This unknown innovator may discover a breakthrough in computer architecture that helps us leap past our approaching quantum limits. By doing so, he or she will push our accelerating rates of innovation, which is central to all hopeful tech predictions. She or he may invent super-efficient solar cells or usable fusion energy. She or he may play a crucial role in the development and integration of 3D printing, robotics, and artificial intelligence. This may lead to new industrial production, capable of quickly scaling these technologies to deal with the scope of climate change.
This ever-expanding pool of talented, non-WEIRD people may be the ones who protect this planet. But economic and social discrimination of women and minorities, in developing and advanced societies alike, still exists and places harmful limits on our potential. Despite some remarkable anti-poverty achievements, 1.2 billion people still live on less than a $1.25 a day and 774 million people are illiterate, 64 percent of whom are women.
The faster we achieve universal equal opportunity, the faster we can reverse climate change and take on other challenges.
Read in full at The Week.
