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Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Peter H. Diamandis,

Steven Kotler (Goodreads Author)

4.12 · Rating details · 8,228 ratings · 827 reviews

Providing abundance is humanity’s grandest challenge—this is a book about how we rise to meet it.

We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies a ...more

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Hardcover, 400 pages

Published February 21st 2012 by Free Press

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Jul 10, 2012 Todd Martin rated it it was ok

Shelves: environment-science

In Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, author and X Prize founder Peter Diamandis makes his case that the standard of living of the bulk of the world’s population can be raised to a level in which everyone’s basic needs are met within the next twenty-five years. How is this to be done you might ask given the many seemingly intractable problems that are present around the globe today? …. SCIENCE, the private sector and the largesse of billionaires!!

This might seem far-fetched, but yo In Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, author and X Prize founder Peter Diamandis makes his case that the standard of living of the bulk of the world’s population can be raised to a level in which everyone’s basic needs are met within the next twenty-five years. How is this to be done you might ask given the many seemingly intractable problems that are present around the globe today? …. SCIENCE, the private sector and the largesse of billionaires!!

This might seem far-fetched, but you don’t have to look very far into the past for other visionaries whose dreams have come true. In the 1940s and 50s there were crazy prophets who envisioned a future of jet packs, hover cars, transporters, ray guns, robot servants, food pills, 4-hour workweeks, space elevators, cryogenic freezers that would bring us back from the dead, colonies on the moon, mars and in our oceans and an abundance of shiny unisex jumpsuits. In the post WWII years, these individuals were viewed as seers, eccentrics, and dreamers with unrealistic expectations, and yet, look at us now … with … uh … exactly none of that stuff. Ok, it’s a bit odd that they didn’t get any of it right and that they failed to anticipate the negative aspects of technology such as nuclear waste, massive species extinction, global warming, thalidomide, the formation of the ozone hole, toxic waste, fishery die-off and oceanic dead zones.

But that’s all in the past, and now we have a fresh breed of Utopians who portend to usher in a new era of prosperity through chemistry. Could they be right this time? Well … it’s a nice thought, but no one really knows. It’s not possible to predict the future and the road is littered with the failed attempts of those who have tried. Data shows that prosperity is rising in most third world countries and that this rise is driven in large part by new technologies (in particular computers and the internet). Barring some catastrophe (such as the worst case predictions of global climate models) it’s reasonable to assume that this trend will continue in the near term. In the long term, one can’t ignore the fact that rising prosperity also leads to increased consumption, environmental degradation and pollution.

I didn’t feel like the book provided a convincing argument, instead, the bulk of the text simply consists of a survey of some of the technologies that are presently under development and a description of the purportedly benign global benefits that they will bring … that is, assuming that they wind up being technologically viable, scalable, cost effective and adopted into broad public use (a huge assumption, given that most technologies fail to satisfy these requirements).

Unfortunately, there are many claims that Diamandis’ makes that I found to be flawed (here are but a few):
1. Diamandis claims that cell phones reduce consumption because they obviate the need for such thing as TVs , stereos, flashlights, tools, video games, computers and home entertainment systems. How many people own not just all of these items but multiple versions of each? Lots. Cell phones are just another consumer item that people purchase on top of many other consumer items.
2. He repeatedly uses the term “sustainable growth” a phrase which is, at best, meaningless and at worst a disingenuous marketing ploy. The term is most often used as a green veneer to allay the guilt of hyper-active consumers. More to the point though, the U.S. EPA stated in a 2007 report: “While much discussion and effort has gone into sustainability indicators, none of the resulting systems clearly tells us whether our society is sustainable.” In other words … nobody even knows what the term means or how to measure it. The phrase represents little more than empty rhetoric.
3. Diamandis is enamored of the robber barons (which is weird on its face … given the fact that they were, you know … first and foremost “robbers”) and believes their philanthropy will save the planet (Diamandis falls into this category and clearly likes to thinks of himself in heroic terms). Here’s the thing though, robber barons and philanthropists have been around as long as civilization has existed. Ignoring the oppression they engender for the moment, they've had more than enough time to solve the world's problems and have not come close to doing so.
4. Along with the above, he believes the private sector will offer all the solutions, ignoring any role of government. That’s fine, but completely ignores the fact that all of the fundamental research for the programs he discusses had their origin in publically funded programs. The internet, space program and human genome project among others would not have existed but for government funded research. Private companies do not engage in basic research because their motive is profit (as opposed to knowledge).
5. Diamandis spends an entire chapter arguing that those who disagree with him do so because of the inherent psychological underpinnings of the brain, which cause us to be unduly influenced by an innate pessimism and to place increased weight on negative arguments and evidence (and to ignore positive news and events in turn). Evidently, if you disagree with Diamandis’ point of view, it is not because he failed to provide convincing evidence, but because of your unconscious pathologically negative patterns of thought. Interesting idea, but as a rebuttal to criticism it’s intellectually dishonest.

But the biggest problem with the book is that Diamandis simply does not seem to understand human nature. Just as those who earn $1 per day wish to earn more to meet basic needs , so does the lower class want to become middle class, and the middle class to become millionaires, millionaires strive to become multi-millionaires, and multi-millionaires wish to become billionaires. Simply put, there is no such thing as 'enough' when it comes to human beings and their desires to acquire material wealth and possessions. Increased wealth begets increased consumption and as long as we continue to overlook the role of population, it will become increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that we live on a finite planet with finite resources. A far better solution than the ones Diamandis proposes, would be to put humane programs in place to systematically reduce human birth rates. The world is quite big enough to sustain many millions (as opposed to billions) of people in abundance, with plenty of room left over for other species and vibrant ecosystems. ...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Andy rated it did not like it

Optimism makes things better. Hooray!

Scientists and engineers exist, and they will make super-duper new gizmos. Yay!

Everything in the whole wide world will soon be radically better because of the business-like innovations of the techno-philanthropists. They are like gods; praise them!

The problem for this goofy book is reality. As documented in Forbes, Fortune and other publications, the Gates Foundation (to use the biggest example of techno-philanthropy) actually has a pretty bad track record. T ...more

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Feb 20, 2012 Lena rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Most human beings have a built-in tendency to focus on the negative, obsessing about all the things that are wrong with the world and how we're all on the fast track to hell in a hand basket. In this book, X PRIZE founder Peter Diamandis tackles that view head on with a compelling argument that humanity is actually in far better shape than the 24/7 news cycle would have you believe.

The core of his argument is that a number of forces have come together to create an opportunity for problem solving Most human beings have a built-in tendency to focus on the negative, obsessing about all the things that are wrong with the world and how we're all on the fast track to hell in a hand basket. In this book, X PRIZE founder Peter Diamandis tackles that view head on with a compelling argument that humanity is actually in far better shape than the 24/7 news cycle would have you believe.

The core of his argument is that a number of forces have come together to create an opportunity for problem solving unprecedented in human history. Among those forces are the explosive growth of computing technology, the democratizing power of the Internet, and the rise of billionaire technophilanthropists with a genuine desire to save the world.

Diamandis and co-author Steven Kotler spend good portions of this book looking at the most serious problems facing the world today, including water, food, sanitation, health care, energy and repressive governments. In doing so, they offer tangible examples of new technologies that have or soon will have the potential to eliminate those problems.

Among the most interesting sections for me were those on how cheap mobile diagnostic tools and cloud based medical computers can bring health care to remote regions of the planet; how Generation IV nuclear reactors can power the earth for 1,000 years using existing nuclear waste with zero risk of the dangers of current plants; the discovery that kids in an Indian slum who spoke no English and had no computer experience could teach themselves biotechnology if given a computer; and that a guy in Colombia with a Facebook page succeeded in taking down FARC, a rebel organization that had been terrorizing his country with kidnappings and violence for 40 years.

Examples like these were the most valuable part of this book for me, provided in enough abundance to combat my own natural "yeah, but..." tendencies. The author's attempt to provide a structural framework through which to view these examples - a pyramid of possibility inspired by Maslow - was less successful; it was too abstract and less engaging than the inspiring, real world examples.

In addition, I couldn't help noting that just because many technologies do drop dramatically in price as they increase exponentially in power doesn't mean that the exponential growth he anticipates can solve many of our problems will actually occur. Despite that, I found this book to be authentically hopeful; it pushes back hard enough against the doomsayers that I finished it feeling like we have a much better chance at solving our big problems than I did before I started it.

...more

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Mar 13, 2014 David Sasaki rated it it was ok

Shelves: audio-book

When I worked at Open Society Foundations, we had a focus on defending rights, which derived from a worldview that assumes there are large institutions (mostly corporations and governments) that encroach upon our individual freedoms and our ability to live a prosperous life. By strengthening and defending rights, we can mitigate the negative effects of these large institutions. For all the insane blabber by Glenn Beck about George Soros being a Communist puppet master, the foundation actually ha ...more

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Jan 17, 2014 Jonathan rated it it was ok

The basic premise of Abundance is that there are a lot of problems in the world, and its hard to get people to change, but the right technological innovations will fix everything.

As someone who notices many of the same problems in the world, I want to believe the authors' assertions. And the book inspired me! The characters and anecdotes are appealing. I finished the book feeling nagged by a few big holes, but overall excited.

Unfortunately, in reflection the excitement wore off. There are plent The basic premise of Abundance is that there are a lot of problems in the world, and its hard to get people to change, but the right technological innovations will fix everything.

As someone who notices many of the same problems in the world, I want to believe the authors' assertions. And the book inspired me! The characters and anecdotes are appealing. I finished the book feeling nagged by a few big holes, but overall excited.

Unfortunately, in reflection the excitement wore off. There are plenty of technical problems with the book – for instance, a few of the stories (computer education in the villages, do-everything water filters) are exaggerated and don't pan out as well in the real world. Devoting a major pillar of the book to the author's own X-prizes project was lame. Wasting a whole chapter on the claim that all their opponents are just deluded by their brain chemistry was a waste of space. But the real difficulties are fundamental philosophical problems with expecting technology to change the world.

First off, the human tendency toward greed has proven able to absorb anything it's been given. Everyone always wants more. The idea that we could produce so much that the rich people would be satisfied and let the poor have enough, without major society changes, doesn't fit with any period in human history. The powerful have always been able to limit other people's access to resources whenever it benefited them, and the authors never explain how they'd keep powerful corporations and powerful governments from continuing to do such a thing. On occasion they allude to such problems (such as Monsanto's wield of patents to force farmers to be reliant on their products indefinitely), but they just “hope” such things will change.

Second, the degree to which wealth disparity, rather than absolute wealth alone, contributes to societal problems is never dealt with. Problems like violence and mental health appear not to be connected just to a nation's overall resources, but to its ability to deal out those resources evenly. That's one reason that Americans are less happy now than we were in the 1950s and 1960s (despite having FAR more stuff, including all the innovations the authors praise), and why many countries – including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, etc. - do better than America an d England on nearly every social index despite having far less money at their disposal. The authors don't deal with that issue at all.

Finally, the book shows absolutely no real interest in the people and things that the authors claim to be trying to preserve. They want to solve poverty, yet don't show any knowledge of the experience of the poor or any desire to ask them what they want. They want to save the environment, but everything they propose is irrelevant to and often disregarding of nature. They want to preserve land, but seem to think they could do that by just destroying small bits of land more efficiently, and hope that other land will be saved in the process. In general, they reach for technological numbers and statistics, but completely ignore the much greater damage to human societal structures and the Earth's environmental balance that are caused by both previous technological "advancements" and their own proposed technological "solutions".

As long as the people with power are obsessed with the greed for more things, they will continue abusing the poor, nature, and the land in order to satisfy their greed. Technology is neutral – no matter what you invent, the powerful aren't going to give up their desire to own more than everyone else, to possess the land, to control other peoples' lives. The authors are right that greed is part of the problem. They're right that people's nature is difficult to change. They're wrong that we can just hope that enough technology will just make that issue go away. It has never, ever worked before. ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 Alex Givant rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2017, tts, best-of-2019, read-again

Excellent book about why our future is better than you think. Have you seen bunch of depressing news today on TV? Just switch it off and use this time to read more books like this one.

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Mar 30, 2012 Shirley Freeman rated it it was amazing

This is an amazing book! The authors define abundance as 'providing all people with a life of possibility.' Imagine a world where 9 billion people have adequate clean water, food, shelter, energy, education and health. The authors not only imagine it, but think it is possible within the next 25 years. Yes, it seems overly optimistic but their argument (with supporting data) and their energy and enthusiasm are contagious. They outline the incredible technological advances that are occurring in ps ...more

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Feb 03, 2015 David Buccola rated it did not like it

Shelves: owned

A truly awful book. Take the futurism of a world's fair, add the hucksterism of a veteran of the start-up world, and rose-tinted outlook of a millennial and you get an idea of what this book is like. The book is littered with the false hope of NGO's and other companies that--just three years from publication--are already complete failures. But never fear, Peter Diamandis assures us, the world's billionaires will save us all! Conveniently missing from the narrative is the looming ecological crisi A truly awful book. Take the futurism of a world's fair, add the hucksterism of a veteran of the start-up world, and rose-tinted outlook of a millennial and you get an idea of what this book is like. The book is littered with the false hope of NGO's and other companies that--just three years from publication--are already complete failures. But never fear, Peter Diamandis assures us, the world's billionaires will save us all! Conveniently missing from the narrative is the looming ecological crisis posed by Global Climate Change. There is very little of substance here.

Just three years since publication, we already know that a number of the ideas espoused in this book are complete failures. The world's cheapest and most dangerous car, the Tato Nano, has not even close to meeting the expectations of shareholders. The devestation of the predatory micro loan industry has been well documented and has shook the Indian economy to its core. The much touted One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has already shuttered its doors after passing out a paltry 2.3 million laptops that are mostly junk. The guy who gave fat suburbanites the segueway claims to have invented a machine that's going to bring clean water to the poorest of the poor. It costs $100,000 at this point so a family making a few dollars a day might have to save up for a few generations before they can buy one. It goes like this, on and on throughout the book.

There are, of course, things aren't failures yet. Bill Gates is promoting the next generation of nuclear power that is supposedly safe and cheap. Of course that's been the mantra of the nuclear industry since its inception. With the recent disaster at Fukushima I think there's little reason to give this much credence. Even Gates admits that we're at least ten years away from a working prototype. So it's really just hype at this point. Other ideas, like the next generation of biofuels are also highlighted. I won't go on much here. Some of this stuff may indeed work out at some point down the line but it's mostly empty hype at this point.

There are points when Peter Diamandis comes dangerously close to touching on something worth while. He admits, for instance, that we already have enough food to feed everybody. We have an abundance of food! Yay, we're already there. But then he goes off the rails to explain to the patient reader that we don't have a distribution problem. Our problem, he insists, is that we need to move the farm!

Now much of what he has to saw about vertical farming and even urban farming is spot on. We would certainly benefit from moving the farm. But it doesn't matter how much we increase our food production if we don't allow hungry people access to that food. You can move the farm wherever you like, but until we start producing food to feed people we're going to still have this problem.

Diamandis' biggest problem is conflating a trend within the computing industry with a scientific law. Moore's law has lead to incredible advances in computing. They're faster and cheaper than ever. But most things we need, like major infrastructure projects, cars, housing and the like still require huge amounts of energy and cost. He talks about the smart water grid were going to build, which is essentially a bunch of sensors, but he's mute on how we're actually going to fix our aging water infrastructure and replace all those pipes. His answers again and again are essentially, "We'll let a computer do it."

When grandma needs to go to an old folks home because the rest of the family is working too many hours to look after her, she can talk to a robot! When we start running out of trained professional teachers, we'll just replace them with iPads and laptops! Again and again we're told that all of life problems will be solved with a giant technological bandaid.

I was told again and again that this was a book full of hope. I don't find techno-charlatanism hopeful. If anything, I found the "future of abundance" outlined here sounds like a complete nightmare where meaningful human interactions are replaced with machine interfaces with artificial intelligence. If you want a realistic look at our future with some hopeful observations I highly recommend Richard Heinberg's "The End of Growth." ...more

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May 02, 2012 Jud Barry rated it liked it

The future according to our popular novelists is almost always dystopian. Peter Diamandis encourages us to imagine otherwise, based on the potential of recent developments in science and technology.
Taking a page from Ray Kurzweil (with whom he has established Singularity University), Diamandis's future is very much the present-day reality of artificial technology, nanotechnology, robotics, communications, and biotechnology, where the pace of innovation conferred by computerization has greatly im The future according to our popular novelists is almost always dystopian. Peter Diamandis encourages us to imagine otherwise, based on the potential of recent developments in science and technology.
Taking a page from Ray Kurzweil (with whom he has established Singularity University), Diamandis's future is very much the present-day reality of artificial technology, nanotechnology, robotics, communications, and biotechnology, where the pace of innovation conferred by computerization has greatly improved the prospects of the planet to support all of its inhabitants comfortably.

Thus, this is more than another account of gee-whizardy. It's about how technological progress can be translated into a higher degree of creature comfort for earth's creatures (well, at least its people), including those living at the "bottom of the pyramid." Indeed, one of the most encouraging messages of the book is how some parts of the world--Africa in particular--occupy in some respects an advantageous position vis-a-vis some of these new technologies. The advantage, such as it is, comes from the fact that they don't have the developed countries' huge invested interest in the old and expensive technologies of land lines, coal, and gasoline, which puts the under-developed countries in a better position to be early adopters of the new technologies, particularly solar power. Cell phones have already proven themselves to be a potent tool for delivering financial and public health benefits in such countries as Bangladesh and Kenya.

Diamandis places a great deal of faith on the ability of tech philanthropists to deliver the goods that will produce our abundant future. While never providing an overt critique of centralized governments, Diamandis consistently uses such examples as Bill Gates to show how much tech tycoons really care about the world and are the key to its salvation.

Unfortunately, he fails to make a distinction between private actions taken for public benefit--Wikipedia comes to mind--and private actions taken for proprietary benefit, like those of Craig Venter in the race to map the human genome. Diamandis's account of Venter's role is brief, glowing--and self-contradictory: "Building on work that had come before, Venter ... delivered a fully sequenced human genome in less than one year (tying the government's ten-year effort) for just under $100 million (while the government spent $1.5 billion)." Sounds like a wasteful government, doesn't it? What he doesn't say is that "government" (actually scientists using money from public sources) had done 80% of the work by the time Venter got to it--and copied it. That's what "building on work that had come before" means. And then, Venter wanted to declare private ownership of what his company had "discovered," whereas the "government" wanted to make the information available to create future wealth in the form of new knowledge by others "building on work that came before."

Diamandis also places a great deal of stock in prizes as an engine of progress. I have no beef with that, but if he wants to point fingers--even without seeming to do so--I do have to wonder why, five years after the awarding of an X-prize to not one but three winners of a competition to design "the world's first fast, affordable, production-ready car able to achieve over one hundred miles per gallon equivalent," there is still no such car on the market. The reason, I'm sure, has something to do with why American auto-makers were never able to release any fuel-efficient cars in the first place and had to have Japan show them how; it has something to do with the fact that so-called "fuel-efficient" cars are being marketed today that get less than 40 mpg, which is disgraceful. The reason is one that I don't fully understand, but it is a demonstrable phenomenon no less. And it has nothing to do with wasteful governments.

I am hopeful that the future will turn out the way Diamandis describes. But there is one reason why dystopian fiction prevails--it is really more about people than technology. If, as J-P Sartre said, hell is other people, so might we say the same about the future. ...more

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Mar 07, 2014 Adam Ford rated it really liked it

Abundance is one of the better books about the modern world that I have read. A very informative and well written book that flowed quickly. I highly recommend it. A few things that stood out to me:

1. The main forces pushing us forward are the buying power of the bottom billion (the poorest billion people on the planet), the exponential growth of technology, the rise of the super-smart techno philanthropist and the do-it-your-selfers.

2. We are heading into a significant shortage of doctors as the Abundance is one of the better books about the modern world that I have read. A very informative and well written book that flowed quickly. I highly recommend it. A few things that stood out to me:

1. The main forces pushing us forward are the buying power of the bottom billion (the poorest billion people on the planet), the exponential growth of technology, the rise of the super-smart techno philanthropist and the do-it-your-selfers.

2. We are heading into a significant shortage of doctors as the baby-boomers retire. There have never been enough doctors worldwide, but we are about to experience a major shortage in the first world. The best hope for dealing with the crisis will be technology. Health scans will engage in direct biocommunication and diagnostics with greater accuracy than possible with a live doctor. Exciting times lie ahead in medical technology.

3. More people should be working on things that are significant. The book quotes one of Google's founders saying that something is significant if it has the potential to affect the lives of 1 billion people in the next decade. This is thinking big. If more people stretched towards this goal, the world would be a much better place. I like this a lot and think I need to broaden my horizons significantly. I spend far too much time obsessing over the tiny religious sect I happened to be born into. It is a long-term historical irrelevancy and has distracted me for most of my life from applying my skills towards accomplishing great things. If your audience size is less than a million people, you are wasting your gift.

4. The bottom billion are a massive market with amazing growth potential for businesses and will not be ignored much longer. As these consumers are understood and targeted engineers and businessmen will be forced to lower the cost of their products. Nearly every household in the Philippines or Kenya or Nigeria or Pakistan have cell phones today. In a decade they will all have more than the average first world household has today due to advances in technology. The 3rd world is disappearing.

5. The next decade will see an explosion in game-based learning. Video games are not harmful and in fact can be a very powerful tool in teaching. We are just figuring out how to use the video game format to revolutionize teaching and learning. It will be exciting to watch this happen. ...more

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May 31, 2012 Glenn Capuano rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone with an interest in cutting-edge technology

Recommended to Glenn by: Neil Creek

This book was recommended by a friend, and I certainly enjoyed reading it. The main premise is that the doom & gloom which dominates the media is ill-placed and we are in fact much better off and will soon have the means at our disposal to beat the challenges facing humanity today. Much of this makes sense to me - certainly there is a tendency to focus on the negative, and it's good to see a book which catalogues some of the good inventions which do have the potential to change our lives in This book was recommended by a friend, and I certainly enjoyed reading it. The main premise is that the doom & gloom which dominates the media is ill-placed and we are in fact much better off and will soon have the means at our disposal to beat the challenges facing humanity today. Much of this makes sense to me - certainly there is a tendency to focus on the negative, and it's good to see a book which catalogues some of the good inventions which do have the potential to change our lives in the foreseeable future.

As far as how believable some of their predictions are - well I think they vary. I found the section on water quite interesting, and some of the technologies discussed around the provision of clean water are very exciting. Also the education section is worth a read, as I think the authors are onto something with the profound way the internet has penetrated our lives and made so much information accessible, and the availability of mobile apps replacing many devices.

I'm a little more skeptical about their claims on energy generation and health care - claiming that there are trends for both of these becoming much cheaper and affordable which seems to be exactly the opposite of what we're seeing in the real world at the moment (both electricity and health care costs increasing rapidly).

At times it seems to be a little too self-promoting, with many passages little more than ads for the authors' companies (eg. the X-prize and Singularity University). There is also a lot of faith placed on continued exponential growth, almost to the point of it being a religion - eg. Moore's Law will continue to apply indefinitely - not considering things like quantum limits where it starts to break down. Just because something has grown exponentially in the past doesn't mean it will continue to do so in the future.

In the end, the book is a good read (and quite easy to read) if you want to know about some of the more exciting technologies which are being developed and appearing on the horizon, and how they might affect our lives. I certainly found it engrossing and wanted to read more.

In terms of providing an overarching view of argument in the title that "the future is better than you think" I think it falls a little short, and didn't leave me convinced of the broader view but predicting the future is a difficult game and I'm looking forward to a follow-up in a few years where the same authors evaluate their own predictions against reality.

...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Kater Cheek rated it liked it

The cover of this book, which you can't really see from the snapshot, has been done to look like it's wrapped in aluminum foil. Aluminum was once the most precious metal on earth, and now technology has made it so cheap it's ubiquitous.

That's basically the premise of the book; technology brings about abundance. Diamandis has oodles of examples, and he backs them up with a thick selection of charts and graphs in the back. For every doom-and-gloom prophecy that journalists have brought up to frig ...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Loraine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I love tomorrow and its potential. I have no nostalgia for the past. So this is a perfect book for me. I want to hear the message that this book presents and I got what I was looking for. Lots of it. No wasted words here and never over my head.
Some examples: "We used to think that healthy and wealthy meant you had to be fat. We don't think that anymore. Today, we think that to be healthy and wealthy we need a ton of things, but maybe that too will become old thinking. Technology can replace much ...more

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Nov 13, 2012 Andy rated it it was amazing

This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. It holds an excellent analysis of what the future holds. It changed my opinion about a lot of technologies (solar and medical) for the better. The section on the future of power collection was very interesting. I do hope their predictions about robots come true... imagine finally having a robot that would clean your house.
My favorite part of the book dealt with people who are attempting to reform the educational process throughout the worl ...more

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May 27, 2015 J.F. Penn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, self-help, entrepreneur

Stop reading the papers and listening to the negative media. Read this book and marvel at the amazing things happening in the world!

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Nov 16, 2016 Charlene rated it really liked it

Shelves: climate, constructs, innovation, politics

In her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein stated how much she disliked scientists who focused on innovation over conservation. For this reason, Klein would absolutely hate Peter Diamandis. He began his book with example after example of why we worry too much about depleting Earth's resources. He even went so far as to Kahneman shame his reader. (I have decided that Khaneman shame should be an actual term). I usually enjoy being Kahneman shamed because I know that even the most logical ind In her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein stated how much she disliked scientists who focused on innovation over conservation. For this reason, Klein would absolutely hate Peter Diamandis. He began his book with example after example of why we worry too much about depleting Earth's resources. He even went so far as to Kahneman shame his reader. (I have decided that Khaneman shame should be an actual term). I usually enjoy being Kahneman shamed because I know that even the most logical individuals among us hold biases that are held from their consciousness. But Diamandis' Kahneman shaming rubbed me the wrong way. I remember thinking, "You are joking right? You are lecturing your reader while you are, yourself, failing to seek out evidence against your own argument?" Clearly I was not a fan of this book, at first anyway.

However, as I continued to read, I came to understand he is just terrible at conveying what steps he took to look at both sides of the coin. The early part of the book reads like a pollyanna approach to the future-- everything looks great! We shouldn't worry now or worry then. He didn't seem, to me, to engage in critical thinking in the way his colleague Kurzweil did, as evidenced by his constant homage to the old guard, gene jocks like Pinker and Ridley. However, toward the middle of the book he became more problem oriented and began to illustrate one solution after the other, and it was beautiful!

Here are some examples of limited resources and the possible solutions for providing everyone on Earth with an abundance of these limited resources:

- Water is hard to come by for those in many developing countries, but laying pipes that carry clean water to everyone around the globe is ridiculously costly. One solution to this problem is to provide them with filters that have pores only 15 nm wide (I love that someone invented such a filter)! That means water is filtered so thoroughly, it will even keep bacteria from getting through. Using these filters, people can turn undrinkable water into drinkable water in seconds at much less cost than running pipes all over the world.

- Many people in developing countries don't have waste systems. When human waste sits around, humans get sick, very sick. Recall the plagues throughout history and the pandemics of more recent times. To address the lack of sanitation, the Malinda and Bill Gates Foundation is working to provide these countries with the best waste system I have ever heard of. They are providing high tech outhouses that powder and burn up feces. Human feces hold more than a megajoule of energy! When that energy is harvested and released by the powder and burn process, it can be used to get rid of the urine, and the left over energy can be sent to a grid and used to power things, such as a cell phone. I know Klein has it in for scientists who innovate over conserve, but Naomi, even you have to love this! Right?

- Of course, providing water and waste systems to people around the world won't amount to much if we end up using more carbon in order to keep progress progressing. Poisoning our planet while trying to provide abundance would be the stupidest thing imaginable. Addressing that concern was perhaps the best part of the entire book. How can we have create an abundance of energy *and* keep atmosphere intact? There are many methods being researched and implemented that could provide not only the energy we need for daily life, but the energy needed to help combat climate change (not a bad plan if we can make it work). Diamandis is clear in his suggestion to take conservation efforts very seriously. I am certain he would suggest that we fight against Trump's plans for the usage of coal- and fight hard. Trump calls everything a huge disaster. Yet, he fights for coal, the use of which would actually be a huge disaster, on a global scale. Coal isn't just a little bit bad for Earth; it is one of the most significant contributors to climate change. That is precisely why there are regulations limiting and prohibiting its use. Our better bet, according to Diamandis, is to restrict the use of coal and use incentives to get the best minds all over our world to come up with alternative ways to generate energy, ways that don't have harmful waste products (e.g. carbon) that destroy our planet. So far, it's looking pretty promising. Now if we can only stop Trump and others like him until we can develop and implement safer energy generating mechanisms.

- Providing an abundance of eduction to everyone around the world is also a really worthwhile goal. I loved the plans for this. It was not the first time I have read about these same methods-- computer / game oriented learning with oversight by teachers who are more like tutors than traditional tutors. This will not only solve the education crisis in developing countries, it might help fix the rigid teaching style that destroys plenty of children's love for learning in schools all over America.

- With better global education comes longer-lived individuals who will need an abundance of access to healthcare. No problem. Innovators of the future have this covered. Smart medicine (e.g. smart phone diagnosis, surgeons in LA who robotically operate on patients in developing countries in their spare time, etc) will change the face of treatment. For more on this, I highly recommend Eric Topol's The Patient Will See You Now.

- And finally, these healthy, well-educated individuals will need an abundance of access to political power. How can we help that happen? Through the internet of course, but as Diamandis will tell you, that might only be accessible to the young ;)
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Nov 02, 2013 Marti rated it it was amazing

Possibly the most fascinating nonfiction book I have read in a decade: a reader-friendly overview from the originator of the X Prize, this book covers advances and reasons for optimism in areas of food, water, shelter, energy, commerce, healthcare, education and more. While realistically laying out causes for concern (over-population, climate change, poverty), the author counters each of these with a solid reason for optimism. Many of these causes for hope come from advances in technology, but t ...more

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Mar 16, 2015 Krista rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015, nonfiction

Cornucopians feel that the rate of technological growth will outpace the rate of population growth, and that will solve all our problems. Malthusians believe that we've already exceeded the planet's carrying capacity, and if population growth continues unchecked, nothing we invent will be powerful enough to reverse those effects.

I finally know what to call myself: I am definitely a Cornucopian (even if those killjoy Malthusians don't mean the term kindly). I am firmly within the camp that says ...more

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Dec 01, 2015 Nicole Anderson rated it it was amazing

Authors Peter H. Diamandis and Steve Kotler have created just about the perfect handbook when it comes to envisioning a technically advanced, democratic and thriving society. Written in 2012, this book is still an important read for anyone who’s interested in a technical future where humanity finally rises above the mire it has been tethered to for millennia.

Much can be said about the book, but there are two aspects that put Abundance at the top of my recommended reading list. First, Diamandis s ...more

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Jan 16, 2019 Douglas Green rated it it was amazing

Must read, gives a great perspective in an easily pessimistic world.

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Aug 27, 2012 Mal Warwick rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction

A Technology Maven's Vision of Humanity's Bright Future

Peter Diamandis envisions a world in which humanity triumphs against all its challenges, from climate change, overpopulation, and poverty to the planetary deficits in energy and water.

This is not science fiction. It’s an eye-opening survey of what one celebrated technology visionary perceives as a feasible future for our species.

As Diamandis writes, “Abundance is a tale of good news. At its core, this book examines the hard facts, the scienc A Technology Maven's Vision of Humanity's Bright Future

Peter Diamandis envisions a world in which humanity triumphs against all its challenges, from climate change, overpopulation, and poverty to the planetary deficits in energy and water.

This is not science fiction. It’s an eye-opening survey of what one celebrated technology visionary perceives as a feasible future for our species.

As Diamandis writes, “Abundance is a tale of good news. At its core, this book examines the hard facts, the science and engineering, the social trends and economic forces that are rapidly transforming our world. . . The point is this: When seen through the lens of technology, few resources are truly scarce; they’re mainly inaccessible. Yet the threat of scarcity still dominates our worldview.”

Diamandis is unusually well qualified to write this book. He is a Harvard-trained physician and an aeronautical engineer with a master’s degree from MIT. Ever since the age of 8, he has been preoccupied with space exploration. He has founded or co-founded a half-dozen businesses and organizations involved in that field and is widely credited with being the seminal figure in jump-starting the private space exploration business with the $10 million Ansari X Prize that led to the flight of SpaceShipOne.

In Abundance, co-written with Steven Kotler and published February 2012, Diamandis veers far from the course he set in space, settling down to earth to explore how humankind can leverage emerging technologies to confront its most pressing problems. Though Diamandis’ focus is squarely on the exponential growth in speed, capability, and spread of information processing technologies, he is not a gadget freak. He recognizes the social and political context in which technology is brought to light, although he may downplay the ferocity of humanity’s innate resistance to change. He writes about “game-changing” technologies, such as the “Lab-on-a-Chip . . . a portable, cell-phone-sized device [that] will allow doctors, nurses, and even patients themselves to take a sample of bodily fluid (such as urine, sputum, or a single drop of blood) and run dozens, if not hundreds, of diagnostics on the spot and in a manner of minutes.” He cites other potential breakthrough technologies now being developed by such luminaries as inventor Dean Kamen and biogeneticist Craig Venter.

For anyone but a Luddite, Abundance is exciting to read. Diamandis clearly believes that the technological advances he writes about hold promise of a much brighter future for humanity despite the anticipated growth in the world’s population to nine billion by 2050. (He even points to growing “in vitro” meat as one solution to the fast-rising demand for protein by ever more prosperous people.) For a science fiction fan such as myself, it’s difficult not to get starry-eyed.

However, the principal flaw in his line of reasoning is that, no matter how promising these new devices and processes might be, it’s not practical to assume that they’ll be quickly adopted around the world. That Lab-on-a-Chip sound wonderful? Great! But how many years will it take to put one billion copies of that device into the hands of the nurses running rural health clinics in Western Kenya and Uttar Pradesh and everywhere else in our wide, wide world? And how much will that cost? And will the spread of the device be rapid enough to prevent what other futurists see as the inevitable pandemics of new communicable diseases? Similar questions arise about nearly every one of the marvelous inventions cited in Abundance.

Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation and cofounder of Singularity University, laid out his vision of abundance in earth’s future in a brilliant TED2012 talk. The themes he introduced onstage at TED are explored in depth in this book.

To give some sense of the exalted circles in which Diamandis travels, here are some of the trustees of the X Prize Foundation: Larry Page, Elon Musk, James Cameron, Dean Kamen, Ratan Tata, Ray Kurzweil, Arianna Huffington, and Craig Venter, every one of whom would figure in anyone’s list of the brightest and most innovative thinkers and doers in the world.

(From www.malwarwickonbooks.com) ...more

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Jan 03, 2016 Anny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science

I love how this book gave a glimpse of the wonders that technology could bring to us. Water-filter that can filter just about anything liquid (seawater, sewage water, factory wastes, etc) to drinkable water. Solar power to replace our fossil fuel power, abundant, renewable, eco-friendly, cheap (hopefully in the coming years). Internet helping to connect people with abundant resources to those that needed them (be it in the form of loans or crowd-funding). Genetics and nano-technology that will h ...more

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Dec 31, 2013 Joe rated it liked it

I want to believe the hype, but the authors seem too entrenched in the establishment and faithful in the market system and "technology" to solve all the world's problems. I don't see their dreams coming to fruition anytime soon, but I hope they prove me wrong. I don't think they give enough space to counterarguments and the possibility of things going exponentially wrong rather than getting exponentially better.

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Feb 26, 2018 J.E. Thompson rated it it was amazing

A must read for anyone interested in technological progress or conversely for anyone feeling as if the world today is not as good as the world of our parents and grandparents time. An exciting, optimistic and well grounded view of possibilities that are just around the corner

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Oct 11, 2017 Abby Smith rated it it was ok

Not at all what I thought it would be. Seems like a lot of hype for a lot of theories. There are a lot of problems in the world but science --> technological advances will fix EVERYTHING. Change is hard.

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Mar 21, 2018 Maria Lasprilla rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, systems-economy-society

The best and most useful book I have read in a while. I am extremely happy with having chosen to read it during a long vacation as it required my mind being rested and focused to absorb all the goodness in it.

The book first reinforced my distaste for reading newspaper. Traditional media is full of useless negativity. But that was just the beginning. What it did best was filled me in a very compressed way with all the technological advancements we are making in this time of human history that, co The best and most useful book I have read in a while. I am extremely happy with having chosen to read it during a long vacation as it required my mind being rested and focused to absorb all the goodness in it.

The book first reinforced my distaste for reading newspaper. Traditional media is full of useless negativity. But that was just the beginning. What it did best was filled me in a very compressed way with all the technological advancements we are making in this time of human history that, combined, can help us solve the problems we have as a civilization. 300 pages of factual optimism that recharges my desire to do bigger things, but in an organized way, and not in the romantic way of my twenty-odd self. Plus there are about 40 pages of graphs from differente sources backing all that optimism up.

All the information in it is something I was somewhat or pretty aware of. The beauty of this book is seeing it all related and helping me create a wider view of things that otherwise is really hard to achieve without long hours of study.

One important point the book makes is what "abundance" refers to in the point they try to make. Starting with that, here are some good quotes from the book:

"Abundance is not about providing everyone on this planet with a life of luxyry- rather it's about providing all with a life of possibility" (p.13).

"Scarcity is often contextual (...). Technology is a resource-liberating mechanism. It can make the once scarce now abundant". (p.4)

(Quoting Sir Ken Robinson): "Our education system rarely give people permission to be themselves. But if you can't be yourself, it's hard to know yourself, and if you don't know yourself, how can you ever tap into your true potential?" (p.180)

"What we do know is that the industrialized model of education, with its emphasis on rote memorization of facts, is no longer necessary. Facts are what Google does best. But creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving [are] skills repeatedly stressed by everyone as the fundamentals required by today's jobs." (p. 181)

"While ICT is clearly the greatest tool for self-empowerment we've yet seen, it's still only a tool, and, like all tools, is fundamentally neutral. A hammer can build bridges or bash brains (...). What ICT does guarantee is an exceptionally broad platform for cooperation". (p. 213)

"You need to be a little crazy to change the world, and you can't really fake it. If you don't believe in the possibility, then you'll never give it the 200 percent effort required." (p. 233)

"Abundance is both a plan and a perspective (...) our perspective shapes our reality." (p. 239).

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Dec 26, 2018 Yvo Hunink rated it really liked it

What this book taught me most is that we as humans have a hard time to think exponentially. IT is developing at such an enormous rate and touches upon so many different aspects of our life, that many of our biggest problems will soon be gone, but that our current model might not be ready for an abundance based system. Truly, the book is a piece of the big puzzle in my head, where moving away from scarcity based models towards abundance based models, could help society move forward in the 21st ce ...more

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Nov 19, 2017 Stephen Heiner rated it it was amazing

Shelves: environment, nonfiction, tech

What I appreciate about Peter Diamandis' vision, which we can catch a large part of in this book, is his ability to be optimistic while being realistic. While he, like Kevin Kelly, doesn't ask the "should we" question but rather focuses on all the ways we can, he does so from a cohesive and coherent worldview, and one that we can very much appreciate.

Taking a cue from Maslow, Diamandis has a basis for his vision. He wants everyone to have access to clean water, nutritious food, affordable housin ...more

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Jun 11, 2017 Lone Wong rated it liked it

Shelves: economic, non-fiction

A book full of hypothesis and speculation.

I'm not pessimistic nor optimistic about the future. But we human are really bad at predicting the future.

The book starts with an introduction about the scarcity of resources. "History littered with tales of once-rate resources made plentiful by innovation." Peter believe that technology is a resource-liberating mechanism. It can make the once scarce the now abundant.

He believes the world can be abundant in the future with technology by building the " ...more

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Jul 07, 2017 Nestor Leal rated it really liked it

It reads like a supercharged overloaded Wired magazine tome. The book paints an ugly world with many problems but with an abundance of possibilities! With many examples by regular collaborators of Wired mag. and stories of rockstar like inventors, I got inspired to create viable business solutions to the many opportunities all around. Made me take some notes and work on ideas.

The many entrepreneurs, technology and futurist authors referenced in the book include Marvin Misnky, Nathan Myhrvold, N ...more

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About Peter H. Diamandis

Peter H. Diamandis

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Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is an international pioneer in the fields of innovation, incentive competitions and commercial space. In 2014 he was named one of "The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders" – by Fortune Magazine.

In the field of Innovation, Diamandis is Founder and Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight.

Diamandis is also the Co ...more