Where Is My Flying Car?

De: J. Storrs Hall

Narrado por: Jonathan Todd Ross

From an engineer and futurist, an impassioned account of technological stagnation since the 1970s and an imaginative blueprint for a richer, more abundant future.

The science fiction of the 1960s promised us a future remade by technological innovation: We’d vacation in geodesic domes on Mars, have meaningful conversations with computers, and drop our children off at school in flying cars. Fast-forward 60 years and we’re still stuck in traffic in gas-guzzling sedans and boarding the same types of planes we flew in over half a century ago. What happened to the future we were promised?

In Where Is My Flying Car?, J. Storrs Hall sets out to answer this deceptively simple question. What starts as an examination of the technical limitations of building flying cars evolves into an investigation of the scientific, technological, and social roots of the economic stagnation that started in the 1970s. From the failure to adopt nuclear energy and the suppression of cold fusion technology to the rise of a counterculture hostile to progress, Hall recounts how our collective ambitions for the future were derailed, with devastating consequences for global wealth creation and distribution. Hall then outlines a framework for a future powered by exponential progress - one in which we build as much in the world of atoms as we do in the world of bits, one rich in abundance and wonder.

Drawing on years of original research and personal engineering experience, Where Is My Flying Car?, originally published in 2018, is an urgent, timely analysis of technological progress over the last 50 years and a bold vision for a better future.

©2021 Stripe Press (P)2021 Stripe Press

Explains many things indeed

As an engineer, physicist and pilot myself - like the author of this book - I have also came to wonder why flying cars / roadable aircraft aren't mass produced yet. Moreover - while ground cars have evolved AND gottwn more and more affordable for the average person - personal/family airplanes like the Cessna-172,182,210 - have NOT evolved significantly since the 1960s, and have gotten many times MORE expensive, relatively to people's incomes of course. Or relatively to cars for that manner.

This book confirms some things I have guessed, and explains many things I didnt realize at all. It also mentions the problems and stagnation in other fields, such as academic research (where my father works) or the energy industry - which is indeed for decades ignoring an elephant in the room which is MODERN nuclear reactors which work safely and efficiently in many Navy vessels without any issue, but noone talks about for civilian use, and some countries are phasing out based on issues with 50 year old designs such as those in Chernobyl, 2 mile island or still used in 2011 in Fukushima. Instead of updating to modern designs. France being the only country which didnt give in and continues to actively use nuclear, but I digress...

Anyway, this book is either eye-opening, or guess-reinforcing, depending on whether you've put much thought yourself into the trajectory of technological evolution lately. Highly recommend.

Wow!

This book caught my attention immediately & starts off w/ a history of actual cars that flew in 1960's! It goes waaaay deep into all of the reasons surrounding current technology & although most engineering & science jargon was over my head I cannot get enough of the facts & figures that illustrate what we may have very very soon! Loved it & reccomend to Anyone!

you can't unlearn what it exposes you too

I knew the book's title was meant to capture the general critique of the current stagnation in science and technology; but to my delight and surprise.. the writer delved generously and masterfully into the question the book's title ask.. and many others of the same and heavier weight and impact too!

jumping between the different areas of science and technology that illustrates the issue.. the book will leave the reader exposed to a different perspective that can't be unlearned or ignored.

a delight

Insightful

A bit too long and in parts too technically detailed but very insightful and full of technology nuggets

Techno-optimism for the win!

Paints an exciting vision for the future. Really puts stagnationists and degrowthers in their place, which is nowhere near power.