighties, internet in the nineties. , the, oh, oh, the two thousands was really marked by mobile. , we went from, , phones in the car actually installed physically in your car.

, to bag phones, to flip phones, to, , the, , the smartphones. Right. And so that really, that transition really happened. In the two thousands. And then social networks I would say is what we saw in the 2010s. Era, not that they started in that timeframe, but they really picked up steam. , impacting, , governments, ,

We had the Egypt thing and Twitter and instant information. , in fact, if you're following the Ukraine stuff, the best place to get information is on Twitter because you can get information directly from the people. In the Ukraine who are putting information out there of what is actually going on, it really is kind of amazing. So social networks have really changed.

Our world, , some for the better, some, not so much for the better, but it's there. And, , And I think the twenties is going to be more AR augmented, virtual reality. Some people think, , AI and, and, , machine learning. But, , yeah, I think that's going to be peppered in there, but I think augmented and virtual reality are really going to change how we interact.

And so I was in preparation for this talk this weekend. I was doing some research. And I remember picking up this book back in 1995 and the book is called the road ahead. And it was written by Microsoft co-founder, , bill gates. And it's interesting because bill gates. Did a bunch of stuff in this book. And then one of the things he did is he said, , let's imagine a world where it's unlimited bandwidth.

It's a unlimited computing power. And it's unlimited miniaturization of circuitry. And he sort of sets that out and, , and pervasive connectivity. Right. So pervasive connectivity. , miniaturization processing power and bandwidth. And, , , it's interesting. He, so he puts that out there and he says, all right, let's see what what's possible.

And he describes this device in 1995. Mind you, and keep in mind that the iPhone had was, was a twinkle in somebody's eye back then. Here's what he had to say. It will be about the same size as a wallet, which means you'll be able to carry it in your pocket or purse. It will display messages and schedules and let you read and send email.

And faxes monitor weather and stock reports and play both simple and sophisticated games. At a meeting, you might be able to take notes, check your appointments, browser information. If you're bored or choose from among thousands of easy to call up photos of your kids. And he wrote that in 1995. Now it's interesting, even with that sort of vision.

Microsoft was not able to capitalize on the smartphone market. They never, , even with some acquisitions and whatnot, they've never really made it, but it's interesting too, to think about that aspect of it. , He predicted streaming video, , how it would overtake TV. He talked about how antiquated.

The model was that you have to sit down at a certain time. , and , at the time we were, we were. , recording things on VCRs and that kind of stuff. And he said, , imagine, imagine a time. Essentially where you're going to have high quality video available to you when you want to see it at any time and whatnot. So he, he really talked, he really understood that streaming video was going to be available. And that's, that's the nature of digital, right? It, it, ,

, it essentially makes the access to these things. It makes. It makes data liquid. Right. So we can move it anywhere very fast and rapidly. And he knew that we could digitize. , movies and videos and that's how it would.

That's how it would be experienced. , he also foresaw the social networks and how they were going to be incredibly powerful. , let's see case notes in his blog post. What he didn't foresee. Oh, so this is actually, it's interesting that this article is, it talks about the stuff in the road ahead, and it talks about some stuff he didn't see. So he saw the pervasive connectivity to social networks and he goes on to note in his blog posts. What he didn't foresee is how social networks would help create division and discord.

I didn't anticipate how much people would choose to filter out different perspectives and hardened their own views. , So, , he goes, , I'd argue that it's leaders in software developers at the social networks. Making that choice rather than the people who use them either way, when you consider that gates made this prediction eight years before Friendster and MySpace launched at a time when mark Zuckerberg was 11 years old, that's pretty impressive.

, that's the writer of the article. , , and, and it also notes. Some of the things he got wrong, he thought there would be internet kiosks, everywhere and whatnot. And I take this little dive down here. Not only because I'm doing this research, but to talk about. , I, I also, for my birthday this

Got a quest. , a medical test to. And while I am not excited about the privacy stance of Metta. And, , Facebook in the world that you live in and you have to put your information in and they're following me every second. I'm in. The, , , on that console device. The, , it got me to thinking what is possible through this.

And the clear winner here is education. Because, , , I've, I've gone through a 3d summit of Mount Everest. And, , it's very different than hearing about it or reading it in a book or even I've, I've heard From people that have successfully and unsuccessfully tried to scale Mount Everest and the challenges associated with it. But when you're standing on the mountain,

And having a conversation, not conversation, but you're hearing from people who are telling you about these things, because it was a movie format, but you could do this in an education type format. You could have somebody who has summited with the footage that they have essentially doing a class on summiting.

, Mount Everest. There's a difference between hearing about it and actually standing there and seeing the base camps. And yeah, it does take a little bit away from your imagination of what a base camp looks like. And my picture was completely wrong compared to what was actually And then when you summit and actually see, , , 360, you can look up and around and

It really has a different impact than just reading a book or even watching a movie about it. It's very different. You're immersed in it. And so education can be the big winner there. , , one of the things about the console that I found. Was it did not have great graphics. But I'm reminded of the thing that bill gates started with, which is, okay. Now imagine this device in a couple years.

With better resolution than your retina display. With, , , a better fill in the blank. , bandwidth speed, all that other stuff. , unlimited content. , connectivity, you name , now imagine that device in three to five years, this is why I put it in the category of could change. A lot of the way we do business and how we interact.

Yeah, we meet via zoom today and it's pretty effective quite frankly. But recently I did a, an interview. I have a person who put together a med adversities. Which is exactly what it sounds. It's universities. In the metaverse and they did two classes of in-person two classes on zoom and two classes.

In the metaverse and the retention and engagement rates in the metaverse were way off the charts on this. , I've heard from people who've talked about the training element of this and training doctors and clinicians. And bringing them up to speed, again, engagement and a retention, a lot higher and pretty interesting opportunities there.

The question becomes where else could it potentially. Change things. Could it change the way we do work? Could it change the way we do onboarding? Could it change the dynamic in nature of going to the office? I don't know. , I'm going to continue to think about that. I've only had the thing for a week and I see definitely opportunities to make a.

Ton of , in terms of, , games and those kinds of things. There were a couple of experiences in there that I thought, man, this, this thing has to be worrying Disney. Because you do a couple of these things in here, and then you go to the park where they're trying to do these immersive 3d experiences and you've waited in line for an hour and a half. And then you're like,

Ah, you know what? It was better on my medical quest too. Then it was actually after waiting in line for an hour, an hour and a half. So. And that has to be worrying them a little bit. Could change the entertainment. , there was an application in here where you can actually go into a theater. And watch a movie.

And it was a pretty interesting experience to have that because you're sitting there. And even though your brain knows that that screen is just a headset that you're wearing. It looks like a massive theater screen that you are sitting in, and I'm not sure where this is going to go, but I do know it feels an awful lot, like my Commodore 64.

When I had that, I did. It was fun. It was neat. It was interesting. But then I started using the modem and connecting up the bulletin boards and it expanded my world. , to, , to connect with people who are also interested in the same things I was interested in, it has the potential, the same kind of potential sitting back there as a kid.

Looking at, , , could I write programs for that common or 64 or any, , computer back in the day and create worlds and create opportunities. , for, , for business and other things. And I think it does. I think it has those opportunities. I'd be curious, any of you who are using , to consider how it could be used moving forward.

, Yeah. So I'm going to keep playing around with that. And , it's Friday, this is what we do on Fridays. We talk about stuff. That's a little out of But, , , journey into the past to explore the future. Unlimited bandwidth, pervasive connectivity. , Miniaturization you name it. What does that enable over the next decade? Over the next two decades? Over the next three decade, decades. What are the possibilities?

What are we going to see? I think augmented virtual reality is really going to be the twenties. I think AI is really going to be the thirties, to be honest with you. I think we're going to see, continue to see experiments throughout this decade. With AI, but I think where we're going to see AI in the thirties.

, 2030s is going to be computers, writing, computer code. It's already happening today, but I mean, literally churning out new computer computing code, new applications. , new digital worlds and those kinds of things. So computers are going to be creators. Come the 2030s. And that's going to open up a whole new world. We'll see. All right. That's all for today. If you know someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week out.com or wherever you listen to podcasts, apple, Google, overcast, Spotify, Stitcher.

Or the mid rivers, you get the picture we're everywhere. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health. Townsite nuance, Canon medical.  And 📍 current health check them out at this week health.com/today. thanks for listening that's all for now