For part A of my TED Talk mini-assignment, I chose to watch a Talk by Peter Diamandis called “Abundance is our future”.
Peter is the founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation which is a nonprofit organization whose mission is simply “to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. The start of Peter’s TED Talk is much like any newscast seen on major media networks. It shows images of doom and gloom and gives a sense that our society is on a downward spiral. Peter goes on to explain that there is a reason for this. Due to evolution, our brains are first and foremost naturally hardwired to pay the most attention to things or scenarios that pose a risk to our survival. Seeing as media networks are run by people and cater to what people are most responsive to, it is only natural that these stories that threaten us are what capture the headlines.
Peter also shows the side of the story that our media does not highlight. He explains many points that argue that our society is actually improving as time goes on and that we are living in the best time that humanity has ever known. Although we certainly do have major problems that are affecting our society, our rate of progress is increasing and this is helping us to solve these problems. The main driver of our successes is the advent of newer and better technology that is being introduced all the time. Computers are being used to create faster, more powerful computers and this growth is exponential. Peter focuses more closely on a few points that prove the point that our world is getting better and that technology is being used to solve humanity’s grand challenges.
One interesting point that Peter makes of how technology can create abundance from something that once was thought to be scarce is the example of aluminum. Aluminum in the mid-1800s was the most valuable metal on the planet, even more valuable then gold and platinum. This wasn’t due to the fact that it was more rare then the other metals, it actually about 8% of the Earths mass. It was due to the fact that it was not normally found a pure metal and the technology to extract aluminum did not exist. Once the technology to extract and process aluminum came around, aluminum became one of the cheapest metals that we use due to its abundance.
Peter goes on to show how this same can be used as a metaphor for solving our problems with energy scarcity, water scarcity, and health care issues in the developing world. His X Prize Foundation offers large cash prizes to inventors who can solve grand challenge and some of the planet’s most important goals. My main take-away from this Talk was that human innovation coupled with the ever-increasing technological powers of computers will insure that our society continually develops even if popular media portrays us as falling backwards.