The Haber-Bosch process, mastered in the First World War, is a chemical method for the mass synthesis of fixed nitrogen - the kind plants can use as fertilizer - from the nitrogen in the air and readily available hydrogen. Before this technique was developed, massive amounts of nitrate (mostly bat dung) from Chile was shipped to farms everywhere in the world to meet fertilizer demand. As demand overwhelmed supply, scientists began to search for a way to mass produce fixed nitrogen, and the Haber-Bosch process was invented. Today, the Haber-Bosch process is used to produce more than 500 million tons (453 billion kilograms) of artificial fertilizer per year; roughly 1% of the world’s energy is used for it, and it sustains about 40% of Earth’s population.

Without the Haber-Bosch process, over a billion people, the vast majority presumably leading lives worth living, would simply not exist. Food would be too expensive. This process, however, enabled the mass production of cheap food which is foundational for population growth and health, which in turn leads to economic development. If the Haber-Bosch process were invented a couple decades later, today’s 2005 might more closely resemble the technology and prosperity level of 1995. The inverse is also true - if the process were invented before the turn of the century, we would be a lot further along by now.

The Haber-Bosch process was initially developed because the First World War made it impossible for Germany to get nitrates from Chile. At this time, the German government began to generously fund Fritz Haber’s laboratory. Haber (with the later help of Carl Bosch) solved the government’s nitrate problem.

When the telephone became widespread, it saved companies many billions of dollars per year in courier costs. The invention of the automobile allowed the expansion of society and personal freedom on an unprecedented scale. The benefits of the Internet and email are massive and difficult to quantify. Certain vaccines have saved millions.

There are technologies right around the corner, that, if their development were specifically accelerated, the benefits would greatly exceed any of the immediate costs. These are technologies that, if correctly administered, would vastly improve quality of life for everyone.

The costs and benefits curve of a revolutionary technology generally looks like the following:

The first step occurs when a genius realizes the feasibility of the technology and starts envisioning the prerequisites for its realization. The genius is then joined by many others - fellow collaborators, investors, supporters, funding apparatus. There is a snowball effect of investment, until that magical moment when the technology is deployed and the payoff begins. The near-term benefits can be enormous. Compare the initial investment in Google to its market capital today. The technology provides profound benefit, undergoes several rounds of improvement, and the level of usefulness it confers ultimately levels off - but can remain high indefinitely. (We still use the light bulb even though it hasn’t undergone any huge improvements lately.)

So which technology should we be investing in today, in order to reach the greatest possible benefit in the shortest amount of time? In rough order:

1. seed AI
2. molecular manufacturing
3. space beanstalk
4. solar towers
5. orbital solar satellites
4. space elevators
5. fusion reactors
6. germline engineering
7. handheld water purification
8. $1000 genome
9. $100 laptop
10. hydrogen fuel cells

Further information on all the above can be found on Google. The order is determined by a combination of cost, development time, and potential benefit. Seed AI totally outscores all the others, because there is no other technology on the list that itself can produce further technology, or assist in ameliorating technological risk.