People are wired for lots of things. We're wired for novelty. We're wired for humor. Furthermore, we're wired for new pieces of information that surprise us in some way or add value to our lives. Furthermore, we're wired for fear.

— Ramez Naam

Playing God is actually the highest expression of human nature. The urges to improve ourselves, to master our environment, and to set our children on the best path possible have been the fundamental driving forces of all of human history. Without these urges to ‘play God’, the world as we know it wouldn’t exist today.

— Ramez Naam

Producing food to eat is the single most destructive environmental activity humans engage in.

— Ramez Naam

Solar power is going to be absolutely essential to meeting growing energy demands while staving off climate change.

— Ramez Naam

Technology is incredibly powerful. And in many ways, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can actually accomplish with the right science and the right technology. But to get there, you have to actually invest in R&D. And often that means you have to be willing to spend an awful lot in that R&D phase before you see the benefits.

— Ramez Naam

Technology is vital. We have to have development in new technology if we're going to solve these environmental problems without throwing humanity back in poverty.

— Ramez Naam

The accumulated knowledge of materials, computing, electromagnetism, product design, and all the rest that we've learned over the last several centuries converts a few ounces of raw materials worth mere pennies into a device with more computing power than the entire planet possessed fifty years ago.

— Ramez Naam

The world has a very serious problem, my friend' Shiva went on. 'Poor children still die by their millions. Westerners and the global rich -- like me -- live in post-scarcity society, while a billion people struggle to get enough to eat. And we're pushing the planet towards a tipping point, where the corals die and the forests burn and life becomes much, much harder. We have the resources to solve those problems, even now, but politics and economics and nationalism all get in the way. If we could access all those minds, though...

— Ramez Naam

Threats that could wipe out the bulk of life on earth abound. Planetary catastrophe could come in the form of a killer asteroid impact, the eruption of massive super volcanoes, a nearby gamma ray burst that sterilizes the earth, or by human-driven environmental collapse.

— Ramez Naam

We've seen over time that countries that have the best economic growth are those that have good governance, and good governance comes from freedom of communication. It comes from ending corruption. It comes from a populace that can go online and say, 'This politician is corrupt, this administrator, or this public official is corrupt.'

— Ramez Naam