Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think Book by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler is a nonfiction book discussing the statistics and promises of the technologies that are on the rise filled with mind-boggling facts and numbers the book is an adventure into the progress of human minds in the 21st century written by Peter Diamandis the Greek American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur best known for being the founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation and Steven Kotler an American author, journalist, and entrepreneur, his articles have appeared in over 70 publications so far the book is going to be a good read for those who are already familiar with the concept of exponential growth and the way the information technologies like the internet grow.
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| Peter Diamandis founder of the X prize foundation |
The book can simply be considered a discussion of the data we have collected so far upon the topics of water consumption, the computing power of computers, mortality, food production, energy production, Farming and land use and so much more, the book may strike as boring if you are not a person who enjoys stats, numbers, and data but if you are this book is made just for the second half of the book is filled with references and graphs endless about the data of the things above mentioned.
The book is divided into 6 parts starting from the introduction and building up to part three where the exponential technologies and their trends are discussed, If you are thoroughly familiar with the works of Ray Kurzweil in The Age of Spiritual Machines you can seriously skip half of this book and for the rest of the book the achievements of engineers and inventors.
The book is optimistic about the future and that is also mentioned in its title, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think and I have to agree after reading this book I am inspired to take bolder risks and have an abundance mindset. The book shows ways to solve world hunger, clean water shortages, and energy shortages with the help of vertical farms and hydroponics, and solar energy, the claims are also supported with evidence and data that ensures the reader that its not a woo fairy tail dream-like scenario that we are discussing here.
The book can be boring and sometimes try too hard to sell you the idea of Abundance and exponential growth. You will certainly be bored somewhere in this book because it is too vast and filled with numbers with language that may strike as boring and too salesman type.
You are going to be absolutely thrilled about the future at some point I Guarantee that. Alas, then the sad reality is going to hit you after you will realize that half of the promises made are only half complete and the rest half is lost in democracy. I want to say this is not true and as a species, we are progressing but a lot can be done, Let me dissect the claims in detail in the coming spoiler full section of this analysis.
SPOILER ALERT. ⚠
Let's begin with the claim that vertical farming and modern farming techniques like aquaponics, hydroponics will solve world hunger. It's 2021 now and we have no solid cooperation that is actually doing vertical farming on a world-changing scale or got any plans for the coming decade.
Why? because there are problems authors ignore because of there limited understanding of the topics in this book they are not an expert in anything they just act as a middle man explaining people stats by deforming them to fit their own personal agenda to sell the snake oil.
Vertical farming has been seen to be efficient but they use way more energy in their operation so the whole process becomes redundant and as for the solar energy claims, yes it is being adopted more and more rapidly but it is still nowhere near to all the homes leave alone farms.
Second, let us take the example of the health care system they claim to diagnose patients for any disease from the Tricorder X Prize Contest this was awarded the prize in 2014, no one knows whats the progress of this publicity stunt and where the funding actually went. Peter Diamandis is trying to promote his foundation in just every single section of this book which is why wrote this book or to be more technical he compiled data available over the internet for free and explained it in fancy terms to join his foundation with the real science and progress that is actually going on in the real world.
WHO SHOULD BUY THE BOOK?
People who are familiar with Ray Kurzweil, who is a good friend of the author Peter Diamandis and has a chapter dedicated to his work will certainly love this book, I have also reviewed Ray Kurzweil's latest book, Danielle, make sure you check that out too. People who love stats and optimistic technology and are not too easily bored with numbers will also definitely enjoy this book but if you are the type who doesn't believe in a better future and think it's going downhill this book is going to make you uncomfortable and that a good thing because I think if you bear with that this book will certainly challenge your mindset to change it for the good. If you don't believe in a positive future read this book once and your mind will change.
DONT BUY, I repeat Don't buy this book if you are bored by statistics because this book's backbone is free data available over the internet over various general topics like food, energy, water, and electronics.
This book is very very much a marketing strategy for the Xprize foundation and nothing else, it is bland and tries too hard to sell you the idea of Abundance, I like what they showcase but it is like talking to a very cheesy salesman who has no idea about the great product he is selling because he just memorized and never understood the product which also makes this book boring.
RATING
2/5
