Abundance by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by X Prize founder and Singularity University co-founder Peter Diamandis and author and entrepreneur Steven Kotler was a solid read about actions around earth's available resources. The book early on contains the statement "technology can make the once scarce now abundant" and Diamandis and Kotler write throughout the book about exponential technologies, with the solving of one problem then serving as a multiplier and having positive downstream impacts in other areas.

Covered as the probably the most important basic need is that of access to clean water. If this can be solved, people’s health can improve, hunger be reduced and time freed up to do other productive things. The authors note how we need entirely new approaches to water, not simple conservation and some of the innovations both here now and potentially to come are inventor Dean Kamen’s company DEKA Research in New Hampshire and its Slingshot that generates clean water from anything wet, no matter how dirty, a smart grid to allocate water usage and smart toilets that can generate freshwater, fertilizer and power. In relation to food supply, it’s noted that we spend too much money and energy moving food, and the solution is to "move the farm" and do vertical indoor farming through hydroponics. Additionally, fish farming, genetically engineered seeds and in-vitro meat grown from stem cells (as meat from animals can both be a source of disease and requires roughly 2,500 gallons of water per pound) are all written about as things that can bring about abundance in relation to food, with the science of designing food systems that mimic the natural world being known as agroecology.

Diamandis and Kotler cover how some of the areas of improvement in energy availability are solar power, biofuels, like those being worked on by Craig Venter and his company Synthetic Genomics Inc., and nuclear power. Also covered is both a local level smart energy grid that can store energy during the day and then release it at night and a large scale energy grid for widespread distribution of power based on demand. Robotics was additionally noted as an enabler of abundance, with mention of the company Willow Garage in Menlo Park and Intuitive Surgical in the Bay Area that makes the da Vinci system surgical robot. Also in relation to health was stem cell treatments and growing artificial organs out of cells using 3-D printers, which are a fascinating innovation even if not using cells to build stuff. In terms of information and education, Diamandis and Kotler mentioned the internet's ability to disseminate information quickly as a key enabler of abundance and in the future, the potential benefit of the Internet of Things, basically devices in the home that all have unique IP addresses, along with education advances and personalized learning like through the Khan Academy and game learning.

Also noted was the new philanthropists, those like Jeff Skoll, Pierre Omidyar, Warren Buffett, and Bill & Melinda Gates putting huge sums of money towards fixing difficult problems and one interesting thing in the book was the distinction between the top and bottom of the pyramid in terms of people globally and their standards of living, and how large improvements may well come from the bottom. These individuals collectively have great spending power, huge needs and likely more than wealthier people in developed countries would benefit from force multipliers, like when someone get a basic need like clean water, it frees up time to be productive in other areas.

All in all, it was a very interesting book and makes the case well that prospects for the future not as bad as they sometimes seem.

Great writing on Medicine & Money - by Fagone, Gawande & Lewis

There's been a few pieces of writing I've seen recently that struck me as particularly excellent on the subjects of medicine and money... which, sadly are inextricably linked perhaps more now than ever.

For evidence of that linkage, one could simply look at the Tampa Bay Times feature series "Never Let Go" I wrote on last week. Included in the third story from the writer, Kelly Benham, was mention of how over a million dollars in micro-preemie infant care cost she and her husband $400, and of course would have financially ruined other parents with different or no health coverage.

A medical story I haven't previously written about and linked to was "Slow Ideas" from the July 29th issue of The New Yorker. It's written by Atul Gawande, a noted surgeon and bestselling author who I've posted about a few times and this latest piece is a fascinating one about how ideas spread and recommendations take hold (in this case recommendations toward reducing infant mortality rates in India).

Another really solid medical piece I've seen lately was "Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?" by Jason Fagone for the August issue of Philadelphia Magazine. It's a piece I previously linked to under a different post topic and is a tremendously interesting look at a doctor doing cutting-edge work. In that regard, the feature reminded me of a couple of other physician profiles I've seen in past years, "Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World" by Wil Hylton for the New York Times and "Adventures in Extreme Science" written on Eric Schadt by Tom Junod for Esquire.

Going to the second side of this medicine and money topic, two other pieces of writing to mention here were both by Michael Lewis. Among other bestselling books, Lewis wrote The Big Short and Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (which I wrote about in 2011) and an excellent recent feature story of his was "Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?" for the September issue of Vanity Fair. The piece was thoroughly reported and details the length to which Goldman would go seemingly to protect their image as a company worthy of the money they make. It's a compelling story and made me think of another piece of writing by Lewis, his "Princeton University's 2012 Baccalaureate Remarks". Really great stuff from Lewis about life and career choices in this speech with the title "Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie".

Great Newspaper writing - by Eli Saslow, Clay Tarver, Wil Hylton & Courtney Queeny

There's been some excellent pieces I've seen from newspapers over the past few weeks with really solid work both in the New York Times and Washington Post.

The most recent story I've read was actually the oldest one with "Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World" done for the Times in May 2012. Written by Wil Hylton, it's a fascinating look at the biologist noted by Hylton (and in Venter's Wikipedia page) as being one of two people who first sequenced the human genome. Venter as a scientist working on cutting-edge stuff makes for a fairly complicated profile and Hylton did a good job making the piece eminently readable. In this regard the story reminded me of another scientist profile I wrote about and linked to in 2011, one by Tom Junod on biologist Eric Schadt.

The other two Times pieces I've seen recently which struck me as memorable were by Courtney Queeny and Clay Tarver respectively. "The View From the Victim Room" is Queeny's first-person account of an abusive relationship and just tremendous and highly personal writing. The Tarver story is a profile of former Nirvana and then Soundgarden bassist turned Army Special Forces solider Jason Everman. Titled "The Rock ’n’ Roll Casualty Who Became a War Hero", it's a remarkable tale that's recounted very well in the piece.

From the Washington Post last week was another great piece by Eli Saslow on a subject that seems as if it must have been painful to report on and witness firsthand. "In rural Tennessee, a new way to help hungry children: A bus turned bread truck" reminded me a great deal of Saslow's March story "Food stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle". Both pieces were sad for what they portray, and this latest story also made me think of how it easy it would be for many of the kids written about to just keep the cycle of poverty going when they become adults.