
Where Is My Flying Car?
First Print Edition
Stripe Matter, Inc. · Print & ebook · November 30, 2021
From an engineer and futurist, an impassioned account of technological stagnation since the 1970s and an imaginative blueprint for a richer, more abundant future.
We earn from qualifying purchases.
- Who it’s for
- A brisk inquiry into stalled innovation, and a case for building a more abundant future.
- Genres
- Futures & Foresight, Tech & Society, Energy
- Published
- Stripe Matter, Inc., November 30, 2021
Nearest books
Matched by what the books are about, then ordered by what their readers also loved.
The Art of Doing Science and EngineeringRichard Hamming, Bret Victor49% match
Chip WarStephen Graybill, Chris Miller49% match
Skunk WorksBen R. Rich, Leo Janos48% match
AutonomyLawrence D. Burns, Christopher Shulgan57% match
The GridGretchen Bakke, Emily Caudwell53% match
The Age of Spiritual MachinesRay Kurzweil54% matchShares Futures & Foresight
Fossil FutureAlex Epstein, Penguin Audio51% match
How to Invent EverythingRyan North51% match
For younger readers: Sky High!, The Way Things Work: Newly Revised Edition, Eyes Wide Open: Going Behind the Environmental Headlines
Start with three books, and this one can be the first.
Members get a new edition every morning: a route out from their books to essays, research and talks, with the reason for each.
Start with this bookAbout this book
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.
Continue reading
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.
The Future, Reconsidered
A brisk inquiry into stalled innovation, and a case for building a more abundant future.
Come here for
- The gap between promised technologies and the everyday world
- Big questions about energy, progress, and prosperity
Expect
- An engineer’s account of technological stagnation since the 1970s
- A forward-looking argument for progress in the physical world
Where it sits
| Futures & Foresight | 38% |
|---|---|
| Energy | 32% |
| Tech & Society | 23% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Aeronautics & Astronautics
- Automotive Engineering
- Inventions
- Authors
- J. Storrs Hall
- Publisher
- Stripe Matter, Inc.
- Published
- November 30, 2021
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Aeronautics & Astronautics