The Wall Street Journal — February 25, 2012 | Matt Ridley

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Dematerialization is one of the reasons that Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler give for the future’s being “better than you think” in their new book, Abundance. Mr. Diamandis founded the X Prizes, which handsomely reward those who reach certain far-minded goals in technology, medicine, energy and ecology.

As well as the X Prizes, Mr. Diamandis is cofounder and chairman of Singularity University, where the futurist Ray Kurzweil’s ideas of exponentially accelerating technology are explored. Despite being unusually optimistic myself about what lies ahead for humanity, I’m not yet convinced that we are about to see almost infinite rates of technological improvement — Mr. Kurzweil’s singularity — resulting, for example, in the indefinite extension of life. […]