Why The Future Is Better Than You Think

Can a Masai Warrior in Africa today communicate better than Ronald Reagan could? If he's on a cell phone, Peter Diamandis says he can.

Peter Diamandis is the founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, which offers big cash prizes "to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity." Reason's Tim Cavanaugh sat down to talk with Peter about his new book Abundance and why he think we live in an "incredible time", but no one realizes it. Peter thinks that there are some powerful human forces combined with technological advancements that are transforming the world for the better.

"The challenge is that the rate of innovation is so fast..." Peter says, "the government can't keep up with it." If the government tries to play "catch up" with regulations and policy, the technology with just go overseas. Certain inovations in "food, water, housing, health, education is getting better and better." Peter "hopes we are not going to be in a situation where, entrenched interests are preventing the consumer from having better health care."

Filmed by Sharif Matar and Tracy Oppenheimer. Edited by Sharif Matar

About 15 minutes

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• Category

  News & Politics

[Drew Spitzer]

A damning examination of the stupidity of slow gov't.

[Bryan Winter]

far more people died to coal than to nuclear. Nuclear is just more dramatic. As it stands now it only killed a few people. The worst cost was the land, but even that is repairable. Also 3rd generation and 4th generation nuclear will burn most of the waste we have now. With regards to electricity, it is about solving multiple problems at once. An electric car still needs a coal plant. You have to solve both issues, in their own marketplace.

[NoFaithNoDogmas]

Good point man

[Jon Russell]

Diseases need to be cured first and foremost

[Chris Ducat]

I'd imagine there will still be places where you can freely drive.

[Chris Ducat]

It's likely there will be car cleaners...not exactly the most vexing problem facing self-driving cars. It's, of course, laws and regulations, which are moving slow right now.

[kpm5017]

What's the point of renting a Ferrari if you're not going to be driving it? "Oh, hey babe. Check out my rented Ferrari that I'm not allowed to control."

[Schwanz720]

with all this talk of the future, of course there is a star trek crew replica in the back

[Sebastian Lundh]

Or we install cameras with face recognition in the cars. ;)

[TheGkmasta]

The upholstery and dash will be coated with nano-materials that are virtually non-stainable. Also, you can forget about those jobs. A robot will be cleaning it when it comes back to the storage facility.

[spamerman]

So when do the triquarters come out?