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.
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