Abundance Is Our Future? What Does That Mean?

"Technology, commitment, and passion can solve anything in the world." O rly?

Peter Diamandis keeps telling us that “abundance is our future” (see video, below). He’s right that a Maasai warrior can now use a cell phone more powerful than anything Ronald Reagan used, but what tangible benefit has that brought to the Maasai warrior? How have cell phones improved the lives of people in the developing world? How will even more technologies improve their lives in the future?

I don’t mean to suggest that Diamandis is completely wrong. I’m not such a Luddite that I reject the ideas and technologies he presents. I only wonder what it all means for us as a culture and as a community. The drawings above are visual notes from Diamandis’s presentation at SXSW. It suggests that our globalized world is preferable to a local and linear world. There’s a lot of truth to this, but again, didn’t a local and linear world have its own value? Didn’t such a world foster a much stronger sense of togetherness and community? Take what’s good about that world and keep it; don’t abandon it on the altar of technological progress.