The slide shows a dated photo of a young man. He’s carrying a stereo recorder on his shoulder. He has a walkman on his head. A photo camera around his neck. On the table he displays a video recorder with a stack of video tapes. And music cassettes. And Cds. And a loudspeaker.
“Twenty years later”, the speaker says in front of a big audience, gathered in the DeLaMar Theater in the heart of Amsterdam, “all of this fits in our pocket.” He believes it’s only one of the signs that things have been getting better—and will continue to get better. Thanks to technology.
The speaker is Peter Diamandis, co-founder and chairman of Singularity University, an educational institute in Silicon Valley where students are inspired to change the world through technology. Diamandis is visiting Amsterdam for the European Summit of Singularity University.
In his presentation, Diamandis showed the world is improving on almost every level. We live longer lives, he kicks off. There’s less violence. If you’re under 40 you’ll probably experience the end of poverty. Costs for food, energy, transport and communication have fallen. “This is the best time ever to be alive,” he concludes.
Diamandis, co-author of Abundance: The future is better than you think (which we reviewed before in our magazine pages), is frustrated by all the negative news we hear all the time. He takes us back to Africa’s savannah where we all come from. “If you missed a piece of good news, like there was food somewhere, you had bad luck. But if you missed a piece of bad news, like there was danger lurking somewhere, you were toast.” That’s how we got genetically programmed to pay extra attention to alarming news.
Diamandis believes the world has gotten so much better thanks to technology. Every aspect of our life has been affected by it, he says. And it will be technology that makes sure everyone on this planet will have access to clean water, energy, food, education, health and means to transportation and communication.
The Intelligent Optimist spoke with Peter Diamandis about how technology is making the world a better place. Listen to the audio below.
Top photo: Flickr.com/Henk-Jan Winkeldermaat
