Abundance

I first heard about Peter Diamandis during a TED livestream event that I was lucky enough to attend in Barcelona last year. His talk was named as “Abundance is our future”.

I have always been an optimist when it comes to technology but the talk has changed my perception about the century we’re living in quite dramatically, in a rather positive way.

Like many others, I have grown up in an environment where most people were quite worried with the diminishing resources on planet Earth. We have been hearing numerous efforts to reverse this, but can’t remember any credible one which actually succeeded in a meaningful scale. My worry just got worse with former Greenpeace CEO Paul Gilding’s talk named The Earth is Full.

Then, Peter Diamandis came to the stage and I remember leaving the room with much more confidence for the future than I ever had. Strongly recommend watching this here or even reading his book if you have more time.

Here are some notes from his talk:

• News media preferentially feeds us with negative stories. Because that’s what we pay most attention. Has biological reasons.
• With the tremendous progress we have made in last century, we have the potential to create a world of abundance in the next three decades.
• Over the last 100 years; the average lifespan has more than doubled, average income per capita around the world has tripled and childhood mortality has come down with a factor of 10x.
• Cost of food, electricity, transportation and communication has dropped 10 to 1000-fold.
• We’re living in the most peaceful-time ever in human history.
• Global literacy has gone from 25% to over 80% in the last 130 years.
• Ray Kurzweil: Any tool that becomes an information technology jumps into the Moore’s curve and experiences a performance/price doubling every 12-24 months.
• Faster computers are used to build faster computers. The rate of technology getting faster itself, is getting faster.
• Energy Abundance: Scarcity is contextual. Scarcity is an accessibility problem. Technology is a resource liberating force.
• First time in 2012 - the cost of solar generated electricity is 50% of diesel-generated one in India.
• Water Abundance: 70% of planet Earth is covered by water. 97.5% of that is salt-water, 2% is ice and we fight over .5%.
• Slingshot today is able to generate 1000 litres of clean drinking water a day out of any source including salt water, with a cost less than 2c/litre.
• Communication Abundance: connectivity, access to world’s information for free. With smartphones, 3 billion people will be connected very soon. Voices we have never heard.