http://cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2012/05/04/ted-peter-diamandis-abundance-is-our-future.ted

Peter Diamandis says too much focus is placed on negative news.
The truth is that the world is poised for abundance through innovation. Social changes have vastly increased wealth, reduced disease and violence. Smart phones put knowledge, tools in the hands of billions around the world.

Peter Diamandis speaks at TED2012.
I’ll start with poverty, which has declined more in the past 50 years than the previous 500. Over the last 50 years, in fact, even while the Earth’s population has doubled, the average per capita income globally (adjusted for inflation) has more than tripled.
Perspective is everything
Paul Gilding: World crisis is coming Paul Gilding: The Earth is full Half a million secrets Confronting shame head on
We’re not just richer than ever, we’re healthier as well. During the past century, maternal mortality has decreased by 90%, child mortality has decreased by 99%, while the length of the average human life has more than doubled.
As Steven Pinker has lately made clear in his new book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” since the middle ages, violence on Earth has been in constant decline. Homicide rates are as much as a hundredfold less than they were when they peaked 500 ago. So we’re not only healthier, we’re safer as well.
If your measure of prosperity is tilted toward the availability of goods and services, consider that even the poorest Americans today have access to phones, toilets, running water, air conditioning and even a car. Go back 150 years and the richest robber barons couldn’t have ever hoped for such wealth.
Paul Gilding: The Earth is full
Right now, a Masai warrior on a mobile phone in the middle of Kenya has better mobile communications than the president did 25 years ago. If he’s on a smart phone using Google, he has access to more information than the U.S. president did just 15 years ago. If present growth rates continue, by the end of 2013, more than 70% of humanity will have access to instantaneous, low-cost communications and information.