Book review - "Abundance" by Peter Diamandis

Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize Foundation and the co-founder of Singularity University, is one of the foremost futurists today. He is well known for both popularizing emerging technologies and driving their development. His new book, Abundance, chronicles the ways in which technology is rapidly transforming life for people all around the world, and will soon usher in a “post-scarcity economy.”

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 19^th and 20^th 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

Welcome to Earth, Population: 7 Billion

This month, the global population will surpass 7 billion people, for the first time in history. Predictably, this milestone has sparked a discussion of overpopulation and sustainability. Pessimists are quick to point to the historical trend. Two thousand years ago, the global population was a mere 200 million people. Even by 1900, there were only 1.6 billion of us. But during the 20^th century, population growth exploded as modern medicine dramatically increased life expectancies all across the world. Even people in the shortest-lived countries today (Afghanistan and Zimbabwe) live longer than those in the longest-lived countries did in 1800 (United Kingdom and Netherlands).

The unfortunate side effect of that amazing record of progress has been an ever-increasing population, consuming more and more resources from our planet. Many have questioned how long this can continue. As early as 1798, Thomas Malthus argued that growth in population was outstripping growth in the food supply, and this would inevitably result in widespread famine. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, which predicted that overpopulation would soon cause mass starvation, destroy the environment, and lead to widespread war.

So far these predictions have failed to materialize, and it is unlikely that they ever will. Concerns of global overpopulation are overblown. There is plenty of room for everyone; we could fit the entire world’s population into the state of Texas, and the population density would be no greater than New York City. On the question of food security, the Malthusian predictions have always failed to take into account technological development. When Malthus made his original prediction, he completely overlooked the Industrial Revolution that was beginning to unfold around him, making the production of food much more efficient. When Ehrlich did the same, he overlooked both the Green Revolution that increased the production of food threefold, and the invention of new birth control technologies which reduced the rate of growth in the population.

In fact, population growth peaked in 1968, just as The Population Bomb was hitting bookshelves. Although it has not yet stabilized, the rate of growth continues to decline. Some parts of the world are already losing people; the fertility rates in Europe, Russia, and East Asia are well below the replacement rate. The United Nations projects that the global population will plateau by the end of this century, between 10 and 15 billion people.

Even the upper end of the UN’s projection is not unsustainable; if we have 15 billion people by the end of this century, we will easily be able to feed them all, with plenty of food to spare. The population doomsayers will continue to be wrong for the same reason that Malthus and Ehrlich were wrong: they ignore technological developments that allow the production of much more food. The coming Genomic Revolution will play a huge role in this process. Not only will it soon be possible to genetically engineer crops that produce a much higher yield in a given amount of space, it will also be possible to breed crops that can grow in much harsher climates than is currently possible, allowing for the widespread production of crops in parts of the world that were previously considered off-limits. The drought-ravaged Sahel Zone of Africa could one day be a breadbasket. Cold climates like Canada and Russia may one day be able to grow coffee.

Additionally, the development of in vitro meat production will soon mean that it is no longer necessary to raise large herds of livestock when meat can be more efficiently grown in a laboratory. This will free up a huge amount of the earth’s farmland and fresh water, which would otherwise be required to feed the animals. These technological developments – as well as others which may not even be anticipated yet – will undoubtedly allow us to continue feeding our growing global society.

Although global overpopulation is not a problem, the problems of specific regions of the world should not be minimized. South Asia is the hardest hit by overpopulation. India has 1.2 billion people crammed into an area one-third the size of the United States. Bangladesh has 150 million (half the population of the US) packed in an area smaller than Florida. In both of these cases, the vast majority of people live in crushing poverty, with some of the highest rates of malnourishment anywhere in the world. But even here, there is some good news. Both India and Bangladesh have taken steps to get their fertility rates under control, and now their fertility rates are only slightly above the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. The era of rapid population growth is drawing to a close for South Asia, although it will still take several decades before it levels off completely.

Many Sub-Saharan African countries have a demographic problem as well, although the nature of the problem is different from South Asia’s problem. With a few exceptions, Africa is not particularly densely populated. Some UN officials and developmental economists have even gone so far as to argue that many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa are underpopulated. I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration for a region of the world that cannot currently feed itself, but there is no denying that Africa’s population is nowhere nearly as densely populated as South Asia. India alone has more people than the entire African continent. Africa’s demographic problem is the rapid rate of growth in its population. Unlike India and Bangladesh, which have finally gotten their growth rates under control, many African nations still have fertility rates as shockingly high as 4 or more children per woman. In the case of Niger, the fastest-growing country in the world, women have 7.6 children on average. In other words, the problem facing many Sub-Saharan African nations is that their population is growing faster than their ability to provide for their people.

Can Africa’s demographic problem be solved? Of course. High fertility rates are closely linked to poverty. Families tend to have more children in societies where the opportunity cost of having kids is low, where children can assist with subsistence farming, and where infant mortality rates are high enough that having extra children provides a hedge against the tragic risk that some of them will not survive to adulthood. As Sub-Saharan African countries continue to develop their economies, these underlying problems will fade away just as they did in South Asia and Latin America, and fertility rates will drop. This issue has been widely studied by developmental economists, who have concluded that the best ways to reduce fertility rates are to ensure access to cheap birth control, improve education (especially for girls), and improve health care and nutrition for infants. Many African nations are making tremendous progress toward these goals, and are already seeing the dividends in reduced fertility rates.

So when our global population officially hits the 7 billion mark this week, remember to take the doomsayers with a grain of salt. Our planet is not overpopulated. At the present time, it is a localized problem for only a couple regions of the globe, and soon it will not be a problem at all. Our economic and technological development will see to that. There is plenty of room on our pale blue dot for more people.

The Future of Agriculture - In Vitro Meat

With the speed at which biotechnology is progressing, it seems very likely that by the end of the decade, we'll be able to grow meat in laboratories at a price that is competitive with meat grown in ranches. It is already possible to produce it, but as of now it is horrendously expensive and has the texture of runny eggs. Not exactly appetizing. Scientists have learned that they can manually "stretch" the cells in a laboratory to mimic the muscle movements of a live animal. By the end of the decade, it is likely that scientists will have the ability to produce lab-grown versions of meats like hamburgers and hot dogs, for which texture is not as important. It will probably take several years longer before we get to taste any lab-grown steaks.

New Harvest is a non-profit dedicated to the research and development of in vitro meat. PETA has offered a $1 million reward for the first team that can develop lab-grown chicken with the taste and texture of real chicken (although their 2012 deadline makes it highly unlikely that anyone will claim the prize). How would the world change if we switched from farm-grown meat to lab-grown meat? The benefits of this are hard to overstate.

The environmental impact will be enormous. Every pound of beef requires 30 or more pounds of crops to feed the cow. Pork and chicken aren't quite as crop-intensive as beef, but nevertheless consume a very large amount of resources. This is a huge drain on our water supplies and farmland. If our meat was grown in a lab, it could completely eliminate these problems, freeing up our land and water supplies to be used for other productive things or returned to nature. Along with solar energy, this is the emerging environmental technology that I am most excited about.

The health impacts of lab-grown meat could be very large too. As it stands now, red meat is extremely unhealthy. It has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer. Growing our meat in the laboratory would enable us to tinker with the genes to make it more nutritious, and to control how much fat is in the meat. Imagine eating something that tastes like a cow, with the nutritional content of a fish. We would be able to eat some of our favorite foods as often as we wanted, without any guilt or negative health consequences.

Furthermore, those with moral or religious qualms about eating meat could sleep easily at night, knowing that no animal was killed just so that they could eat dinner.

I think that right now, the "yuck" factor might dissuade people from trying it. But this is really just a matter of how the lab-grown meat was marketed. If it had the same taste and texture of actual meat, I definitely could see this becoming very popular. And after it became commonplace, the "yuck" factor would disappear on its own. What do you think? Would you eat lab-grown meat, assuming it had the same taste and texture of regular meat, at a reasonable price? I certainly would. It could save the world.

(Donations to New Harvest are tax deductible under US law, and are spent on university research on in vitro meat. It's a great cause with enormous potential to transform the world.)

PREDICTIONS:

By 2022 - Lab-grown hamburger (with the taste and texture of real hamburger) is sold commercially, for the same price or less.

By 2029 - Lab-grown steak (with the taste and texture of real steak) is sold commercially, for the same price or less.