** spoiler alert ** I liked this book mainly because it presents a positive outlook on the future, which is nice in the media-induced doom and gloom environment that we live in.

That said, this book is a high level survey of all of the technological advances going on right now that are going to change the way the world works in the next few decades. Diamandis first starts out tackling the doom and gloom that most people focus on, specifically from the angle of why doom and gloom is the norm. He goes into the Cognitive Biases that Kahnemen defined in 1974 (see "Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" paper) as well as neuroscience to help explain why it is hard for us to focus on the long-term positive versus the current-negative. Kind of boils down to the "sex and violence sells" mantra, but provides a little bit of scientific rigor to it and explains that in most cases our pessimistic views are not normally based in fact.

After the book tackles the question of why it is hard for us to see the forest for the trees, it then goes on the present the high-level problems facing the world and then uses this context to focus on the exponential technologies that will allow us to solve these problems. The survey of technologies and companies the book covers is expansive and is worth reading just for that; he talks about things ranging from 3D printing, to space travel, to biomed and nanotech, to water purification and advancements in nuclear power, as well as many other domains. Even though it is at a high level it presents enough of a map to see where things fit together and decide where to go next (either for reading or for actually doing). In other words, the book is a gold mine for start-up ideas, especially those targeted at the "rising billion" (i.e., the world's poorest people, which he claims are turning into an abundant new market).

One of the key messages of the book is the promotion of the DIY community, and the fact that basically anyone can take on global challenges. He cites examples like how a community of DIY drone builders were able to build an unmanned drone with 90% of the capabilities of a military drone for 1% of the cost. Diamandis focusses heavily on how we can be using incentive prizes to drive the DIY innovation in markets that have stagnated (i.e., space travel, Diamandis is the guy behind the X-Prize foundation).

The only negative thing I will say is that he is almost exclusively positive about all new technologies. The only point he talks about the potential downside is in a short appendix, and this is fairly watered down. He does provide a lot of data to support all of his claims, but one would have to spend a lot of time to verify everything.