Ramez Naam Reminds Us That Innovation Is An Infinite Resource

Books

We live in a finite world where only one thing is infinite: human innovation. In his new book, The Infinite Resource, Ramez Naam shows us the power of knowledge in our world and encourages us spread our ideas.

The most valuable resource on earth is not oil, gold, water or land according to Ramez Naam. He writes in the new non-fiction book, The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet that it is our capacity for expanding human knowledge that is our greatest resource.

Innovation, Naam writes, is the key to overcoming the very real resource scarcity and enormous environmental challenges we face. Throughout human history we have learned to overcome scarcity and adversity through the application of innovation — the only resource that is expanded, not depleted, the more we use it.

Fresh on the heels of writing his outstanding science fiction book, Nexus, Naam in his new book provides a techno-optimistic look at the century ahead.

With the ongoing race between our damaging overconsumption and our growing understanding of ways to capture and utilize abundant natural resources with less impact on the planet. The Infinite Resource is a clear-eyed, visionary, and hopeful argument for progress.

Like Abundance by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, The Infinite Resource identifies the problems and points to clear solutions for our future.

Diamadis says of The Infinite Resource: “An amazing book. Throughout history, the most important source of new wealth has been new ideas. Naam shows how we can tap into and steer that force to overcome our current problems and help create a world of Abundance.”

Rather than just suggesting that innovation and ideas will magically solve these problems, Naam states that such thinking and creativity need to be promoted and encouraged.

Naam writes, "While the Earth’s natural resources are vast, and while innovation has overcome tremendous problems in the past, our current challenges remain severe. We cannot rest idly by and hope that innovation will solve our problems. Instead, we should act to unleash innovation: by investing in people, by fixing the market failures that distort both innovation and consumption, and by embracing new innovations that could be vital to us, but which we now fear."

Included in Naam's list of technologies we currently fear are nuclear energy, genetically modified foods (GMO) and climate engineering.

If you want to understand the challenges of climate change, finite fossil fuels, fresh water depletion, feeding the planet, and more – and if you want to understand how to overcome those challenges through innovation – read this book.

Ramez Naam is a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He is a former Microsoft executive and former CEO of Apex Nanotechnologies, a molecular simulation startup. He is the author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement (Broadway, 2005) for which he was awarded the 2005 HG Wells Award.