First off, I have been fascinated with Transhumanism and a brighter future for the past two years or so. I have written papers on it, read countless books and articles, and have just in general found extremely compelling evidence for a great future full of fantastic technology that is coming sooner than people think.
I know this has been a huge topic of debate on Facepunch, with the majority of people thinking that the future will hold little change, and a good amount arguing that the future is bleak. While I strongly disagree, I did not make this thread for the sake of arguing myself, but I wanted to promote a great book that really opens your eyes to a fantastic future with tons of citations and evidence. Seriously, the second half of the book is graphs, notes, and citations.
[img]http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/Abundance-book-cover-large.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=Abundance]
[B]Providing abundance is humanity’s grandest challenge—this is a book about how we rise to meet it. [/B]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. [/QUOTE]
This book shows through the four forces of exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion, the close future will basically be our first steps to Utopia.
I would ask that everybody cast aside popular stereotypes of the future as typecasted by literature, cinema, or games, dystopian or otherwise, as they are simply visions with no real aspect of research behind them. I hope everyone would give this book a try, I know this isn't really a lot of peoples' "thing" though. I found this book to be incredibly heartening and made me much more secure in my optimism for the future. It is a great read, meant for a general audience and breaks things down into sizeable bite sized chunks for reading.
I would love to sometime make a Transhumanist Megathread but as I don't have the time, me recommending this book will be a start. I just think this knowledge could be great in the hands of whoever gets ahold of it.
The men who wrote this are serious about spreading awareness for the future and getting people active. I had a web conference with Peter Diamandis, Steve Kotler, their PR, and 100 others. They are setting up a website, driven and created by the people who preordered the book. If you expressed interest enough after reading the book, you could contact them and become involved, like me, in what I hope is something that becomes great reading.
Peace Honkys. And good reading
[B]Links:[/B]
Main Site: [url]http://www.abundancethebook.com/[/url]
To see if this kind of thing floats your boat, you can download the first chapter at: [url]http://www.abundancethebook.com/sneak-preview/[/url]
If you decide to buy the book, I would love it if you PMed me and asked for me to send you an E-mail. We can both potentially win $5,000 and a SpaceX flight. However, I know this whole thread will seem like I was doing it for referrals, and I don't want that. So if you like just buy the book from the site. But don't forget, !SPACEX!
I think that technology, and with it quality of life, will improve greatly. I think people will get smarter, and make better choices.
However, politics will not change much. It hasn't changed much in 3000 years, and I don't think it's about to start.
[QUOTE=salmonmarine;35297809]I think that technology, and with it quality of life, will improve greatly. I think people will get smarter, and make better choices.
However, politics will not change much. It hasn't changed much in 3000 years, and I don't think it's about to start.[/QUOTE]
The only reason that I think that politics will change is because of the fact that people in the modern world are [b]far[/b] more informed than the previous generations.
Individuals have enormously larger amounts of power than they ever have.
[QUOTE=TehDoctorz;35298958]Individuals have enormously larger amounts of power than they ever have.[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately corporations and governments do as well.
EDIT:
Vote me dumb as much as you like but thats not gonna stop these sopa-type bills and anti-abortion laws from coming in and squashing our constitutional rights.
An abundance of food and water is possible, but the one thing I've always thought about is space. When life expectancy is extremely high, where will we fit all these people?
[QUOTE=Luci-fer;35298996]An abundance of food and water is possible, but the one thing I've always thought about is space. When life expectancy is extremely high, where will we fit all these people?[/QUOTE]
Space.
[QUOTE=Luci-fer;35298996]An abundance of food and water is possible, but the one thing I've always thought about is space. When life expectancy is extremely high, where will we fit all these people?[/QUOTE]
The book addresses this question. An abundance of food, energy, and water first off, will help ease the problem if we had to deal with such a large amount of people. However, the population will probably peak around 9 billion. Even though the population is going up, the rates that it are going up are slowly declining. In nearly all developed countries, the birth rate is either a perfect replacement, or a decrease in population.
Most population expansion comes from developing countries, but the book goes to show that with massive amounts of evidence, as life expectancy and quality of life go up, birth rate goes down. I don't want to get further into detail as it is far too large a topic.
[QUOTE=Luci-fer;35298996]An abundance of food and water is possible, but the one thing I've always thought about is space. When life expectancy is extremely high, where will we fit all these people?[/QUOTE]
You answered your own question!
[editline]26th March 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=TehDoctorz;35299030]The book addresses this question. An abundance of food, energy, and water first off, will help ease the problem if we had to deal with such a large amount of people. However, the population will probably peak around 9 billion. Even though the population is going up, the rates that it are going up are slowly declining. In nearly all developed countries, the birth rate is either a perfect replacement, or a decrease in population.
Most population expansion comes from developing countries, but the book goes to show that with massive amounts of evidence, as life expectancy and quality of life go up, birth rate goes down. I don't want to get further into detail as it is far too large a topic.[/QUOTE]
I've always maintained the positive mentality that the developing world is going through what we went through during the Industrial Revolution and a little bit afterwards.
Think about it: the population explosion has happened to every nation in history, and as long as things stay stable, it caps out.
[QUOTE=TehDoctorz;35299030]The book addresses this question. An abundance of food, energy, and water first off, will help ease the problem if we had to deal with such a large amount of people. However, the population will probably peak around 9 billion. Even though the population is going up, the rates that it are going up are slowly declining. In nearly all developed countries, the birth rate is either a perfect replacement, or a decrease in population.
Most population expansion comes from developing countries, but the book goes to show that with massive amounts of evidence, as life expectancy and quality of life go up, birth rate goes down. I don't want to get further into detail as it is far too large a topic.[/QUOTE]
I see, thanks. I didn't know the book went into it.
That seems to make sense. but even so, with an abundance where everyone has everything they need, it's a lot of area required.
[QUOTE=Luci-fer;35299107]I see, thanks. I didn't know the book went into it.
That seems to make sense. but even so, with an abundance where everyone has everything they need, it's a lot of area required.[/QUOTE]
It is. Especially when much of the planet's good arable land is being depleted with current methods. Then again you think that around 1% of the planet's surface contains settled land.
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