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The Future Starts Here: An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next
'The future hasn't happened yet. The idea that our civilisation is doomed is not established fact. It is a story we tell ourselves.'
In the 1980s, we gave up on the future. When we look ahead now, we imagine economic collapse, environmental disaster and the zombie apocalypse. But what if we are wrong? What if this bleak outlook is a generational quirk that afflicted those raised in twentieth century, but which is already beginning to pass? What if we do have a future after all?
John Higgs takes us on a journey past the technological hype and headlines to discover why we shouldn't trust the predictions of science fiction, why nature is not as helpless as we assume and why purpose can never be automated. In the process, we will come to a better understanding of what lies ahead and how, despite everything - despite all the horrors and instability we face - we can build a better future.
386 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 16, 2019
33 people are currently reading
741 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
May 29, 2019
70th book for 2019.
A lofi-broadbrush-futurist book, without a lot of depth. I found some of the ideas interesting, but nothing really struck out to me as particularly memorable. Perhaps not surprising as Higgs refused to contact experts for this book, taking the brave/interesting decision to only interview friends within easy walking distance of his home.
2-stars.
A lofi-broadbrush-futurist book, without a lot of depth. I found some of the ideas interesting, but nothing really struck out to me as particularly memorable. Perhaps not surprising as Higgs refused to contact experts for this book, taking the brave/interesting decision to only interview friends within easy walking distance of his home.
2-stars.
August 5, 2019
This is not John Higgs' best book, and I had multiple issues with it, but I am giving it five stars for a few reasons. I will explain. First, the flaws:
1) It had a bit more on AI than I would've liked. AI is interesting, and the fact that he more or less brushes off the idea that we're all going to be replaced is important, but I wanted a whole lot more from some of the other chapters (climate in particular), so the fact that this took up two frustrated me.
2) I have an American leftists' allergy to billionaire worship, so I am deeply unimpressed with Elon Musk. Higgs clearly admires him, but I see him as just another billionaire flimflam man. I was depressed by the car commercial in space, and I, unlike Higgs, see Musk's Mars project less as an attempt to free us from our earthly bonds, and more as an attempt to give him and his jackass billionaire friends a place to hide-out while the world they destroyed eats itself alive. It's less Interstellar, more Elysium. That chapter frustrated me, because I felt like Higgs recognized the weaknesses of Musk's ideas, but still was wowed by him. Having read Higgs other books, which dive into the lives of people like eccentric maniac and Thelemite Jack Parsons, who started NASA's Jet Propolsion Lab and effectively kicked off the Space Age, I get why an eccentric iconoclast appeals to him. The difference is that I don't think history is going to see Musk so much as a Parsons as it will a Henry Ford (still a sort of visionary, but also a pretty terrible person and ruthless capitalist). I can forgive this mostly because Musk is not history just yet, and it's hard to identify who will have been truly influential in 50 years time. History may yet prove me wrong and Higgs right.
3) I found some of his generational analysis to be frustrating. I've always thought that calling Millennials and Gen-Z "too sensitive" misses what the whole woke/PC culture is trying to do, which is to be more inclusive. Obviously, there are a lot of people who misunderstand what's happening and thus abuse it (or, more evilly, totally understand it and abuse it anyway), but his analysis of Millennials could have... you know, consulted a few more actual Millennials. But he makes more of an effort than most people of his generation, so he doesn't lose all the points on this.
The reason it still gets five stars is because Higgs is one of the best non-fiction writers alive, and he was bold enough with this book to impose serious limitations on who he talked to for the purpose of demonstrating a point. To all of the Goodreads reviewers mentioning that he "only talked to his friends"... yeah. That, as he explains at the end, was intentional. His reasoning behind doing so is good, and the in-depth research of his past work is justification enough to me that he did this in good faith rather than out of laziness. This is not a lazy writer.
But it did mean that he put the effort into a chapter on Musk and came away with the conclusion that Mars was not the solution, it did mean that he had more connections in AI and VR and thus put more time into AI and VR, and it meant that he constrained himself from getting the depth on the generational analysis that someone outside his circle (and of the generation being analyzed) might have liked.
This is a bold experiment, and one entirely in keeping with the theme of the book. Fidelity to the experiment hobbled a few chapters, but the genius of the book is that it actually feels admirable that he stuck to his rules and admitted the flaws of it at the end. That's a type of humility you do not normally get from writers who are attempting to present utopian visions of the future.
At the end, the project is a brilliant one, and one that other writers need to expand on. He's right: we're too fixated on dystopia and despair. We cannot imagine anything positive, and thus, we have nothing to work towards. Higgs, in this book, is trying to give us a buffet of ideas that we can choose from and hold on to. Like all buffets, there are some items we will keep off our plates.
It's bold to take that approach to a book about the future. Not having all the answers does not sell books. But it's the type of humility our century needs from its writers, so I'm grateful we have Higgs.
1) It had a bit more on AI than I would've liked. AI is interesting, and the fact that he more or less brushes off the idea that we're all going to be replaced is important, but I wanted a whole lot more from some of the other chapters (climate in particular), so the fact that this took up two frustrated me.
2) I have an American leftists' allergy to billionaire worship, so I am deeply unimpressed with Elon Musk. Higgs clearly admires him, but I see him as just another billionaire flimflam man. I was depressed by the car commercial in space, and I, unlike Higgs, see Musk's Mars project less as an attempt to free us from our earthly bonds, and more as an attempt to give him and his jackass billionaire friends a place to hide-out while the world they destroyed eats itself alive. It's less Interstellar, more Elysium. That chapter frustrated me, because I felt like Higgs recognized the weaknesses of Musk's ideas, but still was wowed by him. Having read Higgs other books, which dive into the lives of people like eccentric maniac and Thelemite Jack Parsons, who started NASA's Jet Propolsion Lab and effectively kicked off the Space Age, I get why an eccentric iconoclast appeals to him. The difference is that I don't think history is going to see Musk so much as a Parsons as it will a Henry Ford (still a sort of visionary, but also a pretty terrible person and ruthless capitalist). I can forgive this mostly because Musk is not history just yet, and it's hard to identify who will have been truly influential in 50 years time. History may yet prove me wrong and Higgs right.
3) I found some of his generational analysis to be frustrating. I've always thought that calling Millennials and Gen-Z "too sensitive" misses what the whole woke/PC culture is trying to do, which is to be more inclusive. Obviously, there are a lot of people who misunderstand what's happening and thus abuse it (or, more evilly, totally understand it and abuse it anyway), but his analysis of Millennials could have... you know, consulted a few more actual Millennials. But he makes more of an effort than most people of his generation, so he doesn't lose all the points on this.
The reason it still gets five stars is because Higgs is one of the best non-fiction writers alive, and he was bold enough with this book to impose serious limitations on who he talked to for the purpose of demonstrating a point. To all of the Goodreads reviewers mentioning that he "only talked to his friends"... yeah. That, as he explains at the end, was intentional. His reasoning behind doing so is good, and the in-depth research of his past work is justification enough to me that he did this in good faith rather than out of laziness. This is not a lazy writer.
But it did mean that he put the effort into a chapter on Musk and came away with the conclusion that Mars was not the solution, it did mean that he had more connections in AI and VR and thus put more time into AI and VR, and it meant that he constrained himself from getting the depth on the generational analysis that someone outside his circle (and of the generation being analyzed) might have liked.
This is a bold experiment, and one entirely in keeping with the theme of the book. Fidelity to the experiment hobbled a few chapters, but the genius of the book is that it actually feels admirable that he stuck to his rules and admitted the flaws of it at the end. That's a type of humility you do not normally get from writers who are attempting to present utopian visions of the future.
At the end, the project is a brilliant one, and one that other writers need to expand on. He's right: we're too fixated on dystopia and despair. We cannot imagine anything positive, and thus, we have nothing to work towards. Higgs, in this book, is trying to give us a buffet of ideas that we can choose from and hold on to. Like all buffets, there are some items we will keep off our plates.
It's bold to take that approach to a book about the future. Not having all the answers does not sell books. But it's the type of humility our century needs from its writers, so I'm grateful we have Higgs.
May 2, 2022
I'm a big fan of John Higgs. The Future Starts Here: Adventures in the Twenty-First Century (2019) is another stimulating and thought provoking read.
Here in the early 21st century our perception of the future often looks decidely gloomy, and certainly when compared with the more positive predictions made in the previous century. But what if we're not doomed? What if we can overcome the climate crisis, ramant inequality, and environmental breakdown?
There might be cause for cautious optimism. The amount of stuff we buy is dropping rapidly, unlike the individualistic generations of the 20th century, rewilding has started, the coming Generation Z appear more empathetic and networked. Whether you find his points encouraging or not, I'm sure you, like me, you'll learn a lot and, potentially, become a bit more optimistic about where we might all be headed.
4/5
Here in the early 21st century our perception of the future often looks decidely gloomy, and certainly when compared with the more positive predictions made in the previous century. But what if we're not doomed? What if we can overcome the climate crisis, ramant inequality, and environmental breakdown?
There might be cause for cautious optimism. The amount of stuff we buy is dropping rapidly, unlike the individualistic generations of the 20th century, rewilding has started, the coming Generation Z appear more empathetic and networked. Whether you find his points encouraging or not, I'm sure you, like me, you'll learn a lot and, potentially, become a bit more optimistic about where we might all be headed.
4/5
'The future hasn't happened yet. The idea that our civilisation is doomed is not established fact. It is a story we tell ourselves.'
In the 1980s, we gave up on the future. When we look ahead now, we imagine economic collapse, environmental disaster and the zombie apocalypse. But what if we are wrong? What if this bleak outlook is a generational quirk that afflicted those raised in twentieth century, but which is already beginning to pass? What if we do have a future after all?
John Higgs takes us on a journey past the technological hype and headlines to discover why we shouldn't trust the predictions of science fiction, why nature is not as helpless as we assume and why purpose can never be automated. In the process, we will come to a better understanding of what lies ahead and how, despite everything - despite all the horrors and instability we face - we can build a better future.
Read
May 22, 2019And I was so looking forward to this. John Higgs has written some of my favourite non-fiction of recent years – his KLF book in particular is essential reading even if you're not into the KLF, though who doesn't like the KLF? He's an expert at putting together the pieces in new and interesting ways, and his book on the 20th century was excellent, so the prospect of him looking to the future and explaining why we're not doomed after all was very appealing. Thinking about it, though, this is often the point where it goes wrong, isn't it? People loved Sapiens and The Silk Road, round-ups of what's gone before, but then the follow-ups facing forward got considerably more mixed reviews. And so it goes here. An early chapter looking at how AI works approaches it via a friend of Higgs who's training a computer to write like Higgs, and how even once it begins to approach coherence, the result always feels fundamentally lacking: "The machine was going to a lot of trouble to mimic what it had been trained to copy, but it was doing so without any larger sense of meaning or purpose. It was the literary equivalent of an X-Factor contestant." And at times I wondered if a later iteration of that system had indeed written The Future Starts Here, except it's not even quite that. The various chats with relevant experts, the slightly looping trajectories of the chapters, somehow remind me more of Jon Ronson. Which is not in itself a bad thing, because I like Jon Ronson's books. I just like John Higgs' books more.
There are, of course, still passages that could only be Higgs, like the excellent section where he attempts to interview both his cat and Alexa about consciousness, or the description of the acts at an experimental noise night which is so funny that excerpting it here feels like cheating*. But a lot of the time...well, it's still right more often than wrong, for sure. But where with previous Higgs books I would regularly find insights I couldn't anticipate and which made me exclaim (usually, though not always, inwardly) 'Yes!', here those are much rarer, and the surprising assertions are more likely to elicit a '...no?' Like Gen Z being so sexulity and race-blind that they dismiss the need for positive discrimination because they can't believe anyone would use race as a factor when hiring. Or the passage arguing "Millennials and Generation Z arrived after postmodernism, so they were not raised to expect absolutes in this world...Forget what's ideologically pure – what matters is whether or not something is useful in the here and now." Really? Now, granted, Higgs has kids, so he sees a side of the younger generation I don't, the everyday rather than the newsworthy and online, but even as the generalisation he admits it to be, I find this very hard to believe. Or when he talks about watching The Breakfast Club, I can absolutely accept (and sympathise with) the idea that young people now find the rebellious posturing of Bender tiresome, but do they really find Assistant Principal Vernon sympathetic, and even if so, can you really deduce from that a greater generational sympathy towards authority figures? For myself, I'm not seeing it.
Those are the more surprising assertions, but there are also problems with the familiar ones, like the recurring notion that it's smartphones and such to blame for the shaky mental health of the younger generations, rather than the state of the world. Higgs doesn't fully commit to this, thank heavens, and sometimes has an interesting take on it (which all comes down to greater empathy), but he still does so more than seems legitimate, especially when he's fully aware of the countervailing arguments pointing at the state of the world as a likelier culprit. More than that, there have been another wave of studies after the ones he discusses which have gone some way to undermining the assertion, even if it seems to have survived as exactly the form of 'common sense' which is the last thing I expect to find in a Higgs book. And of course, that brings us to another problem with these forward-facing books in general: sooner or later, they have to go to the printer, so they're going to miss stuff. There are signs that The Future Starts Here was finalised later than I sometimes inferred from reading it, like the inspiring visit to the rewilding beacon of Knepp, which mentions how it's surviving the horrific summer of 2018 surprisingly well, because that's what happens once natural buffers are restored. But the discussion of the proportion of species at risk seems to be based on earlier projections than the doom-laden recent announcements, and when Higgs reminds us about the recent expansion of rainforest protections in Colombia, he either ignores or precedes the rescinding of protections on far greater areas in Brazil caused by the arrival of the Bolsonaro nightmare.
Still, I'm talking a lot here about what's wrong, and in a way the problem is more that the bits which are right aren't remarkably right, they're the sort of thing where, if you keep half an eye on a decent broadsheet and a few sound blogs, half an ear to the underground, you'll already be mostly up to speed. And that's where it finally clicked for me: I was failing to apply one of the insights of those younger generations under discussion, the realisation that sometimes you have to accept that a given book or film or whatever isn't for you. More often, that's directed at angry men complaining about Captain Marvel, or angry white people not getting Black Panther, or even sometimes at complaints about things which aren't Marvel films. And it might seem odd to apply it here, when Higgs and I are both middle-aged white male members of the liberal metropolitan elite. But this is a book which, despite Higgs' sympathies and friendships with futurists and anarchists and general weirdos, he's plugged with a piece in the Daily Mail. And dear heavens, if even a single Mail reader picks this up as a result, he's done good work, because it'll rewire their bloody minds right up. That gentle tone, that slight over-readiness to accept the mutterings about screentime, while always gently but firmly arguing that the younger generation might know more than they're given credit for? I suspect there's at least a certain amount of tactics in that. This really comes to the fore when he talks about Universal Basic Income, and in particular when he takes Nick Boles MP as an example of an opponent to the scheme, and then politely, slyly demolishes the daft bastard. Unlike Higgs' previous books, this is less about jamming with the cognoscenti than catching up the elements holding us back. And as such, I wish it and him all the best. I just slightly wish I hadn't rushed to pre-order the hardback.
*The other funniest passage for me was the apparently serious quotation of a line from Vanity Fair: "If you could give a computer all the best scripts ever written, it would eventually be able to write one that might come close to replicating an Aaron Sorkin screenplay."
Given my feelings on Sorkin's mannered, trope-saturated, wish-fulfillment drivel, that reads as a far more damning prognostication of AI capabilities than I suspect it was intended.
There are, of course, still passages that could only be Higgs, like the excellent section where he attempts to interview both his cat and Alexa about consciousness, or the description of the acts at an experimental noise night which is so funny that excerpting it here feels like cheating*. But a lot of the time...well, it's still right more often than wrong, for sure. But where with previous Higgs books I would regularly find insights I couldn't anticipate and which made me exclaim (usually, though not always, inwardly) 'Yes!', here those are much rarer, and the surprising assertions are more likely to elicit a '...no?' Like Gen Z being so sexulity and race-blind that they dismiss the need for positive discrimination because they can't believe anyone would use race as a factor when hiring. Or the passage arguing "Millennials and Generation Z arrived after postmodernism, so they were not raised to expect absolutes in this world...Forget what's ideologically pure – what matters is whether or not something is useful in the here and now." Really? Now, granted, Higgs has kids, so he sees a side of the younger generation I don't, the everyday rather than the newsworthy and online, but even as the generalisation he admits it to be, I find this very hard to believe. Or when he talks about watching The Breakfast Club, I can absolutely accept (and sympathise with) the idea that young people now find the rebellious posturing of Bender tiresome, but do they really find Assistant Principal Vernon sympathetic, and even if so, can you really deduce from that a greater generational sympathy towards authority figures? For myself, I'm not seeing it.
Those are the more surprising assertions, but there are also problems with the familiar ones, like the recurring notion that it's smartphones and such to blame for the shaky mental health of the younger generations, rather than the state of the world. Higgs doesn't fully commit to this, thank heavens, and sometimes has an interesting take on it (which all comes down to greater empathy), but he still does so more than seems legitimate, especially when he's fully aware of the countervailing arguments pointing at the state of the world as a likelier culprit. More than that, there have been another wave of studies after the ones he discusses which have gone some way to undermining the assertion, even if it seems to have survived as exactly the form of 'common sense' which is the last thing I expect to find in a Higgs book. And of course, that brings us to another problem with these forward-facing books in general: sooner or later, they have to go to the printer, so they're going to miss stuff. There are signs that The Future Starts Here was finalised later than I sometimes inferred from reading it, like the inspiring visit to the rewilding beacon of Knepp, which mentions how it's surviving the horrific summer of 2018 surprisingly well, because that's what happens once natural buffers are restored. But the discussion of the proportion of species at risk seems to be based on earlier projections than the doom-laden recent announcements, and when Higgs reminds us about the recent expansion of rainforest protections in Colombia, he either ignores or precedes the rescinding of protections on far greater areas in Brazil caused by the arrival of the Bolsonaro nightmare.
Still, I'm talking a lot here about what's wrong, and in a way the problem is more that the bits which are right aren't remarkably right, they're the sort of thing where, if you keep half an eye on a decent broadsheet and a few sound blogs, half an ear to the underground, you'll already be mostly up to speed. And that's where it finally clicked for me: I was failing to apply one of the insights of those younger generations under discussion, the realisation that sometimes you have to accept that a given book or film or whatever isn't for you. More often, that's directed at angry men complaining about Captain Marvel, or angry white people not getting Black Panther, or even sometimes at complaints about things which aren't Marvel films. And it might seem odd to apply it here, when Higgs and I are both middle-aged white male members of the liberal metropolitan elite. But this is a book which, despite Higgs' sympathies and friendships with futurists and anarchists and general weirdos, he's plugged with a piece in the Daily Mail. And dear heavens, if even a single Mail reader picks this up as a result, he's done good work, because it'll rewire their bloody minds right up. That gentle tone, that slight over-readiness to accept the mutterings about screentime, while always gently but firmly arguing that the younger generation might know more than they're given credit for? I suspect there's at least a certain amount of tactics in that. This really comes to the fore when he talks about Universal Basic Income, and in particular when he takes Nick Boles MP as an example of an opponent to the scheme, and then politely, slyly demolishes the daft bastard. Unlike Higgs' previous books, this is less about jamming with the cognoscenti than catching up the elements holding us back. And as such, I wish it and him all the best. I just slightly wish I hadn't rushed to pre-order the hardback.
*The other funniest passage for me was the apparently serious quotation of a line from Vanity Fair: "If you could give a computer all the best scripts ever written, it would eventually be able to write one that might come close to replicating an Aaron Sorkin screenplay."
Given my feelings on Sorkin's mannered, trope-saturated, wish-fulfillment drivel, that reads as a far more damning prognostication of AI capabilities than I suspect it was intended.
Read
July 17, 2019A book that dares to ask: “what if we actually have a future?”, which immediately makes it one of the most important books currently.
What follows is an investigation (and an experiment) by Higgs, who looks at various phenomena (artificial intelligence, virtual reality, social media, Gen Z, ecological collapse) to try to tease out whether we have reasons to be hopeful and what exactly will it take to save ourselves.
It’s a deeply humane, clever, interesting, and funny book. In the four days spent reading it, I found myself wanting to recommend it on three separate occasions, so, you know. Read it.
What follows is an investigation (and an experiment) by Higgs, who looks at various phenomena (artificial intelligence, virtual reality, social media, Gen Z, ecological collapse) to try to tease out whether we have reasons to be hopeful and what exactly will it take to save ourselves.
It’s a deeply humane, clever, interesting, and funny book. In the four days spent reading it, I found myself wanting to recommend it on three separate occasions, so, you know. Read it.
December 7, 2021
Με απλή και κατανοητή γλώσσα ο Higgs σου δίνει να καταλάβεις έννοιες όπως ο "μετα-μεταμοντερνισμος", όπως και τον τρόπο που αναπτύχθηκαν οι τελευταίες γενιές, τα "θέλω" τους και τις αδυναμίες τους. Παράλληλα κάνει ένα στοχασμό για το μέλλον και το που οδηγούμαστε. Η λέξη "ενδιαφέρον" είναι μικρή για αυτό το βιβλίο.
June 3, 2020
Higgs is skilled at putting together concepts and ideas in new and interesting ways. And in this book he looks into the future to explain why we're not doomed after all. In doing so he considers several present and near-future topics. These include
artificial intelligence,
big data,
virtual reality,
social media,
interplanetary travel,
rewilding,
a universal basic income,
gen Z, and,
ecological collapse.
Then tries to establish if we have any reasons to be hopeful. Which, to be honest, he sometimes struggles to achieve. The problem being an attempt to rationalise events which run contrary to his overarching narrative. But saying this, the book is still and interesting read, most of the time.
‘The idea that our civilisation is doomed is not established fact. It is the latest in a very long line of stories.’ And this story is a ‘circumambient mythos’, writes Higgs as he disappears down a rabbit hole.
In fact, in the chapter on how AI functions, Higgs explains his friend is training a computer to write like the author. And even as the results start to make some sense, it always feels lacking:
"The machine was going to a lot of trouble to mimic what it had been trained to copy, but it was doing so without any larger sense of meaning or purpose. It was the literary equivalent of an X-Factor contestant."
And at times I wondered if I was reading Higgs, or the work of this AI?
The upshot of the whole book is each generation form their own historical narrative. This includes the part they play in it. Everything is hopeless now because Gen X dominates. They are creating the narrative and suffer from nihilism and self centred individualism. Higgs suggests we should pin a lot of hope in our current generation (Gen Z) of kids. They have grown up with the internet and have been exposed to an unprecedented amount of technology in their upbringing. Gen Z are also surprisingly different from the generations that preceded them. They appear to have exactly the type of highly social conscience required to change humanity's ways.
Yet these are the same generation that are ‘too socially anxious’ to use a manned checkout for fear of human interaction. And while he argues against ‘blind optimism’, he’s still extremely upbeat about us, the human race. All said, it gave me, a firmly entrenched Gen X'er some hope and optimism.
artificial intelligence,
big data,
virtual reality,
social media,
interplanetary travel,
rewilding,
a universal basic income,
gen Z, and,
ecological collapse.
Then tries to establish if we have any reasons to be hopeful. Which, to be honest, he sometimes struggles to achieve. The problem being an attempt to rationalise events which run contrary to his overarching narrative. But saying this, the book is still and interesting read, most of the time.
‘The idea that our civilisation is doomed is not established fact. It is the latest in a very long line of stories.’ And this story is a ‘circumambient mythos’, writes Higgs as he disappears down a rabbit hole.
In fact, in the chapter on how AI functions, Higgs explains his friend is training a computer to write like the author. And even as the results start to make some sense, it always feels lacking:
"The machine was going to a lot of trouble to mimic what it had been trained to copy, but it was doing so without any larger sense of meaning or purpose. It was the literary equivalent of an X-Factor contestant."
And at times I wondered if I was reading Higgs, or the work of this AI?
The upshot of the whole book is each generation form their own historical narrative. This includes the part they play in it. Everything is hopeless now because Gen X dominates. They are creating the narrative and suffer from nihilism and self centred individualism. Higgs suggests we should pin a lot of hope in our current generation (Gen Z) of kids. They have grown up with the internet and have been exposed to an unprecedented amount of technology in their upbringing. Gen Z are also surprisingly different from the generations that preceded them. They appear to have exactly the type of highly social conscience required to change humanity's ways.
Yet these are the same generation that are ‘too socially anxious’ to use a manned checkout for fear of human interaction. And while he argues against ‘blind optimism’, he’s still extremely upbeat about us, the human race. All said, it gave me, a firmly entrenched Gen X'er some hope and optimism.
March 31, 2021
Ενάντια σε όλες τς δυσοίωνες προβλέψεις οι οποίες αφθονούν στις μέρες μας και πρεσβεύουν πως η συντέλεια του κόσμου είναι κοντά- και χωρίς μάλιστα να μπορούμε να κάνουμε τίποτα για να την αποτρέψουμε,- είναι το βιβλίο του συγγραφέα, ιστορικού και δημοσιογράφου John Higgs "Το μέλλον αρχίζει εδώ και τώρα".
Είναι ένα βιβλίο αισιόδοξο, το οποίο θέλει να μας περάσει το μήνυμα πως για τίποτε δεν είναι αργά για την ανθρωπότητα, αρκεί αυτή να περάσει στη δράση. Με λίγα λόγια, το μέλλον είναι στα χέρια μας και από εμάς εξαρτάται το αν θα το κάνουμε καλύτερο ή χειρότερο. Οι άνθρωποι θα αποφασίσουν πως θα χρησιμοποιήσουν την τεχνητή νοημοσύνη και οι άνθρωποι θα αποφασίσουν αν θα δράσουν εγκαίρως προκειμένου να σώσουν τον πλανήτη μας από την κλιματική αλλαγή όσο είναι ακόμη καιρός. Οι ίδιοι οι άνθρωποι είναι επίσης αυτοί που θα αποφασίσουν κατά πόσον θα περνούν όλη τη μέρα τους με ένα κινητό στο χέρι χαζολογώντας, ή αν θα ξοδεύουν εποικοδομητικά τον χρόνο τους μπροστά από τις οθόνες.
Ο Higgs συνομιλώντας με εξειδικευμένους επιστήμονες από κάθε τομέα και εξηγώντας τους συλλογισμούς του με κατατοπιστικά παραδείγματα, καταρρίπτει πολλούς από τους μύθους, οι οποίοι κυριαρχούν σήμερα στην καθημερινότητά μας σχετικά με το μέλλον που μας περιμένει.
Κατά πόσον είναι αλήθεια ότι οι μηχανές και τα ρομπότ θα αντικαταστήσουν στο μέλλον τον άνθρωπο στην εργασία του; Είναι άραγε αυτές οι "προβλέψεις τροχιάς βέλους" αληθινές; Πού τελειώνει και πού αρχίζει η αλήθεια σχετικά με την εικονική πραγματικότητα; Ποιος είναι ο πραγματικός ρόλος των ολοένα και σημαντικότερων δεδομένων στη ζωή μας; Τι έχουμε να περιμένουμε από τη νέα, μετά-μεταμοντέρνα γενιά; Είναι άραγε εφικτή η δημιουργία αποικίας στο διάστημα στο άμεσο σχετικά μέλλον; Πώς θα είναι η ζωή στον Άρη; Και είναι αλήθεια τελικά ότι η γη μας είναι καταδικασμένη μαζί με μας να χαθεί εξαιτίας της κλιματικής αλλαγής;
Τέτοιου είδους άκρως ενδιαφέροντα ερωτήματα θίγει ο συγγραφέας στο παρόν πόνημα και ψάχνει εναγωνίως τις απαντήσεις, οι οποίες βασίζονται σε επισταμένη έρευνα.
Το μόνο σίγουρο είναι ότι όσοι επιλέξουν να διαβάσουν το εν λόγω πόνημα θα ενημερωθούν αναλυτικά για τις εξελίξεις που έχουμε να περιμένουμε στη ζωή μας τον 21ο αιώνα. Η εποχή του ατόμου και του ατομοκεντρισμού, που ήταν ο 20ος αιώνας, βαίνει προς το τέλος της, καταλήγει ο συγγραφέας. Τώρα ανατέλλει η εποχή της συλλογικότητας. Διότι οι άνθρωποι μπορούν να καταφέρουν τα πάντα, αρκεί να προσπαθήσουν όλοι μαζί για ένα καλύτερο μέλλον.
Είναι ένα βιβλίο αισιόδοξο, το οποίο θέλει να μας περάσει το μήνυμα πως για τίποτε δεν είναι αργά για την ανθρωπότητα, αρκεί αυτή να περάσει στη δράση. Με λίγα λόγια, το μέλλον είναι στα χέρια μας και από εμάς εξαρτάται το αν θα το κάνουμε καλύτερο ή χειρότερο. Οι άνθρωποι θα αποφασίσουν πως θα χρησιμοποιήσουν την τεχνητή νοημοσύνη και οι άνθρωποι θα αποφασίσουν αν θα δράσουν εγκαίρως προκειμένου να σώσουν τον πλανήτη μας από την κλιματική αλλαγή όσο είναι ακόμη καιρός. Οι ίδιοι οι άνθρωποι είναι επίσης αυτοί που θα αποφασίσουν κατά πόσον θα περνούν όλη τη μέρα τους με ένα κινητό στο χέρι χαζολογώντας, ή αν θα ξοδεύουν εποικοδομητικά τον χρόνο τους μπροστά από τις οθόνες.
Ο Higgs συνομιλώντας με εξειδικευμένους επιστήμονες από κάθε τομέα και εξηγώντας τους συλλογισμούς του με κατατοπιστικά παραδείγματα, καταρρίπτει πολλούς από τους μύθους, οι οποίοι κυριαρχούν σήμερα στην καθημερινότητά μας σχετικά με το μέλλον που μας περιμένει.
Κατά πόσον είναι αλήθεια ότι οι μηχανές και τα ρομπότ θα αντικαταστήσουν στο μέλλον τον άνθρωπο στην εργασία του; Είναι άραγε αυτές οι "προβλέψεις τροχιάς βέλους" αληθινές; Πού τελειώνει και πού αρχίζει η αλήθεια σχετικά με την εικονική πραγματικότητα; Ποιος είναι ο πραγματικός ρόλος των ολοένα και σημαντικότερων δεδομένων στη ζωή μας; Τι έχουμε να περιμένουμε από τη νέα, μετά-μεταμοντέρνα γενιά; Είναι άραγε εφικτή η δημιουργία αποικίας στο διάστημα στο άμεσο σχετικά μέλλον; Πώς θα είναι η ζωή στον Άρη; Και είναι αλήθεια τελικά ότι η γη μας είναι καταδικασμένη μαζί με μας να χαθεί εξαιτίας της κλιματικής αλλαγής;
Τέτοιου είδους άκρως ενδιαφέροντα ερωτήματα θίγει ο συγγραφέας στο παρόν πόνημα και ψάχνει εναγωνίως τις απαντήσεις, οι οποίες βασίζονται σε επισταμένη έρευνα.
Το μόνο σίγουρο είναι ότι όσοι επιλέξουν να διαβάσουν το εν λόγω πόνημα θα ενημερωθούν αναλυτικά για τις εξελίξεις που έχουμε να περιμένουμε στη ζωή μας τον 21ο αιώνα. Η εποχή του ατόμου και του ατομοκεντρισμού, που ήταν ο 20ος αιώνας, βαίνει προς το τέλος της, καταλήγει ο συγγραφέας. Τώρα ανατέλλει η εποχή της συλλογικότητας. Διότι οι άνθρωποι μπορούν να καταφέρουν τα πάντα, αρκεί να προσπαθήσουν όλοι μαζί για ένα καλύτερο μέλλον.
August 4, 2019
Another reviewer criticised this book because John Higgs only interviewed people he knew personally and lived within walking distance of his home, but in defence, not only are his friends fantastically interesting, but he did this as a sort of experiment to test his own hypothesis - that you might get more useful true information from your own network rather than from established authorities who will have their own line they stick to and a lot more to lose if they say something that might be criticised. Your mates will just tell you what they think, but someone from a body or institution will say what they think they should say or will be most beneficial to their career. That aside the book is very well researched but the main thing is John Higgs' incredible ability to link concepts and find deep meaning between things. Also - it's his book, that isn't much more that what he thinks about stuff, he can use whatever methodology he wants.
A big thing that stuck out for me is how different generations form their own narrative of history and what part they play in it. Maybe the world seems totally doomed and everything hopeless right now because the dominant generation, generation x, are creating the narrative right now and they suffer from a huge wave of nihilism (which is hopefully receding, we are living through it's last grip on the way we think) and self centred individualism. The hope is for the generation under my, who are teenagers right now, generation z who are much more networked because they know that in order to be a real individual you must fight for the right for everyone to be one. That's why trans rights are suddenly and issue and as a society we are more accepting. They are optimistic and empathetic. I have a lot of love and respect for the youngers now.
I also heard about a lot of really interesting people and ideas I'm going to looking into that I wouldn't have otherwise heard of. I really think John Higgs is great, he has a wonderful ability to make you look at things sideways.
I actually preferred John Higgs' other book Watling Street, which really blowed me away, probably because it crossed over with a few things that resonated more with me personally. I'm giving this one five stars too to counter act what seems like an unfairly low rating on one or two previous reviews.
A big thing that stuck out for me is how different generations form their own narrative of history and what part they play in it. Maybe the world seems totally doomed and everything hopeless right now because the dominant generation, generation x, are creating the narrative right now and they suffer from a huge wave of nihilism (which is hopefully receding, we are living through it's last grip on the way we think) and self centred individualism. The hope is for the generation under my, who are teenagers right now, generation z who are much more networked because they know that in order to be a real individual you must fight for the right for everyone to be one. That's why trans rights are suddenly and issue and as a society we are more accepting. They are optimistic and empathetic. I have a lot of love and respect for the youngers now.
I also heard about a lot of really interesting people and ideas I'm going to looking into that I wouldn't have otherwise heard of. I really think John Higgs is great, he has a wonderful ability to make you look at things sideways.
I actually preferred John Higgs' other book Watling Street, which really blowed me away, probably because it crossed over with a few things that resonated more with me personally. I'm giving this one five stars too to counter act what seems like an unfairly low rating on one or two previous reviews.
February 25, 2020
The Circumambient Mythos? I Like It Here, Can I Stay?
if, like me, you're a thickie (ok, mibbe not a thickie, but an innarested, semi-bewildered gen Xer!), and you don't want to appear as such, you buy everything john higgs flings your way so you may get a handle on things! don't bother with television or social media or newspapers or tuppenceworth blether, if you are patient mr higgs will explain it for you!
that's not to say i'm lazy or complacent or that john higgs is a colossal genius (ok, he is a bit), it's really to say i thoroughly enjoy his style and ability to present things in a way that is clear and also vastly entertaining.
the fact that he employs his pals (or at least people he knows) to bolster his ideas is vital to the outcome of each piece, avoiding the distant dryness of interviewing strangers for opinion and fact, brings with it a warm and natural unforced result - if murakami has his cats, higgs has his alan moore! this contributes to my feeling better informed after each book, and isn't that the point?
the book itself is deeply entrenched in matters relevant to this current century, and hopefully suggestions for planning to ensure that we reach the end of it, which will concern those known as 'generation why'!?
i'm not saying the book is perfect, but even in those few passages where things look like getting bogged down, it is done with great style and a determination to reach resolution. what can i say - a handbook for generation x (other generations are available)!
if, like me, you're a thickie (ok, mibbe not a thickie, but an innarested, semi-bewildered gen Xer!), and you don't want to appear as such, you buy everything john higgs flings your way so you may get a handle on things! don't bother with television or social media or newspapers or tuppenceworth blether, if you are patient mr higgs will explain it for you!
that's not to say i'm lazy or complacent or that john higgs is a colossal genius (ok, he is a bit), it's really to say i thoroughly enjoy his style and ability to present things in a way that is clear and also vastly entertaining.
the fact that he employs his pals (or at least people he knows) to bolster his ideas is vital to the outcome of each piece, avoiding the distant dryness of interviewing strangers for opinion and fact, brings with it a warm and natural unforced result - if murakami has his cats, higgs has his alan moore! this contributes to my feeling better informed after each book, and isn't that the point?
the book itself is deeply entrenched in matters relevant to this current century, and hopefully suggestions for planning to ensure that we reach the end of it, which will concern those known as 'generation why'!?
i'm not saying the book is perfect, but even in those few passages where things look like getting bogged down, it is done with great style and a determination to reach resolution. what can i say - a handbook for generation x (other generations are available)!
October 24, 2022
TL,DR: stop being so damn pessimistic about the future, thinking we can't possibly do anything about it is the only sure-fire way to ensure we won't be doing anything about it. Other main points: the robot apocalypse is not as close as we think, we're now in the metamodern era ("meta" meaning "can hold apparently opposing truths in balance" rather than "self-referential" in this case), and it will likely be Gen Alpha rather than Gen Z who'll save us, for some definition of saving. Good read.
January 13, 2023
Another absolute banger from Higgs - smart, perceptive, wise, funny and personal. I particularly enjoyed the thoughtful breakdown of generations Boomer, X, Millennial and Z - using The Breakfast Club as his way in. Superb stuff. The man has a brain the size of a planet and he isn't afraid to use it.
November 29, 2022
Starts brilliant, wanders a bit in the middle, and ends brilliant. Overall a great if optimistic snapshot of where we are. Certainly has changed my outlook and made me even fonder of this author than I was before.
August 19, 2025
I probably read this a few years too late. I don’t think the chapter on AI holds up now.
The final chapter on “more than individual” didn’t seem too convincing either and felt that it wasn’t as well written and enjoyable as the rest of the book.
There are interesting views on ideas that have been discussed for a while, but in 2025 they just don’t seem original enough any more.
I did take quite a few notes though, so pretty good anyway!
The final chapter on “more than individual” didn’t seem too convincing either and felt that it wasn’t as well written and enjoyable as the rest of the book.
There are interesting views on ideas that have been discussed for a while, but in 2025 they just don’t seem original enough any more.
I did take quite a few notes though, so pretty good anyway!
August 31, 2021
I'm rating the audiobook version, narrated by the author himself, so I will quickly open by noting that, god damn, he is a good narrator. Easy to listen to and subtly engaging. He doesn't need to fight for my attention in the way that some nonfiction has to. He has it unequivocally.
To the book itself; this book discusses the future of our world. Many of us cannot imagine a future that is not dystopian. We believe that the human race is in terminal decline. I don't like this defeatist attitude, but find it hard to be convinced that anything different will happen. Higgs challenges that perspective in a way which I find very thought-provoking.
Early on, this book reads like a series of essays, tackling different topics like AI, generational differences and environmental degradation. I've read enough books by Higgs to know that he had some greater thesis, and it began to reveal itself about half-way through the book. All the pieces weaved together until you were suddenly not reading a series of essays, but a comprehensive whole.
For me, part of the pleasure of Higgs's writing is the unravelling of that synthesis, but I appreciate most readers may want something more solid before dedicating their time to this worthwhile book. In essence, all the reasons for cautious optimism orbit around generational differences.
A reasonable portion of the book discusses the Boomers through to Generation Z, with Z being given the bulk of the attention. His thesis is that Generation Z is more empathetic, networked and less individualistic than the proceeding three generations; the qualities needed to build a better future (he has also written a great book about the emergence of individualism in the 20th Century, which I would also recommend - Stranger Than We Can Imagine: An Alternative History of the 20th Century).
Now, I am highly cynical of anything or anyone that claims that the next generation will 'save the world'. I am a millennial, and remember Boomers and Gen Xers telling a teenage me that my generation were less selfish and cared more about people. Even then I argued against this verdict because I felt it was an untrue characterisation, but also because I felt it was wrong to place all hope on the young when you are of a generation that has more power to challenge a destructive status quo. Higgs has done a solid job of challenging my cynicism regarding Gen Z - he makes a strong case for Gen Z having qualities that the other generations lack, while also being clear about their *cough* "shortcomings". This does not mean for a second that I will simply pass the buck and wait for Gen Z to grow up and miraculously fix things. In fact, this book has encouraged me to learn more from Gen Z as I engage in my activism and advocacy, as well as be mindful to empower them and ensure they have a voice.
This is primarily why I have given this book 5 stars. While some parts didn't engage me (for personal reasons really; for example, the picture painted of Musk is undermined by his long support of energy-hungry bitcoin), none of these undermined the book tremendously and it overall has provoked me to think about something I care about in a different way, and in an energizing way. And it achieved this while entertaining and without inflicting a headache. Excellent stuff.
To the book itself; this book discusses the future of our world. Many of us cannot imagine a future that is not dystopian. We believe that the human race is in terminal decline. I don't like this defeatist attitude, but find it hard to be convinced that anything different will happen. Higgs challenges that perspective in a way which I find very thought-provoking.
Early on, this book reads like a series of essays, tackling different topics like AI, generational differences and environmental degradation. I've read enough books by Higgs to know that he had some greater thesis, and it began to reveal itself about half-way through the book. All the pieces weaved together until you were suddenly not reading a series of essays, but a comprehensive whole.
For me, part of the pleasure of Higgs's writing is the unravelling of that synthesis, but I appreciate most readers may want something more solid before dedicating their time to this worthwhile book. In essence, all the reasons for cautious optimism orbit around generational differences.
A reasonable portion of the book discusses the Boomers through to Generation Z, with Z being given the bulk of the attention. His thesis is that Generation Z is more empathetic, networked and less individualistic than the proceeding three generations; the qualities needed to build a better future (he has also written a great book about the emergence of individualism in the 20th Century, which I would also recommend - Stranger Than We Can Imagine: An Alternative History of the 20th Century).
Now, I am highly cynical of anything or anyone that claims that the next generation will 'save the world'. I am a millennial, and remember Boomers and Gen Xers telling a teenage me that my generation were less selfish and cared more about people. Even then I argued against this verdict because I felt it was an untrue characterisation, but also because I felt it was wrong to place all hope on the young when you are of a generation that has more power to challenge a destructive status quo. Higgs has done a solid job of challenging my cynicism regarding Gen Z - he makes a strong case for Gen Z having qualities that the other generations lack, while also being clear about their *cough* "shortcomings". This does not mean for a second that I will simply pass the buck and wait for Gen Z to grow up and miraculously fix things. In fact, this book has encouraged me to learn more from Gen Z as I engage in my activism and advocacy, as well as be mindful to empower them and ensure they have a voice.
This is primarily why I have given this book 5 stars. While some parts didn't engage me (for personal reasons really; for example, the picture painted of Musk is undermined by his long support of energy-hungry bitcoin), none of these undermined the book tremendously and it overall has provoked me to think about something I care about in a different way, and in an energizing way. And it achieved this while entertaining and without inflicting a headache. Excellent stuff.
August 11, 2021
The Future Starts Here gives amusing chapter-sized overviews of a variety of AI, VR/AR, “psychic pollution,” Space Travel, environmental degradation, and a loosely defined avant-garde art movement called “New Weird Britain.”
While Higgs is a capable researcher, his real strength is in distilling big ideas across different disciplines and trying to understand their social impact. Therefore, for Higgs, it makes perfect sense to combine these seemingly very-quite separate topics.
Stylistically, Higgs combines personal narrative (“I met up at a pub with a friend of mine who’s an expert in X”) with narrative non-fiction (third-person) based on research. One might be tempted to cluster him in with writers like Tony Horowitz and Bill Bryson (or at least his travelogues), with the key difference that while Horowitz tends to traverse thousands of miles and meet new people along the way Higgs sticks to his neighborhood. I would also loosely guess that this book is 30% first-person narrative and 70% third person while Bryson and Horowitz tend to reverse those numbers.
Since the future is rather a large topic it is inevitable that Higgs will leave out some stuff that people with a special interest in each field will think is important. A lot of these topics are areas that are still in flux with a great deal of controversy about how they will develop and what sorts of actions we should take to push them in the right direction.
In most of the areas covered there are many plausible suggestions for what actions we should take, as a society. While Higgs often discusses a couple of these possibilities he’s not shy about picking favorites. As a result, the book may also irk some people who think that some of his arguments are wrong. I certainly don’t agree with him on everything, and I think in a few areas (like AI) he is, perhaps, a little out of his depth. But even I disagree with his conclusions he tends to be interesting.
Oh and one last note: while the subtitle of this book refers to it as "An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next" it can just as easily be enjoyed by pessimists. Higgs is an optimist about technology because he's an optimist about humans. If you think humans aren't so great the book is quite compatible with remaining a pessimist.
While Higgs is a capable researcher, his real strength is in distilling big ideas across different disciplines and trying to understand their social impact. Therefore, for Higgs, it makes perfect sense to combine these seemingly very-quite separate topics.
Stylistically, Higgs combines personal narrative (“I met up at a pub with a friend of mine who’s an expert in X”) with narrative non-fiction (third-person) based on research. One might be tempted to cluster him in with writers like Tony Horowitz and Bill Bryson (or at least his travelogues), with the key difference that while Horowitz tends to traverse thousands of miles and meet new people along the way Higgs sticks to his neighborhood. I would also loosely guess that this book is 30% first-person narrative and 70% third person while Bryson and Horowitz tend to reverse those numbers.
Since the future is rather a large topic it is inevitable that Higgs will leave out some stuff that people with a special interest in each field will think is important. A lot of these topics are areas that are still in flux with a great deal of controversy about how they will develop and what sorts of actions we should take to push them in the right direction.
In most of the areas covered there are many plausible suggestions for what actions we should take, as a society. While Higgs often discusses a couple of these possibilities he’s not shy about picking favorites. As a result, the book may also irk some people who think that some of his arguments are wrong. I certainly don’t agree with him on everything, and I think in a few areas (like AI) he is, perhaps, a little out of his depth. But even I disagree with his conclusions he tends to be interesting.
Oh and one last note: while the subtitle of this book refers to it as "An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next" it can just as easily be enjoyed by pessimists. Higgs is an optimist about technology because he's an optimist about humans. If you think humans aren't so great the book is quite compatible with remaining a pessimist.
February 22, 2020
Currently really enjoying this book.
Firstly, I love the sincerity of the writing style. This feels like a book the author is emotionally invested in and gives the impression of someone who genuinely cares about the planet and everyone living on it.
It's so refreshing to see someone who is so extremely well informed free themselves from the need to demonstrate this at every turn. Who cares if every single page isn't crammed with totally novel facts or insights? It's the overall message that's important.
I don't seek non-fiction books to tell me new facts or reveal new ideas. To me a great nonfiction book changes your perspective either by getting you to think about things you wouldn't have otherwise thought about, or by connecting facts and ideas you would never have connected.
By bringing so many disparate threads together Higgs makes us traverse regions of idea space we might otherwise ignore. By connecting technology, psychology, global capitalism and generational change he does provide hope that we can control our future.
Firstly, I love the sincerity of the writing style. This feels like a book the author is emotionally invested in and gives the impression of someone who genuinely cares about the planet and everyone living on it.
It's so refreshing to see someone who is so extremely well informed free themselves from the need to demonstrate this at every turn. Who cares if every single page isn't crammed with totally novel facts or insights? It's the overall message that's important.
I don't seek non-fiction books to tell me new facts or reveal new ideas. To me a great nonfiction book changes your perspective either by getting you to think about things you wouldn't have otherwise thought about, or by connecting facts and ideas you would never have connected.
By bringing so many disparate threads together Higgs makes us traverse regions of idea space we might otherwise ignore. By connecting technology, psychology, global capitalism and generational change he does provide hope that we can control our future.
July 21, 2020
Bought this book after hearing it get recommended on one of Adam Buxton's podcasts with Louis Theroux. Didn't really know what to expect from it but thoroughly enjoyed reading this from start to finish.
I am a millennial who spends a great deal of time worrying about the state of the world and what will be left of it when I start having children. This book has made me feel better about some things, tapered my expectations about others and also introduced me to some interesting concepts such as Half Earth theory and Universal Basic Income.
Heavy going in some places, but I found that John Higgs writes in a way that means that you'll very rarely get lost. Will be very interested in reading some more of his books!
I am a millennial who spends a great deal of time worrying about the state of the world and what will be left of it when I start having children. This book has made me feel better about some things, tapered my expectations about others and also introduced me to some interesting concepts such as Half Earth theory and Universal Basic Income.
Heavy going in some places, but I found that John Higgs writes in a way that means that you'll very rarely get lost. Will be very interested in reading some more of his books!
March 22, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed this book- I feel like John Higgs books subtly expand my mind. I disagree with some of the criticisms other readers had with his approach and comments on generational attitudes. He was clear about the limitations of defining people by generation but made a valid argument for the way it can be informative. Loved this book and look forward to the next Higgs book I can get ahold of!
March 29, 2021
Probably 4.5 stars, I am just enamored with Higgs. Read this for visions of the future, especially if you are feeling a little hopeless. This book manages to be optimistic and realistic at the same time.
November 13, 2020
Brilliant
September 28, 2021
Gained a couple of sparks/insights/aha-moments listening to this, that in itself is worth one or two stars. Everything will be fine, even if it's not. conclusive take-away, don't be a dick.
December 14, 2021
One or two less interesting chapters about AI but when he hits his stride really interesting read. Recommended
February 27, 2025
John Higgs is a fool. Well educated and researched, but a fool nonetheless. In The Future Starts Here: An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next he attempts to portray an optimistic vision of the future, but comes off as unconvinced himself. The main chapters of the book feel separated and often contradict each other. And that's sad, because some of the information and ideas presented are really interesting.
You've seen this type of book before: it starts with research and interviews, then it's compiled into a documentary style narrative that is skewed towards a particular idea. This one is trying to say that the future is not as bleak as we make it out to be, that technology has the potential to enrich our lives if we are careful with what we choose to do with it, that the environment has the potential to recover and thrive if we choose to be mindful of it, that we can escape the trappings of the capitalist mediated dystopia that everybody delights in being terrified of and that young generations of people are trending towards empathy and awareness. You get the gist: things will be better if we make them so, even if the author himself seems to lose faith in humanity as a whole a lot of the times.
The problem arises when Higgs starts contradicting himself or using some really cherry-picked examples that he doesn't often understand. The first chapter tells of how we can't build a bright future without imagining it and that media today is biased strongly towards the negative, including fiction with its many dystopian visions. We should be focused on truth and hope. A strong start. But then he starts talking about artificial intelligence, of which he understands little, showing a strong humanistic bias and bringing Penrose's quantum microtubules intelligence as a hopeful argument, obliterating his previous points.
He talks about the neurological effects of stuff like watching the (terrible and uninformative) news, using social media and being exposed to advertising, how it changes us in ways I didn't think of before. Strong chapter. Until he starts talking about how individualism is bad and the new youngster trend of seeing each other as part of a network is the hopeful future. Only "network" and "friendship group" are just modern terms for "tribe", yet another way in which social interaction and belonging uses the same oxytocin mechanism he described in detail and warned about just a chapter before.
Then he goes on and on about how the new generations - which he blissfully describes from a purely Western liberal perspective, ignoring all of the silent unmediated youngsters he forgets exist - are focused on emotional well being, awareness of their environment, capable of holding multiple contradicting ideas in their head and using the one that works best, like that's something new and positive. But then he talks of how intransigent these new hopefuls are with any ideas that are not about emotional well being, environment awareness or contradicting the handful of ideas they use to shield themselves from actual truth. And then, to top it off, speaks highly of the Greatest Generation and hopes this new one, coming from the 2008 economic crisis, will be similarly practical and emotionally grounded.
But it's the ending that makes it all feel very funny. Funnier than a book about an optimistic future published early 2019, that is. The author concludes that people find meaning in their immediate unmediated interactions with other people and reveals that, in writing this book, he "experimented" by only presenting information from people he personally knows and met. He wanted to test the idea that your direct connections are more meaningful than any exhaustive research through impersonal papers or news items.
Bottom line, he artificially constrained himself in a bubble, wrote several small papers on various future related subjects, then bundled them all in a book that manages to contradict itself about almost every major point made.
However, to focus on truth and hope, there is a way to enjoy this book in the spirit it was written in. You have to consider it as a conversation with a random guy. You don't have expectations of journalistic objectivity and scientific research when you talk to other people. You take what they say with a grain of salt, you pick and choose which parts of their discourse is interesting, useful or entertaining, and you have a pleasant time. If you do that with this book, you can learn some really interesting tidbits from what is basically a guy rambling.
You've seen this type of book before: it starts with research and interviews, then it's compiled into a documentary style narrative that is skewed towards a particular idea. This one is trying to say that the future is not as bleak as we make it out to be, that technology has the potential to enrich our lives if we are careful with what we choose to do with it, that the environment has the potential to recover and thrive if we choose to be mindful of it, that we can escape the trappings of the capitalist mediated dystopia that everybody delights in being terrified of and that young generations of people are trending towards empathy and awareness. You get the gist: things will be better if we make them so, even if the author himself seems to lose faith in humanity as a whole a lot of the times.
The problem arises when Higgs starts contradicting himself or using some really cherry-picked examples that he doesn't often understand. The first chapter tells of how we can't build a bright future without imagining it and that media today is biased strongly towards the negative, including fiction with its many dystopian visions. We should be focused on truth and hope. A strong start. But then he starts talking about artificial intelligence, of which he understands little, showing a strong humanistic bias and bringing Penrose's quantum microtubules intelligence as a hopeful argument, obliterating his previous points.
He talks about the neurological effects of stuff like watching the (terrible and uninformative) news, using social media and being exposed to advertising, how it changes us in ways I didn't think of before. Strong chapter. Until he starts talking about how individualism is bad and the new youngster trend of seeing each other as part of a network is the hopeful future. Only "network" and "friendship group" are just modern terms for "tribe", yet another way in which social interaction and belonging uses the same oxytocin mechanism he described in detail and warned about just a chapter before.
Then he goes on and on about how the new generations - which he blissfully describes from a purely Western liberal perspective, ignoring all of the silent unmediated youngsters he forgets exist - are focused on emotional well being, awareness of their environment, capable of holding multiple contradicting ideas in their head and using the one that works best, like that's something new and positive. But then he talks of how intransigent these new hopefuls are with any ideas that are not about emotional well being, environment awareness or contradicting the handful of ideas they use to shield themselves from actual truth. And then, to top it off, speaks highly of the Greatest Generation and hopes this new one, coming from the 2008 economic crisis, will be similarly practical and emotionally grounded.
But it's the ending that makes it all feel very funny. Funnier than a book about an optimistic future published early 2019, that is. The author concludes that people find meaning in their immediate unmediated interactions with other people and reveals that, in writing this book, he "experimented" by only presenting information from people he personally knows and met. He wanted to test the idea that your direct connections are more meaningful than any exhaustive research through impersonal papers or news items.
Bottom line, he artificially constrained himself in a bubble, wrote several small papers on various future related subjects, then bundled them all in a book that manages to contradict itself about almost every major point made.
However, to focus on truth and hope, there is a way to enjoy this book in the spirit it was written in. You have to consider it as a conversation with a random guy. You don't have expectations of journalistic objectivity and scientific research when you talk to other people. You take what they say with a grain of salt, you pick and choose which parts of their discourse is interesting, useful or entertaining, and you have a pleasant time. If you do that with this book, you can learn some really interesting tidbits from what is basically a guy rambling.
December 3, 2025
The real problem is that a species that lives inside its own fictions can no longer imagine a healthy fiction to live inside, and this failure of the imagination stops us from steering towards the better versions of our potential futures. [p. 19]
The Future Starts Here: An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next is a cultural analysis of how we view the future, focussing very much on the positive. The book ranges from an overview of why colonising Mars is a daft idea to explorations of the Knebb rewilding project, of natural versus artificial intelligence (and why Higgs feels his cat is smarter than Alexa), and of the ways in which virtual reality can be more than just entertainment. Higgs explores ideas such as reality tunnels, emotional intelligence, the Half-Earth biodiversity project, the utopian tropes of Star Trek and the benefits of Universal Basic Income.
I particularly liked the explanation of the 'circumambient mythos', the underlying narrative mode of a civilisation. He suggests that medieval Western culture's narrative was 'Voyage and Return' (coming from and returning to God); that was replaced by 'The Quest', a journey to a better place (via technological advancement), from the Renaissance onwards. Now, he thinks, our mode is Tragedy: doomed by a fatal flaw. 'But there is also a narrative plot which, for the characters living it, appears to be identical to Tragedy. That plot is Comedy.' [p. 16] Comedy, unlike tragedy, isn't fatal: it can be resolved. Much later in the book, he writes: 'Sitcom, then, is the best metaphor for our future. Humanity, our digital creations and mother nature attempt to get along, while trapped together on the third rock from the sun for untold years to come.' [p. 210]
Higgs is more or less my contemporary; we probably know some of the same people. I certainly felt seen by some of the anecdotes, such as the one where he uncovers 'a box of abandoned gadgets and pieces of technology, which were about 10–15 years old... None of this was cheap to buy at the time, so it wasn’t thrown away when it became redundant. Instead, it was carefully stored away for years, until the day finally came when it was rediscovered in the back of the wardrobe. Then it was thrown away.' [p. 298] Higgs makes much of generational change, and how differently the 'digital natives' of Generation Z view the world: the importance of networks, communication, self-definition. Writing this book, Higgs experimented with his own network: he only talked to people he knew well enough to meet for a drink regularly, and who lived within walking distance from his house.
It's worth noting that The Future Starts Here: An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next was published in 2018, pre-Covid, pre-Trump2, pre-Ukraine, pre-Gaza, pre-Starmer... It feels to me as though the world has got worse: but I still want to hope for a better future, and so does Higgs.
Read
August 4, 2024This is my second John Higgs book, and I’m liking his style! This isn’t a typical science-heavy, doom-laden look into a crystal ball. Yes, he does devote chapters to space travel, climate change, AI, social media, and virtual reality … however, the lens he uses is more about the prevailing human zeitgeist (the story we tell ourselves) that Higgs calls the circumambient mythos* and the part played [and to-play] by those of us born in the C20th, up to and including the millennials, and Gen-X and unborn generations. So far so good, but Higgs also plays a couple of tricks on the reader; (1) trying to contain his research within his local area (Brighton/W.Sussex), he has his reasons, and; (2) equating big data with ‘big psychology' (my phrase!)
So, to unpack some of the above, Higgs uses Star Trek specifically and books and films generally to explain how the narrative has changed to a dystopian view of the future, comparable with the story template of a tragedy. We have lost the way in terms of positive ‘utopian’ visions of the future. Utopianism is not a story template in itself, but [Higgs] chooses ‘Comedy’, where the protagonists, i.e. humanity, survives but is not in control of the outcome, which is where the comedy elements [can] come in. In Higgs view AI and robots will not be taking over soon, nor does the science stack up for humans as a multi-planetary species. So we are left with new thinking and the coming generations to protect our biome … despite a couple of positives examples, this is not a very convincing argument.
Per the Proverbs quote, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’
In terms of big data, Higgs draws the comparison between patterns in big data (quantity over quality) and the broad-brush of generational behaviour and traits; he is not a fan of Boomers and Gen-X but feels that Gen-Z (digital natives/snowflakes) have the empathy, flexibility, and connectivity/networking skills to ‘fix’ the problems, or maybe the next generation (Gen-A) will inherit these positives and address the inherent egotism, nihilism, and anxiety in their predecessors (as I say ‘big psychology'). This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book, not perfect IMO, but brave and clever to look at the bigger story, the resilience of human-kind, and point out some green shoots and possible roadmaps.
Last but not least, the part played by traditional- & social- media and pervasive & divisive interests (‘Psychic pollution’) could undermine this narrative; i.e. humans doing harm unto humans. So, we can hope for generational change, but we also need more individual heroes and champions from all generations. Looking at a sample of the news of the day, we have rogue states, corrupt politicians, greedy organisations, and very few feel-good stories to shift the conversation. There is a lot that needs to change.
*(Medium review) … Higgs calls for a new pragmatic optimism because history has shown that there is always a new story in the “circumambient mythos” as he calls it, which is a differently interpreted zeitgeist than those of us who grew up in the prior era. The recognition of this phenomenon can only be acute in times of vast change.
So, to unpack some of the above, Higgs uses Star Trek specifically and books and films generally to explain how the narrative has changed to a dystopian view of the future, comparable with the story template of a tragedy. We have lost the way in terms of positive ‘utopian’ visions of the future. Utopianism is not a story template in itself, but [Higgs] chooses ‘Comedy’, where the protagonists, i.e. humanity, survives but is not in control of the outcome, which is where the comedy elements [can] come in. In Higgs view AI and robots will not be taking over soon, nor does the science stack up for humans as a multi-planetary species. So we are left with new thinking and the coming generations to protect our biome … despite a couple of positives examples, this is not a very convincing argument.
Per the Proverbs quote, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’
In terms of big data, Higgs draws the comparison between patterns in big data (quantity over quality) and the broad-brush of generational behaviour and traits; he is not a fan of Boomers and Gen-X but feels that Gen-Z (digital natives/snowflakes) have the empathy, flexibility, and connectivity/networking skills to ‘fix’ the problems, or maybe the next generation (Gen-A) will inherit these positives and address the inherent egotism, nihilism, and anxiety in their predecessors (as I say ‘big psychology'). This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book, not perfect IMO, but brave and clever to look at the bigger story, the resilience of human-kind, and point out some green shoots and possible roadmaps.
Last but not least, the part played by traditional- & social- media and pervasive & divisive interests (‘Psychic pollution’) could undermine this narrative; i.e. humans doing harm unto humans. So, we can hope for generational change, but we also need more individual heroes and champions from all generations. Looking at a sample of the news of the day, we have rogue states, corrupt politicians, greedy organisations, and very few feel-good stories to shift the conversation. There is a lot that needs to change.
*(Medium review) … Higgs calls for a new pragmatic optimism because history has shown that there is always a new story in the “circumambient mythos” as he calls it, which is a differently interpreted zeitgeist than those of us who grew up in the prior era. The recognition of this phenomenon can only be acute in times of vast change.
August 17, 2019
John Higgs has an uncanny way of sending your brain down fascinating new avenues, uncovering uncommon knowledge across a variety of fields and serving it up in a compulsively readable form. In this, his latest book, he turns our near-ubiquitous pessimism about the future on its head, setting out many reasons why humanity may not be quite as doomed as we like to think. This is not just blind optimism - Higgs is realistic about the huge changes required to minimise the damage caused by climate change and mass extinction. Above all, what's required is a change in human nature, something which seems like an impossibility to a nihilistic Gen-Xer like me, but Higgs presents convincing evidence that the hyper-individualism of the 20th century is something of a blip, and that Generation Z, the "Snowflake" generation who are now coming of age, are surprisingly different from the generations that preceded them, and appear to possess exactly the type of highly social conscience required to change humanity's ways. Along the way he takes us on an engaging tour of fake news, space travel, AI, VR, rewilding and metamodernism, always finding new and revealing ways of looking at things. And the book ends with something of a twist, which makes its richness of new knowledge even more of a surprise.
January 30, 2020
An interesting book I picked up on a recommendation. I have read a few things on some of the topics in it such as AI and less about others such as generation Z, but generally Higgs tries to set up what trends today would determine some of how the future of this and the next generation looks like. It is undoubtedly interesting to read his speculations and to know more on some of the topics in the book. This, I feel, is in line with a few other authors who are writing some sort of popular futurology but this one takes it beyond technology and into society and human relationships.
So, us in Generation X are individualistic and nihilistic, while those who are post-post-millennial (GenZ) are more connected, empathetic, and networking. They have things we might not understand that will put them in a better place to face our common future such as having born in the internet era, being attached to networks (physical and virtual), and their intrinsic empathy.
All this is woven into talk of AI, VR, AR, and other tech that the author brings from his exchanges with artists, scientists, and oddballs he knows in an experiment to write this book without chasing the global "experts" and only talking to people he is acquainted with, interesting despite not being scientific, but this is precisely the point he tries to make, and it is at least worth considering.
So, us in Generation X are individualistic and nihilistic, while those who are post-post-millennial (GenZ) are more connected, empathetic, and networking. They have things we might not understand that will put them in a better place to face our common future such as having born in the internet era, being attached to networks (physical and virtual), and their intrinsic empathy.
All this is woven into talk of AI, VR, AR, and other tech that the author brings from his exchanges with artists, scientists, and oddballs he knows in an experiment to write this book without chasing the global "experts" and only talking to people he is acquainted with, interesting despite not being scientific, but this is precisely the point he tries to make, and it is at least worth considering.
August 21, 2023
Πολύ σωστά και ενδιαφέροντα όσα λέει ο κ Higgs με μια μικρή διαφορά, ότι το βιβλίο μιλάει για Ευρώπη και βόρεια Αμερική κυρίως. Αν όλη η γη ήταν έτσι τότε θα ήταν σωστά τα γενικά του συμπεράσματα. Ειδικά όταν μιλάει για ευαίσθητη γενιά Ζ που δεν έχει γνωρίσει πόλεμο και κακουχίες και που θα αλλάξουν τον κόσμο με την ενσυναισθηση τους, κάποια παιδιά από την ανατολή, την Αφρική η και την λατινική Αμερική γελάνε...
February 3, 2024
This is the second book by John Higgs I have closed thinking "everyone should read this." My feelings and thoughts about the future -- at least the 25 years or so I might see of it -- have changed, and I am going to be happier and better for that change, although it is not 100% optimistic as his subtitle suggests. I highly recommend this book.
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