Saving the World With Tech

From this article in Wired:

X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis kicked off the PopTech conference ... with a lofty goal ...: "Our mission is to bring about radical breakthroughs," he said in his opening-day address.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle-clearing solution offered up came from Diamandis, whose recent announcement of a NASCAR-like Rocket Racing League intends to spark America's love of spaceflight anew.

Those "radical breakthroughs" Diamandis hopes to incite may come from a new generation of X-Prizes Diamandis' organization is now putting together. "The X-Prize worked, and it worked so well that we have decided to build the X-Prize Foundation beyond space into other prize areas," he said.

There will be X-Prizes, Diamandis said, for education, genomics and energy. The energy prize, in fact, should be off the blocks soon. "We're trying to completely rework the automobile industry. It's a broken industry," he said. "There is no good reason why we don't have cars right now that are getting amazing performance at 200 miles per gallon or greater."

Indeed, with the dwindling energy resources of the planet, innovations on how we spend energy and fuel much more efficiently are very welcome and should be encouraged by promoting these new generation of X-Prizes, especially an X-Prize for energy.