Introduction
The Future Is Better Than You Think is a great book by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler written in 2012. Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is an international pioneer in innovation, incentive competitions, and commercial space. In 2014, he was named one of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” – by Fortune Magazine. Diamandis is also the Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of Human Longevity Inc.
Steven Kotler is an American author, entrepreneur, and journalist. He is known for his non-fiction books, including A Small Furry Prayer, Stealing Fire, and West of Jesus.
The book’s main theme refers to a scenario in which nine billion individuals had access to clean drinking water, nutrition, electricity, health care, knowledge, and anything else required for a first-world standard of life, owing to technological advancement. The four key points of the book are:
- Innovations in computers, energy, medicine, and several other fields are advancing at an accelerating rate, allowing for advances that appear inconceivable today.
- With minimal money or personnel, these innovations have enabled individual entrepreneurs to make astounding improvements in many technology sectors. This is accomplished primarily through incentive prize tournaments.
- Technology has given rise to a new breed of “techno-philanthropists” (including Bill Gates) attempting to overcome intractable issues, including poverty and sickness.
- Technology is significantly improving the lifestyles of the globe’s impoverished people.
Fewer Resources are Limited; Rather, they are Unreachable with Today’s Technology
History is filled with instances of once-rare materials being made abundant through imagination. The answer is simple: scarcity is frequently contextual. Humankind is currently experiencing a phase of fundamental upheaval wherein technology can considerably enhance basic living conditions for every male, female, and kid in the world.
“Technology is a resource-liberating mechanism. It can make the once scarce now abundant.”
Within a century, we will be allowed to continue providing services and goods that were once only available to the rich and powerful people to all who require them or aspire to them. We can have plenty for everyone. There are three more factors at work, which are boosted by the strength of continuously developing technology and each of which has tremendous abundance-producing capacity:
- Abundance pyramid
- Power
- Techno-optimists
Abundance Pyramid
Abundance does not mean delivering a luxury lifestyle to everybody on the earth. Rather, it means offering a life of opportunity to everyone. Although the abundance pyramid is a bit more condensed than Maslow’s, it shares a standard plan for similar reasons. The bottom layer is dedicated to basic survival worries such as food, moisture, necessities, and other basic preservation worries.
The intermediate tier is dedicated to motivators for further expansion, such as renewable power, comprehensive learning programs, and connecting directly to prevalent communications.
Lastly, the top tier is dedicated to liberty and wellness, i.e., the two core basic requirements for a person to benefit society. At the bottom of the pyramid, constructing worldwide abundance entails meeting basic physiological needs such as providing enough water, meals, and sanctuary.
The Most Obvious Major Opportunity is Power
Another significant improvement would be training, especially teaching the fundamentals of reading, mathematics, practical skills, and critical reasoning to every kid in the world. That, too, might appear to be a modest offering. However, most specialists believe that the recommended basic elementary school essentials provide the framework for self-improvement, which is undoubtedly the core of abundance.
Furthermore, “self-improvement” no longer has the same connotation it formerly had. Since the invention of the internet, certain essentials have been required to grasp many online resources, providing the foundation for accessing what is undoubtedly the largest self-improvement instrument.
Techno-Optimists
Optimistic thinking is difficult since the mind’s filtering structure is designed to be skeptical. Even though it is in the establishment’s best financial interest to overemphasize the terrible, positive news gets drowned out. Moreover, researchers have lately identified an even greater cost: those survival impulses not only lead us to feel that whatever hole we’re into is too profound to get out of but they also restrict our willingness to jump from that depression.
Abundance is indeed a worldwide vision based on exponential development, but our localized and sequential minds are ignorant of the possibilities it may provide and the velocity with which it would come. Instead of this, we succumb to what has come to be described as the “hype cycle.”
Sources of Motivation that Propel Innovation
Four key motivators encourage innovation. The first and strongest one is curiosity – the drive to figure out how to unlock the black container, to explore what’s just around the corner. Desire is a strong jones. It powers most of technology, but it pales in comparison to our next motivation, fear. Tremendous fear makes exceptional risk-taking possible.
The drive to make riches is the next key motive, best demonstrated by the private equity industry’s support of 10 concepts, with nine expected to fail and one major championship winner. The want for importance is the fourth and final motivational factor: the need for one’s existence to be committed to improving society.
The Incentive Award – A Device that Combines all 4 of these Motivation Factors
The success of the four motivation factors (curiosity, desire, drive to make riches, and the want for importance) may be distilled and reduced to a few core ideas. Firstly, huge incentive awards increase awareness of a certain difficulty while also creating a mentality that this problem is manageable.
Aside from raising awareness of significant concerns and quickly addressing bottlenecks, incentive awards are another important feature: their capacity to throw a broad net. Everyone participates, from amateurs to specialists, from solo owners to large businesses. Specialists in one field go on to others, carrying a slew of unconventional ideas. Exceptions have the potential to become key actors.
The Advantages of Incentive Awards
“Always believe that a little collection of intelligent, determined individuals can alter the world,” Margaret Mead.
It is, in fact, the only event that has ever happened. As it turned out, however, there are some compelling reasons for this.
Huge or intermediate groups of corporations and organizations are not designed to be agile or prepared to take big risks. These businesses are built to achieve significant progress and to have too much risk to achieve the large risks that some successes need.
The Six Ds
The authors have followed the great technologies that drive these great difficulties through six stages called The Six Ds of Remarkable Associations: digitization, deception, disruption, demonetization, dematerialization, and democratization.
- Digitization: When innovation becomes digitized, it is not difficult to access, share, and circulate. Consider how sun-oriented energy went advanced quite a while back.
- Deception: After digitization, development is interestingly little until the numbers break the entire number obstruction. Most won’t take note if the speed of your outstanding innovation develops from .034 to .068. In any case, when it develops to 1.088, it crosses the entire number hindrance. When it grows ten additional times, that number becomes remarkable: 38,788.92. This is precisely the exact thing that has been occurring in the sun-powered energy area and the outstanding advancements that have driven it beyond 25 years.
- Disruption: After the complete number obstruction is broken, the current market is upset by the new market’s viability and cost. In the energy business, savants consider this the “utility passing winding,” as numerous service organizations have grouped to campaign against the multiplication of sun-oriented.
- Demonetization: Innovation progressively becomes less expensive. In 1998, private sun-oriented power establishment cost was $12 per watt. In 2015, property holders paid under $4 per watt.
- Dematerialization: Actual items are moved. As additional individuals move to sunlight-based power, oil organization processing plants will disappear. The dependence on service organizations to convey power will begin to vanish, supplanted by the singular property holder’s capacity to produce and store their power.
- Democratization: When the other 5 Ds occur, the innovation cost is modest to the extent that anyone can have it. Energy flips from being a scant asset to a plentiful one.
Abundance is Techno-Utopianism
The book’s standpoint can be summarized by discussing the 3-D printers — DIY innovations to exponential technologies providing great tools for cooperation and collaboration. The authors featured another type of tech givers with an alternate mentality beyond what, at any point, the universally associated world could assist with changing the 21st century.
Today, these tech humanitarians have their impact, from neighborhood difficulties to the incredible worldwide series of apparently unsolvable issues. Everything from environmental change to pestilence influences everybody all over the place. Along these lines, the world has turned into a new nearby for tech givers like Bill Gates.
What’s more leap forwards that dramatic innovations carry — removing one more billion to worldwide acknowledgment. The author refers to them as “the rising billion.” These are the world’s poor, who are presently (because of innovation) ready to decrease their weight significantly.
“For the first time, the rising billion will have the remarkable power to identify, solve and implement their abundance solutions.”
Book Review
In the book “The Future is Better than you Think,” the authors define abundance as ‘furnishing all individuals with an existence of plausibility.’ Imagine a reality where 9 billion individuals have sufficient clean water, food, cover, energy, training, and well-being. The authors also imagine and naturally suspect it is conceivable in the coming 25 years. Indeed, it appears to be excessively hopeful!
However, their contention (with supporting information), energy, and excitement are infectious. They frame the fantastic mechanical advances in brain and science and, subsequently, in medical services and food creation, schooling, and energy improvement in each field of human undertaking. They recount the story in a meaningful configuration.
However, the greater part of the book is notes and information supporting their contention. The ignite form is 45% words and 65% reference sections and notes.
FAQs
The Future is Better Than You Think is based on which concept?
Ans. The book’s major arguments are that capabilities in computers, energy, healthcare, and several other fields are developing at an accelerating rate and will soon permit unattainable advances today.
How is The Future Better Than You Think related to the abundance mindset?
Ans. The key idea emphasized in The Future is Better Than You Think is that our viewpoint determines our experience. The most accurate approach to forecasting tomorrow is to make it.
So, whereas the Bible warns, it’s equally important to remember that perhaps the contrary is also true: when there is a purpose, the people thrive. The unimaginable is transformed into the feasible. So, abundance for everyone leads to the question of what happens next.
Who is the author of the book the future is better than you think?
Ans. The book “The future is better than you think” is written by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler.
Who is the publisher of the book the future is better than you think?
Ans. The Future Is Better Than You Think is a techno-idealistic book by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, published in 2012 by Tantor Audio.
Who is Peter Diamandis?
Ans. Peter H. Diamandis, named one of the World’s 50 Biggest Leaders by Fortune Magazine, is the Organizer and Leader Director of the XPRIZE Foundation, which drives the world in planning and working with huge scope incentive competitors.
Who is Steven Kotler?
Ans. Steven Kotler is best known for his forthcoming books, including the New York Times hit Abundance, A Small Furry Prayer, West of Jesus, Bold, The Rise of Superman, and Stealing Fire.
Conclusion:
The book The Future Is Better Than You Think is based on the novel assumption that exponential technology will reverse our prevalent perception of scarcity. We live in a world wherein businesses profit from scarcity.
A certain commodity is difficult to obtain. Therefore, an entrepreneur devises a method to obtain and distribute it to the public. Exponential innovations are technologies or devices in which the powerful and profane double annually are cut in half.
Diamandis & Kotler have exposed us to pioneers and business titans achieving huge gains in their respective fields through an abundance mindset.