Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Christopher Funk

Author:   Peter Diamandis

Genre:  Non Fiction, Science, Economics

400 pages, published February 21, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

In Abundance, tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist Peter Diamandis makes the case that the world is a lot better off than you think it is and that we are getting close to the time we will be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every human being on earth.  Diamandis backs up this bold claim with extensive research and shows how four forces (exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion) are all helping to solve humanity’s biggest problems.  Abundance profiles many innovators doing amazing work including Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, and Craig Venter.   After discussing human needs by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, and freedom, Diamandis sets forth concrete targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs to achieve these goals.

Quotes

“Quite simply, good news doesn’t catch our attention. Bad news sells because the amygdala is always looking for something to fear.”

 

“It’s incredible,” he says, “this moaning pessimism, this knee-jerk, things-are-going-downhill reaction from people living amid luxury and security that their ancestors would have died for. The tendency to see the emptiness of every glass is pervasive. It’s almost as if people cling to bad news like a comfort blanket.”

 

“Today Americans living below the poverty line are not just light-years ahead of most Africans; they’re light-years ahead of the wealthiest Americans from just a century ago. Today 99 percent of Americans living below the poverty line have electricity, water, flushing toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 percent have a television; 88 percent have a telephone; 71 percent have a car; and 70 percent even have air-conditioning. This may not seem like much, but one hundred years ago men like Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt were among the richest on the planet, but they enjoyed few of these luxuries.”

 

“I’ve got a hunk of gold and you have a watch. If we trade, then I have a watch and you have a hunk of gold. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange them, then we both have two ideas. It’s nonzero.”

 

“Poverty was reduced more in the past fifty years than in the previous five hundred.”

“Teaching kids how to nourish their creativity and curiosity, while still providing a sound foundation in critical thinking, literacy and math, is the best way to prepare them for a future of increasingly rapid technological change.”

 

“The true measure of something’s worth is the hours it takes to acquire it.”

 

“Technology is a resource-liberating mechanism. It can make the once scarce the now abundant.”

 

“if everyone on Earth wants to live like a North American, then we’re going to need five planets’ worth of resources.”

 

“The negativity bias—the tendency to give more weight to negative information and experiences than positive ones—sure isn’t helping matters. Then there’s anchoring: the predilection for relying too heavily on one piece of information when making decisions. “When people believe the world’s falling apart,” says Kahneman, “it’s often an anchoring problem. At the end of the nineteenth century, London was becoming uninhabitable because of the accumulation of horse manure. People were absolutely panicked. Because of anchoring, they couldn’t imagine any other possible solutions. No one had any idea the car was coming and soon they’d be worrying about dirty skies, not dirty streets.”

 

“Today most poverty-stricken Americans have a television, telephone, electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing. Most Africans do not. If you transferred the goods and services enjoyed by those who live in California’s version of poverty to the average Somalian living on less than a $1.25 a day, that Somalian is suddenly fabulously rich.”

 

“Decentralized means learning cannot easily be curtailed by autocratic governments and is considerably more immune to socioeconomic upheaval.”

 

“A week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than the average seventeenth-century citizen encountered in a lifetime.”

 

“If we were to forgo our television addiction for just one year, the world would have over a trillion hours of cognitive surplus to commit to share projects.”

 

“From the very beginning of time until the year 2003,” says Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “humankind created five exabytes of digital information. An exabyte is one billion gigabytes—or a 1 with eighteen zeroes after it. Right now, in the year 2010, the human race is generating five exabytes of information every two days. By the year 2013, the number will be five exabytes produced every ten minutes … It’s no wonder we’re exhausted.”

 

“Abundance is not about providing everyone on this planet with a life of luxury—rather it’s about providing all with a life of possibility.”

 

“Nanotechnology has the potential to enhance human performance, to bring sustainable development for materials, water, energy, and food, to protect against unknown bacteria and viruses, and even to diminish the reasons for breaking the peace [by creating universal abundance].”

 

“Today mammography requires an expensive, large, stationary machine that takes a crude, two-dimensional picture. But imagine a ‘bra’ that has tiny X-ray pixel emitters on the top and X-ray sensors on the bottom. It’s self-contained, self-powered, has a 3G or Wi-Fi-enabled network, and can be shipped to a patient in a FedEx box. The patient puts on the bra, pushes a button, and the doctor comes online and starts talking: ‘Hi. All set to take your mammogram? Hold still.’ The X-ray pixels fire, the detectors assemble and transmit the image, and the doctor reads it on the spot. The patient ships back the package, and she’s done. With little time and little money.”

 

My Take

Abundance is my kind of book.  I have always been a “glass half full” person and it is encouraging to read an optimistic take on the future of the world.  So many people think that we live in terrible times and that things are getting worse.  Peter Diamandis repeatedly demonstrates that folly of that mindset and that things have never been better.  Not only is the world-wide poverty rate declining dramatically and rapidly, but there are a plethora of technological innovations coming our way that will make life better and more meaningful.  Abundance made me realize how good we have it now and excited for all of the future developments that are coming our way soon.