Rutger Bregman

Greg Duncan, a professor at the University of California, calculated that lifting an American family out of poverty takes an average of about $4,500 annually – less than the Cherokee casino payouts. In the end, the return on this investment, per child, would be:

•12.5% more hours worked

•$3,000 annual savings on welfare

•$50,000–$100,000 additional lifetime earnings

•$10,000–$20,000 additional state tax revenues

Argus II, a brain implant that restores a measure of sight to people with genetic eye conditions

Rewalk, a set of robotic legs that enables paraplegics to walk again

Lazarus Project” (named for the New Testament story of a death deferred).

six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies

2013, six billion of the globe’s seven billion inhabitants owned a cell phone. (By way of comparison, just 4.5 billion had a toilet.)

real crisis is that we can’t come up with anything better.

utopias always say more about the time in which they were imagined than about what’s actually in store.

Utopias are a breeding ground for discord, violence, even genocide. Utopias ultimately become dystopias; in fact, a utopia is a dystopia.

without utopia, all that remains is a technocracy