Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis
The cover of this book, which you can’t really see from the snapshot, has been done to look like it’s wrapped in aluminum foil. Aluminum was once the most precious metal on earth, and now technology has made it so cheap it’s ubiquitous.
That’s basically the premise of the book; technology brings about abundance. Diamandis has oodles of examples, and he backs them up with a thick selection of charts and graphs in the back. For every doom-and-gloom prophecy that journalists have brought up to frighten us with, Diamandis proposes a technologically feasible solution.
Some of the book deals with the psychology of why people are predisposed to believe the worst about the future, and some of it deals with how typical economic models of helping developing countries are flawed. He seems to be a big fan of capitalism.
This tome of Gee Whizzery feels a little like reading the transcript of a couple hours of TED talks, edited into a single optimistic book. I recommend it for people who like pop science books and want to read one that doesn’t leave them feeling like the end of the world is upon us.
