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Where Is My Flying Car? by [J. Storrs Hall]

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J. Storrs Hall

Where Is My Flying Car? Kindle Edition

by J. Storrs Hall (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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in Nanotechnology

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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.

Print length

333 pages
Language

English
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Publication date

November 30, 2021
File size

31002 KB
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From the Publisher

Nanotechnology, civil engineering, innovation, Human progress, Sustainable living, Computer science

Praise for Where Is My Flying Car?

“One of the best and most interesting books on technology.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

“There are many writers with optimistic visions of the future. However, the goals I most often hear are all the negation of negatives: cure cancer, eliminate poverty, stop climate change. . . . This is good, but it is not enough. [These techno-optimists] are content with bringing the whole world up to the current best standard of living, but not increasing it. In this context, I found Where Is My Flying Car? refreshing. Hall unabashedly calls for unlimited progress in every dimension.” —Jason Crawford, Roots of Progress

"Whether there is 'tech stagnation' or a revolution about to swarm the skies, Where Is My Flying Car? offers piercing questions and answers about what it might take to make the dream come true." —David Brin, astrophysicist and author of Existence and The Postman

"This book is an inspirational roadmap to an amazing future that can be ours if we will only reach for it. Hall’s bold new perspective on technological progress is a must-read for anyone who claims to be a futurist." —Robert Freitas, nanotechnology scientist and author of Nanomedicine

"America's 'golden quarter century' of technological and economic progress ended 50 years ago. Instead of flying cars, we got Facebook. J. Storrs Hall brilliantly explains the reasons for this Great Stagnation, and what to do to bring about another golden era of growth and prosperity." —Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee

From Where Is My Flying Car?


"The key to [our] future will be our visions: whether we can imagine, want, and try hard enough to achieve great things—things worthy of the capabilities of a people with intelligent robots, complete control of the structure of matter, and the limitless power of the atom. Our muscle awaits, if only we can find our muse."	"We need to understand how to harness our enormous creative energies for improvement instead of virtue-signaling. We need to understand how to live beyond Earth’s fragile soap bubble of a biosphere. We need to begin to appreciate how much more there is to even our small solar system."	"We need hopers and dreamers; we need visionaries who can see a better future worth striving for. We need great, important things to do with the staggeringly huge capabilities that lie within our grasp. Science fiction must get back down into the gutter and start looking back up at the stars."

About the author

J. Storrs Hall, Ph.D., is an independent scientist and author. He was the founding chief scientist of Nanorex, Inc. and a president of the Foresight Institute and is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing and an associate editor of the International Journal of Nanotechnology and Molecular Computation. He was also accredited as an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the field of computational climate models. His previous books include Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine and Nanofuture: What’s Next for Nanotechnology. Now residing on Chesapeake Bay, he dabbles in aerodynamics design under the auspices of Eastern Shore Flying Cars, LLC.

innovation, books, new ideas, technology, business, stripe press

About the publisher

Stripe Press publishes books about economic and technological advancement. Stripe partners with hundreds of thousands of the world’s most innovative businesses—organizations that will shape the world of tomorrow. These businesses are the result of many different inputs. Perhaps the most important ingredient is "ideas." Stripe Press highlights ideas that we think can be broadly useful. Some books contain entirely new material, some are collections of existing work reimagined, and others are republications of previous works that have remained relevant over time or have renewed relevance today.

Related titles by Stripe Press:

The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop
Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowan
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard W. Hamming
Working in Public by Nadia Eghbal
Scientific Freedom by Donald W. Braben

Editorial Reviews

Review

“There are many writers with optimistic visions of the future. However, the goals I most often hear are all the negation of negatives: cure cancer, eliminate poverty, stop climate change. . . . This is good, but it is not enough. [These techno-optimists] are content with bringing the whole world up to the current best standard of living, but not increasing it. In this context, I found Where Is My Flying Car? refreshing. Hall unabashedly calls for unlimited progress in every dimension.” --Jason Crawford, Roots of Progress

“One of the best and most interesting books on technology.” --Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

"This book is an inspirational roadmap to an amazing future that can be ours if we will only reach for it. Hall’s bold new perspective on technological progress is a must-read for anyone who claims to be a futurist." --David Brin, astrophysicist and author of Existence and The Postman --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

J. Storrs Hall, Ph.D., is an independent scientist and author. He was the founding chief scientist of Nanorex, Inc. and a president of the Foresight Institute and is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing and an associate editor of the International Journal of Nanotechnology and Molecular Computation. He was also accredited as an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the field of computational climate models. His previous books include Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine and Nanofuture: What’s Next for Nanotechnology. Now residing on Chesapeake Bay, he dabbles in aerodynamics design under the auspices of Eastern Shore Flying Cars, LLC. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09H478XG4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Stripe Press (November 30, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 30, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 31002 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 333 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1953953182

Best Sellers Rank: #134,050 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1 in Nanotechnology (Kindle Store)
- #10 in Business & Management Technology History
- #12 in Human-Computer Interaction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
169 ratings

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J. Storrs Hall

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I spent most of my time as a kid reading science fiction. Well, that and everything else ranging from Sherlock Holmes to Jeeves. And making models of dinosaurs, robots, and flying machines. Then I spent most of my productive life studying artificial intelligence, designing and programming computers, and exploring nanotechnology. Now I just write books in the hopes of sharing some of the insights I've run into along the way.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

169 global ratings

5 star		66%
4 star		21%
3 star		5%
2 star		4%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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William Maddox

Thought provoking but a bit weird.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 4, 2023

Verified Purchase

I learned some new things about aeronautics, nuclear physics, and nuclear power. Hall accurately describes the current malaise in putting new discoveries into production, identifying government bureaucracy and inbred university teaching as the culprits. He digresses too often on the need he sees for flying cars and some odd ways of getting there.

Helpful

Dan Elton

How hippies, tort lawyers, status quo bureaucrats, and overzealous regulators ruined everything

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 19, 2022

Verified Purchase

There's no other book quite like this. This is quickly emerging as a foundational text for the burgeoning cultural movement around progress studies.

Here, Dr. J. Storrs Hall explores why we don’t yet have flying cars and uses the answers he finds as launching off points for a broader discussion on the causes of The Great Stagnation that started in the late 1960s.

Broadly speaking this is a book about how the future could be even more glorious than what was envisioned in the 1960s, how we lost our way, and how we might get back on the path to a grander future. Storr is a computer scientist by training but is well known for his work in the nanotechnology field. His command of important object-level considerations in multiple engineering disciplines is really impressive. Whether discussing nuclear powered rockets, nuclear batteries, molecular nanotechnology, or pros and cons of different flying car designs, Storrs analyses are firmly grounded in established physics and specific detailed engineering calculations. Storrs makes a compelling case that we would have flying cars, energy too cheap to meter, supersonic flight, vacations on the moon, and material abundance if we had been bolder and hadn't regulated and litigated ourselves to death. Skeptical? Buy the book! Highly recommended!

15 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ken

A screed: Blame the government and universities

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 21, 2022

Verified Purchase

Author argues we'd all now have flying cars (or equivalent wonders) if the government and their ivory tower elitist supporters had just let the free market do the job instead of crowding the market out and entrenching elites who oppose change. Hmmm. America invests nearly $5 trillion per year (largely privately) and foreign investors (most of whom could invest in America) invest multiples more, while US government annual R&D spending comes in under $140 billion, less than 3% of total US investment. The face that the private sector does not divert $140 billion from low return projects--and no doubt managers know they are investing in at least some low yield projects--to potentially high-yielding projects like flying cars suggests crowding out is not the culprit. And those intellectual fortresses--so what? If bright private sector researchers have brilliant ideas that go against the flow, the free market will ensure they'll find savvy private sector investors to fund them, notwithstanding what the ivory tower elitists say. Is a Silicon Valley VC really going to reject a brilliant way to produce microscopic factories or cold fusion or flying cars because some professor at Harvard opposes it? I expect it's more likely he'd take pride at thumbing his nose at them. Markets in everything except when it goes against your argument that government is the source of all evil!

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Peter Doherty

Here Is My Disappointment

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 24, 2022

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I was excited to read this book because, as the author is, I'm a fan of sci-fi, Feynman and the potential for the future we've been promised but I was ultimately greatly disappointed by it. There are some insightful and compelling cases made about the history and potential future of aviation, nanotechnology and "safe" nuclear power, to be sure. However, as much as the author puts forth an air of objectivity, their biases show through like a nuclear powered lighthouse and the book winds up spending a significant percentage of its pages airing grievances about safety regulations, cities, "greens", Woodstock and "the rathole of worthless light rail".

One of the themes of the book is that the "great stagnation" that happened in the 60/70s as a (supposed) result of regulation and counterculture is to blame for upper-middle class households not having flying cars. It also makes bold claims about how no valuable (in either sense) research or discoveries have come about as a result of government grants or R&D (post-Manhattan Project?) and confusingly, perhaps conveniently, doesn't mention the Internet or DARPA when they quickly handwave over IT as the sole exception to the "great stagnation". Also no mention of the government grants that led to the breakthroughs in mRNA technology (again, DARPA and NIAID).

A significant portion of the book was also dedicated to the potential of nuclear power and how "relatively" safe it is or could be and, yet, there wasn't a single mention of the Chernobyl disaster and a blanket dismissal of any "real" damage done as a result of the Fukushima disaster. The author also cherry picks climate science reports and all but dismisses the *widely* accepted view that humans are/will be responsible for any significant amount of climate change and that it also doesn't really matter because it won't have *too* much of an economic impact.

33 people found this helpful

Helpful

Charles DuHadway

Inspiring vision of the future

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 27, 2022

Verified Purchase

Few books have even one provocative idea. This has dozens.

Its optimism is a reminder of the power of imagination, ambition and execution. We get to make the future. And we can choose to make it awesome.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Susan E. Fox

What technology can be used to fly privately?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 8, 2022

Verified Purchase

Liked the overview of what could have been developed for a flying car owned by a family and where it looks like we are going. Also good info for me, a general reader, for what might be possible once technology hurdles cleared for faster flying. Great general information on history of first flying machines. Good general information concerning the economics of private flying cars.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Maxim Ischenko

Such an inspiring book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 5, 2022

Verified Purchase

Beyond technology and all the things we could have done (and will do!) to the betterment of human race this book also re-kindled my passion for good old sci-fi books. Thank you!

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Chris

Great read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 23, 2022

Verified Purchase

Do not let the title or cover of this book fool you. This is not only about “flying cars”. It’s the modern day version of “profiles of the future”. This is a book for readers that want to feel optimistic about the future and the steps we can take to realizing that better future.

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