Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think (Exponential Technology Series)

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

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 and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler. 

Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—fast. The authors document how four forces—exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion—are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.

Examining human need by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, freedom—Diamandis and Kotler introduce dozens of innovators making great strides in each area: Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, Craig Venter, among many, many others. 

Peter H. Diamandis is a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of more than fifteen high-tech companies. He is the CEO of the XPRIZE and executive chairman of Singularity University, a Silicon Valley-based institution backed by Google, 3D Systems, and NASA. He is cochairman of Planetary Resources, Inc. and the cofounder of Human Longevity, Inc. Diamandis attended MIT, where he received his degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering, and Harvard Medical School, where he received his MD. In 2014 he was named one of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” by Fortune magazine.

Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and the founder and executive director of the Flow Research Collective. His books include Stealing Fire, Bold, The Rise of Superman, Abundance, A Small Furry Prayer, West of Jesus, and Last Tango in Cyberspace. His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes, has been translated into more than forty languages, and has appeared in over a hundred publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Wired, Forbes, and Time.