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. He 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.
