Includes bibliographical references and index.

Machine generated contents note: An Optimist's Reasoning, in Five Easy Premises -- Futurists Often Get It Wrong -- History Can Help Us Get It Right -- Internet Technology + Human Ingenuity = Infinite Promise -- Accelerating Progress is Inevitable -- The New Renaissance Has Begun -- The End of Ignorance -- The High Cost of Ignorance -- Your Digital Echo -- Surprise! We share -- Data and Knowledge -- Wise Decisions -- The Jim Haynes Effect -- How the Internet and Technology Will End Ignorance -- The End of Disease -- Disease (and Cure) Defined -- "Could You Patent the Sun?" -- Dairymaids, Folklore, and Smallpox -- A Reason to Hope -- Disease: A Timeline -- We May Already Have the Answer -- The Promise of the Genome -- Information and Disease -- How the Internet and Technology Will End Disease -- The End of Poverty -- How Is Wealth Created? -- Scarcity -- Free Trade, Technological Displacement, and Outsourcing -- Chad Gets a Better Job -- Robots and Nanites and Jobs, Oh My! --

Contents note continued: Wealth and Poverty in History -- Earning a "Living" -- Left Behind -- How the Internet and Technology Will End Poverty -- The End of Hunger -- A History of the Hungry -- Nutrition -- Enough Food Already -- Why Is There Hunger? -- Agriculture 1.1 -- The End of the Farmer -- Genomics -- Information and Agriculture -- Food as a Human Right -- Beyond Hungry to Healthy -- How the Internet and Technology Will End Hunger -- The End of War -- War -- Civilization -- Must We End War? -- Is It Possible to End War? -- The Difficulties of Ending War -- How the Internet and Technology Will End War -- In Conclusion -- Do We Lose Our Humanity? -- What Could Possibly Go Wrong? -- Optimism, Revisited.

Illustrates how the internet, human ingenuity, and technological innovation will help us overcome what he identifies as the five plagues of our existence: ignorance, disease, poverty, hunger, and war.

Social Forecasting, Futurology.

Information Technology Industries.

Issued also as an ebook.