Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Author	Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Subject	Technology
Publisher	Free Press
Publication date	February 21, 2012
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	386 pp. (first edition)
ISBN	9781451614213
OCLC	741542469
LC Class	T173.8

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think is a book by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler that was published in 2012. The writers refer to the book's title as being a future where nine billion people have access to clean water, food, energy, health care, education, and everything else that is necessary for a first world standard of living, thanks to technological innovation.

Theme

The book's four main points are:

1. Technologies in computing, energy, medicine and many other areas are improving at an exponential rate and will soon enable breakthroughs that today seem impossible.
2. These technologies have allowed independent innovators to achieve startling advances in many areas of technology with little money or manpower.
3. Technology has created a generation of "techno-philanthropists" (such as Bill Gates) who are using their billions to try to solve seemingly unsolvable problems such as hunger and disease.
4. The lives of the world's poorest people are being improved substantially because of technology.

Synopsis

It has come to the point of cliché to say that, since the industrial revolution, and particularly in the past one hundred years or so, our level of technological innovation has advanced at an unprecedented rate and reached astronomical heights. It is clear that this innovation has provided us with countless benefits, and an enormous increase in our standard of living—at least for some of us. Indeed, it is equally clear that most of these innovations have benefited the developed world much more so than the developing world. Nevertheless, the gains have been so great, and the promise so overwhelming, that much of this period has been pervaded with a palpable optimism that we would eventually reach a stage where the whole world would benefit from the largesse, and we would perhaps even reach a technological utopia.

More recently, however, this optimism has given way to uncertainty, if not an outright crisis of faith, as it has become ever more clear that our technological innovation has left us with new and increasingly pressing problems, such as dwindling resources, global warming, and a population explosion that threatens to confound (and in some cases already does confound) our advances in agricultural production and medicine. Indeed, the problems that we face are so deep and pervasive that many have come to believe that we may have to pay for our era of decadence after all, and that the future is more likely to witness a collapse than the dawn of a utopian age.

However, in their new book ‘Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think’, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler argue that we needn’t discard our techno-optimism after all. Indeed, according to Diamandis, the world is on the precipice of another explosion in technology that will soon bring refuge from many of our current problems and abundance to our doorstep. Not content to let the goal or the timeline remain vague, Diamandis is happy to hang a more precise definition on each. When it comes to abundance, Diamandis defines it as “a world of nine billion people with clean water, nutritious food, affordable housing, personalized education, top-tier medical care, and non-polluting, ubiquitous energy” (loc. 317), and, to top it all off, the freedom to pursue their goals and aspirations unhindered by political repression. With regards to the timeline, Diamandis claims that it “should be achievable within twenty-five years, with noticeable change possible within the next decade” (loc. 580).

In an attempt to convince us that this goal is achievable Diamandis take us through the latest technological developments (and those that will soon be coming down the pipe) in numerous fields such as water filtration and sanitation (including advancements in water desalination, nano-filtering, sewage recycling and the smart-water-grid ); food production (including the next generation of genetically modified foods, vertical farming, in-vitro meat and agroecology); education (including personalized education, the OLPC [One Laptop Per Child program], AI education programs and advancements in educational games, video-games and computer programs) ; energy (including solar and wind power, the next generation of nuclear energy and algal biofuel, the smart-energy-grid, and battery-encapsulated energy storage); healthcare (including stem cell therapy and organ creation, robotic medical care-givers and surgeons, genomic medicine [based on your individual genome] and Lab-On-Chip technology [a diagnostic tool compatible with your cell phone that can instantly analyze samples of saliva, urine and blood]) and many, many more.

According to Diamandis, the technological innovations mentioned above are being spurred on by 3 forces in particular these days that are likely to bring us to a state of abundance even quicker than we might otherwise expect, and one that extends to all parts of the world. The 3 forces are (in reverse order as to how they are presented), 1) the rise of the bottom billion—which consists in the fact that the world’s poorest have recently begun plugging into the world economy in a very substantial way, both as a consumer and as a producer of goods (largely as a result of the communications revolution, and the fact that cell phones are now spreading even to the world’s poorest populations); 2) the rising phenomenon of the techphilanthropists—a new breed of wealthy individuals who are more philanthropic than ever, and who are applying their efforts to global solutions (and particularly in the developing world); and 3) the rising phenomenon of DIY innovation—which includes the ability of small organizations, and even individuals to make contributions even in the most advanced technological domains (such as computing, biotechnology, and space travel).

The book is divided into six parts: Perspective, Exponential Technologies, Building the Base of the Pyramid, The Forces of Abundance, Peak of the Pyramid, and Steering Faster. It contains 19 chapters, a reference section with raw data, an appendix titled "Dangers of the Exponentials," and a Notes section for further reading.

Table of Contents

• Ch. 1: Our Grandest Challenge
• Ch. 2: Building the Pyramid
• Ch. 3: Seeing the Forest Through the Trees
• Ch. 4: It's Not as Bad as You Think
• Ch. 5: Ray Kurzweil and the Go-Fast Button
• Ch. 6: The Singularity is Nearer
• Ch. 7: The Tools of Cooperation
• Ch. 8: Water
• Ch. 9: Feeding Nine Billion
• Ch. 10: The DIY Innovator
• Ch. 11: The Technophilanthropists
• Ch. 12: The Rising Billion
• Ch. 13: Energy
• Ch. 14: Education
• Ch. 15: Health Care
• Ch. 16: Freedom
• Ch. 17: Driving Innovation and Breakthroughs
• Ch. 18: Risk and Failure
• Ch. 19: Which Way Next?
• Afterword: Next Step - Join the Abundance Hub
• Reference Section Raw Data
• Appendix: Dangers of the Exponentials
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Authors

Reception

The book was largely well-received by critics. Abundance was profiled in Time magazine, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the [Wall Street Journal]]. It debuted at #1 on both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble's bestseller lists, and at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. It remained on the NYT bestseller list for nine weeks.

Time magazine wrote of its message, "The future is going to be better than you think. That might be hard to believe given the constant stream of dread that is the daily news -- and the endless well of fear that seems to be the future -- but a close look at the numbers indicates that things are better than we believe."

The Washington Post added that the book is "a heavy dose of optimism... The authors make a persuasive case that mankind's future may not be as bleak as we fear."

The San Francisco Chronicle said that the book's authors "argue forcefully against two prevailing notions: that the world's resources are being depleted too rapidly, and that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening beyond repair. They cite the rise of do-it-yourself innovation, fabulously rich 'technophilanthropists' who intend to use their deep pockets to change the world, and what they've termed the 'rising billion': the world's poor, who, thanks to modern communication technology, now have a voice."

The Wall St. Journal wrote, "Diamandis and Kotler think that individual innovators can and will make huge differences to human living standards... Take Iqbal Quadir, who quit his job as a venture capitalist in New York to start a cellphone company in his native Bangladesh, at a time when cellphones cost nearly twice the annual income of the average Bangladeshi. He had the foresight to bet on falling costs and the usefulness of the new technology for the long-isolated rural poor."