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pharmdad2007's review
5.0
I tend to be an optimist, so even though I know that there is a lot of uncertainty around the future of our planet and the things we need to do to keep it going, I also really enjoyed this look at the bright side of things. The author illustrates a number of ways that these potential problems could be solved, or in some cases, maybe not even materialize.
jstamper2022's review against another edition
3.0
The authors make some good points, like scarcity being largely a myth, as fear and crisis make people more malleable, global living conditions have improved vastly over the centuries and decades even for the poor, and technology can improve lives further globally. That we can't just focus on our country, we need to focus on improving conditions globally and they can prove those benefits mathematically. By expanding access to clean water, food, health, and education globally, we can slow the population booms and allow current resource consumption to even out. Resource grow laterally while population is growing exponentially and that can be reversed by proving the basic needs globally. This isn't a 4-hr workweek, UBI for all type book. T points out the things we can do right now to improve our global economy and lives and how emerging technology can one day lead to a short work week and UBI assuming things pan out. They are more baby step type guys with less of the vast jumps in technology as post-WWII futuristic utopians were. I fear they grossly underestimated how awful humans are as a whole to each other. But kudos for trying. Maybe they will be the futurists who got it right.
dannb's review
4.0
Rise above the need to argue with the math and focus on the value of looking at situations without the constraints of "that is impossible" or "this/that is too big an issue to overcome."
ghostsofthings's review
3.0
It's easy to be hopeless about humanity's future. There is a lot going wrong and it feels like we're past the point of no return. But that's really just giving up, isn't it? Abundance is an optimistic take on the future, and offers some reassurance that we can't give up and we need to keep trying. The more we try and fail and succeed, the more discoveries we make, the more adjacent possibilities open up, and who knows - one of those could be the key to getting us all back on track.
ptaradactyl's review
3.0
The whole point of this book was to be challenging and though-provoking, which it was. But my tactical mind kept getting annoyed at the HUGE concerns that he swept over. For example, talking about medical data being used to track outbreaks without any mention of data privacy issues.
I also caught a few places where his data wasn't wrong, exactly, but it wasn't really right, exactly, either. Just over-simplified and over-generalized in ways that really made me question how feasible his big ideas could be. I recently heard the pithy aside that if Bill Gates walks into a bar, everyone there is a millionaire by average net worth, but that doesn't mean your bank account has gotten fuller. That kind of math seemed to crop up throughout.
I also kept getting hung up on wondering who would pay to make these things happen. Even the most social of social entrepreneurs or philanthropic of tech philanthropists is getting SOMETHING in return. Most benign case, it's the warm fuzzy feeling of helping humanity. Least benign? Data is money and power, and hacking for bad may pay off even faster than hacking for good.
This book got into my brain, and it definitely got me thinking, if only about how much less-than-compelling some of the arguments were. I can't help but thing that the authors would consider that a success.
I also caught a few places where his data wasn't wrong, exactly, but it wasn't really right, exactly, either. Just over-simplified and over-generalized in ways that really made me question how feasible his big ideas could be. I recently heard the pithy aside that if Bill Gates walks into a bar, everyone there is a millionaire by average net worth, but that doesn't mean your bank account has gotten fuller. That kind of math seemed to crop up throughout.
I also kept getting hung up on wondering who would pay to make these things happen. Even the most social of social entrepreneurs or philanthropic of tech philanthropists is getting SOMETHING in return. Most benign case, it's the warm fuzzy feeling of helping humanity. Least benign? Data is money and power, and hacking for bad may pay off even faster than hacking for good.
This book got into my brain, and it definitely got me thinking, if only about how much less-than-compelling some of the arguments were. I can't help but thing that the authors would consider that a success.
juggernaut's review against another edition
4.0
Far better than their recent book "Future is faster than you think". It seems Peter Diamandis' coaching business took up well and his later books are just brouchers for his courses.
bookaneer's review
3.0
It was good and enlightening at first but it really bores me at the second half. Sick and tired reading about X Prize and stuff. Hence, it took me four months to finish it.