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A review by banandrew
Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Steven Kotler, Peter H. Diamandis
3.0
Peter Diamandis and Steve Kotler take on the future in this book that aims to be more positive than most. It presents a vision of the future dominated by technology, the kind that includes robots doing household chores, mobile phones performing diagnostic x-rays, and
Diamandis, founder of Singularity University and the X PRIZE, speaks with all the excitement of a startup venture capitalist---his startups' early demonstrated successes with orders-of-magnitude improvements over existing technology will change the world! Factor in "the magic of exponential growth" and in thirty years we'll all have clean energy, great medical diagnostics, and have solved global hunger.
The book is indefatigably positive, which, as it sets out to do, is encouraging. Diamandis has not only thought a lot about these issues but routinely works with the people who are actually making it happen. His outlook is not about the technology of the next five years but about the next thirty to fifty, and it's hard not to come to the conclusion that his utopia is actually a possibility. To help illustrate this, he brings in example after example of exponential growth:
There is, however, no mention of the fact that all of these examples have been the successful outliers, and that hundreds of startups have tried and failed to be these success stories. This is clearly Diamandis' idea of a reasonable model to solve the world's problems (as illustrated by his description of using public prizes to motivate attempts) but it puts a glossy sheen over the misery of everyone who tries and fails in the meantime.
Diamandis starts off the book criticizing those who focus on existing negatives in the world and says they impede progress by affecting public opinion. While I understand his sentiment, how many problems have been solved primarily because of negative attention towards them? That can't be ignored as a force for good.
Let's talk about global hunger: we already have enough food for the whole world and are perfectly capable of making more. So why are people still hungry, and how will technology fix that? Well, he sort of addresses it, talking about more local/portable solutions to growing food that could work in more rural areas. But he doesn't tend to tackle a lot of the actual major issues in the way, such as:
- Existing governmental aid infrastructure, where corporate lobbying has a massive impact on what gets sent
- Social norms that may be violated in the process (he briefly alludes to this with an anecdote about women in rural villages sabotaging water pumps because of how it disrupted certain social routines, but he doesn't really address it).
- Aid isn't given to all countries, especially countries which the U.S. (and, by coercion, its "allies") doesn't consider friendly.
Some of the results he cites seem to good to be true. When talking about the "hole-in-the-wall computer" (used to educated students with little to no teacher interaction) and the experiments derived from it, he cites "unprecedented retention of information". I could hear Audrey Watters over my shoulder telling me to read more about education theory.
On the positive side, the book is thoroughly researched, with a constant flow of references provided if you want more information. Amartya Sen is cited when discussing development and improvement of life for the "bottom billion", and his influence is seen when discussing how freedoms and abilities (especially through food, clean water, healthcare, and education, which he compelling connects to Maslow's hierarchy of needs), but Sen's warnings about the nuances of social norms, power distribution within families and communities, and other important considerations to development are completely ignored when discussing how technology will make everything better.
Unfortunately, there are some key things that are never addressed:
- What the work situation of the future world looks like. It's great that we're replacing more and more things that people need to do with robots (self-driving cars, factory jobs, household cleaning), but at some point soon we run out of "information jobs" for everyone to do. I found this dissonance illustrated well when talking about providing clean water for rural populations:
The assumption that there will even be a job available for "mom" to take is not addressed, but I think it is a serious concern in Diamandis' future.
- Any social issues at all. Most pressing to me in this future is, "how do we convince the developed world to support everyone having water, food, and healthcare, especially if they live in a developed country but don't have/can't find a job?"
This book is better-written and more well researched than Al Gore's The Future, despite tackling many of the same topics. Highly recommended if you are interested in the super-specialized technology being worked on that a lot of media tends to miss, or if you're more generally interested in what smart people are thinking right now about how the future looks.
Diamandis, founder of Singularity University and the X PRIZE, speaks with all the excitement of a startup venture capitalist---his startups' early demonstrated successes with orders-of-magnitude improvements over existing technology will change the world! Factor in "the magic of exponential growth" and in thirty years we'll all have clean energy, great medical diagnostics, and have solved global hunger.
The book is indefatigably positive, which, as it sets out to do, is encouraging. Diamandis has not only thought a lot about these issues but routinely works with the people who are actually making it happen. His outlook is not about the technology of the next five years but about the next thirty to fifty, and it's hard not to come to the conclusion that his utopia is actually a possibility. To help illustrate this, he brings in example after example of exponential growth:
In 2004 iGEM had 5 teams that submitted 50 potential BioBricks. Two years later, it was 32 teams submitting 724 parts. By 2010, it had grown to 130 teams submitting 1,863 parts---and the BioBrick database was over 5,000 components strong.
By early 2009, [Kiva] had grown to 180,000 member entrepreneurs receiving $1 million in loans per week. As of February 2011, a Kiva loan was being made every seventeen seconds, for a total amount lent of more than $977 million.
For all of these reasons, mobile banking has seen exponential growth in a few short years. M-PESA, launched in Kenya in 2007 by Safaricom, had 20,000 customers its first month. Four years later, it was 150,000; four years after that, 13 million.
There is, however, no mention of the fact that all of these examples have been the successful outliers, and that hundreds of startups have tried and failed to be these success stories. This is clearly Diamandis' idea of a reasonable model to solve the world's problems (as illustrated by his description of using public prizes to motivate attempts) but it puts a glossy sheen over the misery of everyone who tries and fails in the meantime.
Diamandis starts off the book criticizing those who focus on existing negatives in the world and says they impede progress by affecting public opinion. While I understand his sentiment, how many problems have been solved primarily because of negative attention towards them? That can't be ignored as a force for good.
Let's talk about global hunger: we already have enough food for the whole world and are perfectly capable of making more. So why are people still hungry, and how will technology fix that? Well, he sort of addresses it, talking about more local/portable solutions to growing food that could work in more rural areas. But he doesn't tend to tackle a lot of the actual major issues in the way, such as:
- Existing governmental aid infrastructure, where corporate lobbying has a massive impact on what gets sent
- Social norms that may be violated in the process (he briefly alludes to this with an anecdote about women in rural villages sabotaging water pumps because of how it disrupted certain social routines, but he doesn't really address it).
- Aid isn't given to all countries, especially countries which the U.S. (and, by coercion, its "allies") doesn't consider friendly.
Some of the results he cites seem to good to be true. When talking about the "hole-in-the-wall computer" (used to educated students with little to no teacher interaction) and the experiments derived from it, he cites "unprecedented retention of information". I could hear Audrey Watters over my shoulder telling me to read more about education theory.
On the positive side, the book is thoroughly researched, with a constant flow of references provided if you want more information. Amartya Sen is cited when discussing development and improvement of life for the "bottom billion", and his influence is seen when discussing how freedoms and abilities (especially through food, clean water, healthcare, and education, which he compelling connects to Maslow's hierarchy of needs), but Sen's warnings about the nuances of social norms, power distribution within families and communities, and other important considerations to development are completely ignored when discussing how technology will make everything better.
Unfortunately, there are some key things that are never addressed:
- What the work situation of the future world looks like. It's great that we're replacing more and more things that people need to do with robots (self-driving cars, factory jobs, household cleaning), but at some point soon we run out of "information jobs" for everyone to do. I found this dissonance illustrated well when talking about providing clean water for rural populations:
Since women also waste hours a day running these same errands, providing clean water also betters everything from quality of family life to quantity of family income (because mom now has time to get a job).
The assumption that there will even be a job available for "mom" to take is not addressed, but I think it is a serious concern in Diamandis' future.
- Any social issues at all. Most pressing to me in this future is, "how do we convince the developed world to support everyone having water, food, and healthcare, especially if they live in a developed country but don't have/can't find a job?"
This book is better-written and more well researched than Al Gore's The Future, despite tackling many of the same topics. Highly recommended if you are interested in the super-specialized technology being worked on that a lot of media tends to miss, or if you're more generally interested in what smart people are thinking right now about how the future looks.