When I started writing my forthcoming book Future Rise, the intent was publish it today, April 22 2020 — the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day.
Sadly, publishing timelines and coronavirus ended up scuppering this plan, and the publication date has been pushed back. Yet despite this, the book remains deeply influenced by, and relevant to, our relationship with the planet we live on, and the future we’re building with it.
And so, to mark this year’s Earth Day, I’m posting the book’s introduction and the first chapter, in recognition of our relationship with the future, and our increasingly important responsibility to it.
FUTURE RISING
A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow
Introduction
We live in a world in turmoil. As I write, we are grappling with a future-changing global pandemic, refugees are being held in less-than-human conditions as they strive to build a better future, a growing wave of populism and nationalism is sparking another type of global epidemic—this one of mean-spirited inhumanity, and people the world over are being denied the futures they aspire to because of the narrow-mindedness of others. And over everything, there’s the looming disaster of climate change, as we sacrifice long- term sustainability for short-term gain.
It’s a picture of the present that doesn’t bode well for the future. Yet, dire as the outlook seems, it is not inevitable. Despite appearances, our collective ability to imagine and build the future we aspire to has never been greater. With advances in science and technology, we are on the cusp of mastering biology, of creating machines that think, and of conquering seemingly-incurable diseases. Our understanding of people and society is revealing pathways toward more equitable and just futures. And we’re beginning to figure out ever-more-effective ways of living sustainably within the constraints of the planet we inhabit.
And yet, unless we better understand our relationship with the future and our responsibility to it, there will remain a gaping chasm between what we are capable of and what we achieve. As a species, we are profoundly talented architects of our own future. But to do the job well, we need to get a much better grip on where we’re heading, and how to ensure it’s a better place than the one we came from. This is a responsibility we all face. And as we do, we each need to find our own personal threads that tie together past and future, and learn how to weave them together into a bigger picture of what humanity could become.
This, though, is no mean task. Every day, we’re bombarded with information and advice in a cascade of news, commentary, and opinion that conspires to hide and tangle these threads—often leaving us feeling dazed and confused. And sometimes, we simply need to take time out—to find a still, quiet place, where we can begin to piece together a picture of the future that makes sense.
But finding such a quiet place isn’t easy. We’re obsessed with the future, to such an extent that it can threaten to overwhelm us. We avidly suck up news feeds and forecasts to get a glimpse of what’s coming down the pike. We immerse ourselves in social media to keep up with what’s on trend, and what’s not. We consume book after book about the future that tells us what we’re doing to destroy it, how technology will transform it, how our wrong-headedness is hampering it, and how our intelligence is manufacturing it. And we surround ourselves with science fiction stories that guide and color our ideas of how the future might pan out.
And yet, despite all of this, we rarely take the time to hit the reset button and think afresh about what the future is, where it came from, why it’s so integral to our lives, and what our responsibilities to it are.
It’s this metaphorical reset button that I set out to hit in this series of short reflections. My aim was to make them long enough to help carve out a quiet space for reflection, but short enough that they don’t add to the noise. Through them, I hope to take you on a journey into what the future is, why it matters, and how we can collectively navigate toward one we aspire to as we live our lives together.
What emerges is a journey into our understanding of the future that spans history, starting at the very beginning of all things, with the celestial “big bang,” and ending with our responsibility to ensure that coming generations inherit a better future than the one passed on to us. It’s a journey of twists and turns, of unexpected insights, and serendipitous delights. And it’s one that, step by step, builds a picture, not only of what the future is, but what our roles and responsibilities are in crafting and creating it.
Like all pictures, of course, this is one that tells a story that is far from complete. Look closely, and there are broad brushstrokes where you might expect fine detail, and curious omissions where you might expect deep insights. Yet step back, and a unique portrait of the future emerges that sheds new light on its relationship to us, and our responsibility to it.
It’s also a portrait that, despite the turmoil we see around us in the present, gives us hope for a future that could far exceed our expectations—as long as we all play our part in building it.
Chapter 1. Earthrise
On December 24, 1968, William Anders took one of the most influential photographs of the past hundred years. The picture was taken from the Apollo 8 mission as it orbited the moon, and it showed a startling image of the Earth, suspended in space above a bleak lunar landscape.
Anders’s Earthrise photo captured a growing sense of
our planet as a precious object that, despite its stunning beauty, was in danger of being systematically destroyed by short-sighted consumerism and greed. And it galvanized a generation to protect and preserve a future that was increasingly seen as being under threat.
In the intervening decades since Anders’s photograph was first published, our ability to exploit the Earth and, with it, our future, has only escalated. As the Earth’s population climbs toward eight billion, with many people still facing poverty, hunger, and substandard living conditions, we are polluting the planet and stripping it of its resources faster than ever. Climate change that’s being driven by human activity is now one of the greatest threats we face. At the same time, we are beginning to overstep other environmental boundaries that help keep the world we live in on an even keel, from decreasing biodiversity to increasing ocean acidification. And this seeming disdain for the future is only being exacerbated by a growing fascination with powerful and potentially destructive new technologies.
Yet within this seemingly dystopian vision of the future, there is room for hope. Since Anders took his photograph in 1968, we’ve seen profound advances in potentially beneficial science and technology. As a result, more of us are living longer, healthier lives than ever before. We can now treat and manage diseases that were once considered unmanageable. The digital revolution and the internet have put more information, knowledge, and power into the hands of more people than at any previous point in history. Emerging technologies from gene editing to artificial intelligence are opening the door to potential futures that were once little more than science fiction. And threading through all of these advances, social norms and expectations are evolving around how we should behave, and what our responsibilities to future generations are.
Collectively and individually, we have more control now over how our future unfolds than ever before. But our ability to envision and engineer the future comes with almost unimaginable levels of responsibility as, together, we grapple with what we want it to look like, and how to avoid costly and potentially catastrophic mistakes.
Anders’s 1968 photograph set us on a path toward powerful new ways of imagining our future. As well as showing us the majesty of our planetary home from space, he encouraged us to think of the future as an “object,” something real and precious that we can and should aspire to, and to imagine the possibility of a vibrant home we would gladly bequeath to generations to come. It’s a metaphor for what lies ahead that has the power to tear our eyes from the present and focus them on a future that we have a hand in designing and creating. But for it to truly transform how we think about the future, we need to go on a journey that starts billions of years in the past, when the distinction between what was and what is to come was little more than a spark in the cosmos’s eye.
Future Rising is published by Mango Publishing, and is currently available for pre-order. It will be published in October 2020.
