Diamandis
starts out by identifying the sources of humanity's biggest needs
today – water, food, energy, education, information, communication,
transportation, health care, and freedom/democracy – before going
on to explain how technology can solve or is already solving these
problems. Many of these same topics have already been covered in this
blog.
Technologies
like Dean Kamen's Slingshot will soon transform the way water is
distributed and solve humanity's single greatest problem.
Bioengineered crops, in vitro meat production, and vertical farming
will soon enable us to grow food in places where it was not
previously possible, under conditions that are much safer, more
environmentally friendly, and less volatile. New online education technologies will soon enable far more people to have access to
high-quality K-12 education, at a greatly reduced price, and Moore's Law is reducing the price of computing to the point where nearly
anyone in the world can afford it (case in point: the proliferation
of cell phones throughout even the poorest parts of Africa and
India.) Solar energy will become cost-competitive with fossil fuels
by the 2020s, thus offering a virtually unlimited source of
environmentally-friendly energy.
But
the part of the book that I found the most intriguing wasn't simply
the range of technological solutions to humanity's greatest
challenges; although Diamandis writes about these emerging
technologies with an insider's knowledge, they have all been
discussed elsewhere for years. The most intriguing part was
Diamandis' idea of billions of new minds “coming online.” Sadly,
people grinding out an existence in poverty are usually not able to
contribute their ideas and talents to the world, and we are all worse
off for it. But as we solve the problems of poverty and move toward a
post-scarcity economy, billions of people will be freed from the task
of eking out a subsistence lifestyle and will be able to contribute
more to humanity's wellbeing themselves.
In my
opinion, this reserve of squandered brainpower is the biggest
overlooked resource of exponential growth that humanity has. Even the
futurist most known for the concept of exponential growth, Ray
Kurzweil, rarely talks about this untapped human potential. I find
Diamandis' idea of exponential growth due to human intelligence far
more plausible than Kurzweil's idea of exponential growth due to
artificial intelligence...at least for the next few decades.
For
most of human history, progress crawled along at an incredibly slow
pace, because nearly everyone was dirt poor, focused on staying alive
rather than making the world a better place. Progress accelerated
dramatically in the 19th
and 20th
century, as more and more people gained access to the basic
necessities of life and were able to build careers in areas in which
they were talented and interested. But even today, at most a small
fraction of humanity is currently driving the vast majority of the
technological, social, political, and economic change around the
world. This small fraction is disproportionately comprised of those
who have already benefited from abundance. Far too many people still
do not have access to the basics of life, which are a prerequisite to
leaving a lasting mark on humanity.
As
more and more people gain access to these things and we enter a
post-scarcity economy, the world will begin to “wake up.” What
happens when 8 billion people, rather than 1-2 billion, have
everything they need to pursue their dreams? What will they do? How
much more rapidly will our world progress when we have so many more
people working for the betterment of the world? What kind of ideas,
dreams, and talents already exist in the world today, lying dormant
and waiting to be unlocked by the technological drivers of abundance?
Book
rating: 5/5 stars
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