dansumption's review
5.0
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.
sirchutney's review
3.0
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.
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