Amazon | Providing abundance is humanity’s grandest challenge — this is a book about how we rise to meet it. We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler.

Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing — fast. The authors document how four forces — exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion — are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.

Examining human need by category — water, food, energy, healthcare, education, freedom — Diamandis and Kotler introduce dozens of innovators making great strides in each area: Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, Craig Venter, among many others.

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Special offers to KurzweilAI readers

According to Diamandis, KurzweilAI readers who place an advance order by February 13 (athttp://www.abundancethebook.com) will receive four gifts worth more than $1200: access to Singularity University’s private graduate training video library (covering AI, robotics, computing systems, neuroscience, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, energy, and innovation); a $1200 gift certificate toward attendance at SU’s 7-day Executive Program at the NASA Ames Campus in 2012; free online access to view Transcendent Man, a documentary film chronicling the life and controversial ideas of Ray Kurzweil; and an invitation to a meeting with the book’s authors via webcast.

In addition, Diamandis calls on the Kurzweil community to help ignite a new conversation around the world, and in the process enter to win a $5,000 gift (either a ticket to a zero-gravity flight, http://www.gozerog.com, or a seat at the 4-day SU Executive Program, http://www.singularityu.org).

Visit http://www.abundancethebook.com/tell-a-friend for more information.