"Abundance" seems to disregard earth's finitude

The earth’s finitude was apparently not among the considerations of those who wrote the soon to be published book, “Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think”.

The new book by
Peter H. Diamandis
and Steve Kotler.

Co-authors, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation and co-founder and chairman of Singularity University, Peter H. Diamandis, and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler, seemed to avoid earth’s well documented limitations when enthusiastically discussing progress.

Diamandis and Kotler give readers what is described as “an extensive tour the latest in exponentially growing technologies” use the pages of the soon to be published book (February 21) to argue that those some technologies will conspire to solve humanity’s biggest problems.

They discuss the exploding exponential technologies, the do it yourself innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion who will soon be contributing fresh thinking to the innovations humanity needs.

They point to a variety of changes humanity has experienced in the last century, among them the fact that “Ninety-five percent of Americans living below the poverty line now have electricity, internet, water, flushing toilets, a refrigerator and a television. John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, among the richest on the planet, enjoyed few of these luxuries”.

Two other facts they point to in an attempt to illustrate humanity’s progress are that the field of personalized medicine—an industry that didn’t exist before 2003—is now growing at 15 percent a year and will reach $452 Billion by 2015; and in 15 years, the average $1000 laptop should be computing at the rate of the human brain.

Finally, they claim that solar cell production capacity is growing at 30 percent per year at the same time that price is falling at 6 percent per annum.

“At this rate,” they argue, “America is less than 20 years away from meeting 100 percent of its energy needs with solar.”

The book’s thesis is somewhat difficult to argue with, particularly when looked at in isolation, but even a cursory glance of the literature that explains such things as climate change, oil scarcity and a world economy that is limping badly, illustrates that the Abundance Diamandis and Kotler claim is a fleeting thing and probably little more than the hollow thinking of neo-liberal think-tanks.