No answer here, but I would like to see some book for teenagers that would be like "a list of serious problems that need to be solved", compiled by reasonable people, so that it wouldn't be completely one-sided. This might make the world a better place, if everyone could pick a topic that resonates with them most. (Rather than the default, which is "choose your group, and try to destroy the outgroup by any means possible".)
There are a lot of problems facing the world right now. To decide which to confront, you must know enough about the overall class of problems to say "yes, I want to work on x" because I feel that breakthrough "y" makes it possible to solve this problem and others aren't working on it for so and so reasons. How does one:
I'd appreciate recommendations of books / textbooks / videos / articles / resources that helped you with any of the above (I can probably get access to any book you suggest - feel free to suggest literature that's out of print).
An example of this would be realizing that proteins ~= molecular nanotechnology (2), that molecular nanotechnology has such and such applications (1), and that with new breakthroughs in the field, such nanotech has now become a lot more possible than it was before (3).