Summary: What’s your prediction for the future? You may think it doesn’t matter much. It does. Your perspective can actually have an impact on how the future turns out. Your view of the world will shape your actions. And your actions will shape the world. That’s what Peter Diamandis and Steve Kotler aim to do with their book, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think. They want to change your world view (literally, your view of the world), give you some ideas about what is already happening, and show how you can join the revolution. They do this by describing in detail some of the new technologies and advancements in a variety of critical areas, such as clean water, food, energy, health care and how innovative solutions are emerging to solve the world’s biggest problems. Understanding what is working and how you can contribute in a meaningful way will ‘expand your notions of the possible’ and have you saying, “Yeah, we can do this” by the end of the book. Golden Egg Solving Problems Anywhere, Solves Problems Everywhere “Our days of isolation are behind us. In today’s world, what happens ‘over there’ impacts ‘over here.’” Abundance, introduction You have to admit, things are different now. Compared with even just a few years ago, the ubiquity of cell phones and the connection to information on a world wide scale has caused an explosion of collaboration and innovation, even the overthrow of governments. Specifically, the viral spread of cell phones in Africa has “had about the same effect as a democratic change of leadership” says business executive Isis Nyong’o. In 2001, 134 million Nigerians were sharing 500,000 landlines. By 2007, Nigeria had 30 million cellular subscribers. Africa and other developing countries are skipping the wired cable infrastructure stage and entering directly into instant wireless access to all the same information that the developed world has, creating what Diamandis calls, “the rising billion.” These are the 4 billion people occupying the lowest strata of the economic pyramid, the so-called bottom billion, who have lately become a viable economic market. Individually, they may live on less than $2 a day, but their aggregate purchasing power creates significant possibilities. Crucial is the sharing of information, which is our latest, our brightest, commodity. “In a world of material goods and material exchange, trade is a zero-sum game,” says inventor Dean Kamen. “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.” And ideas are spreading across the planet at remarkable speed. Over the next eight years, three billion new individuals will be coming online, joining the global conversation, and contributing to the global economy. Their ideas – ideas we’ve never before had access to – will result in new discoveries, products, and inventions that will benefit us all. GEM #1 Exponential Technologies are Accelerating Global Change “If you want to know if technology is accelerating fast enough to bring about an age of global abundance, then you need to know how to predict the future.” Abundance, page 51 Exponential growth is a simple doubling: 1, 2, 4, 8. When you start below 1 (as in .0001) the curve looks like a horizontal line for a while, 13 doublings before it gets to 1, but only seven doublings later the line has skyrocketed above 100. This quick explosion is hard for our mind to fathom, but it is exactly what is happening in multiple technologies, not just computer processing speed. It started in the early 1950’s when the Air Force tracked the accelerating progress of flight from the Wright brothers forward. They discovered a shocking conclusion: a trip to the moon should be soon possible. Sure enough, the USSR Sputnik and US rockets to the moon occurred right on schedule,
