This morning’s Observer column.

The future, as the novelist William Gibson observed, ‘is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed’. One place where it might be found is Mount Holly, Berkeley County, South Carolina. I’ve just flown over it (courtesy of Google Earth), and you’d never think it was a place where our destiny lies. The terrain is flat and wooded and includes some magnolia plantations. There’s a highway and what looks like a railway line (the image resolution isn’t great). The nearest town is Goose Creek, a settlement of 30,000 souls.

So why is this obscure spot a pivot of the universe?