Where Is My Flying Car?
A Memoir of Future Past
by J. Storrs Hall · first published 2018
14mentions
7recommended by
10HN commenters
2018–2025first – last mentioned
70% recommend30% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Argues that technological progress stalled after the 1970s, with energy use flattening as a central explanation; useful for readers wondering why past sci-fi visions of the future never arrived.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Back in the 60s we were all sure there would be flying cars in our future. Were the futurists and SF writers of the day just wrong? Or has something more interesting and important happened? Will we ever get flying cars? This book offers a compelling analysis of the past and a surprising view of the future.
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Where is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall. The flying car is both literal and metaphorical. If you’ve ever wondered why technology has stagnated, this is the book for you. If you doubt technology has stagnated, this book will…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗…behaviors that affect the subjects, so you might yet find it interesting, if you're willing to take wild ride. Of the books I've read in 2020, this is the one I must recommend anytime I get a chance: Where Is My Flying Car?: A Memoir of Future Past by J Storrs Hall
on “Ask HN: Best books for dealing with workplace politics and dishonesty?” ↗> It's a big mystery for me how the things went down since seventies. There is a insightful (if a bit messy, and occasionally wrong) book that purports to answer that question: Where is my flying car?: A memoir of future past, by J. Storrs Hall. [1] In that author's view, it boils down to * a levelling off of energy consumption per capita, that previously had doubled every 10 years. (In particular,…
on “The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower” ↗I like the question. Bible aside, here are some other options: Where is my Flying Car? Zero to One Paradise Lost East of Eden
on “What's the most radical book you've read?” ↗…basically flatlined since the 70s. It appears that on a civilizational scale, reaching greater levels of development and expression simply requires more Joules. If you disagree, I highly recommend the book Where is my Flying Car?
on “Intel plans immersion lab to chill its power-hungry chips” ↗Clarke's Profiles of the Future was off on a whole lot, but still impressive. There's a recent book Where is my flying car? with the thesis that old sci-fi visions of the future could've been accurate if not for unnecessary stagnation in key areas like nuclear power. The 70s were the turning point in this view, which I think…
on “Things Stanislaw Lem Predicted” ↗"Where is My Flying Car" is very good. The author is a bit overoptimistic IMO in his assessment of technological capabilities, but it has a great overview of attempted aviation innovations that I've never seen anywhere else.…
on “Stripe Press” ↗I highly recommend giving the book "Where is my flying car?" a read. It is a very idiosyncratic and unconventional book, written by an engineer rather than an academic. He goes into great depth about how the FAA and NRC basically deliberately killed general aviation…
on “Two stories about tacit knowledge” ↗The curves largely break about 1971 across a wide set of areas, but the energy connection is interesting. J Storrs Hall argues in "Where is My Flying Car?" that the proximate cause is breaking the increasing availability of energy per person, which could only have been continued with very widespread nuclear, and that the turn from nuclear was a symptom…
on “The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality” ↗I've heard there is a book about this why we don't have such a thing - the book largely blames it on the green movement I think... Where is my flying car I believe is the title. Earlier this year I saw a book review from the star slater codex substack. Didn't read it tho
on “The U.S. Army tried portable nuclear power at remote bases 60 years ago” ↗…that I really need to sort through. But yeah, I also am concerned about how safety driven we are for things and unwilling to take risks as a culture but that might be recency bias because I'm reading "Where is my flying car?" and they basically make the same point about the regulatory state stymieing innovation in the name of safety (often for absurd things like nuclear)
on “FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars” ↗A lot of different trends in technological stagnation can be traced back to Nixon. The book Where is my Flying Car? goes into this in depth
on “Starship is threatening NASA’s moon contractors” ↗>people are flying 50 year old planes because the new basic cessnas cost $400K each This wasn't always the case though. There's a chapter in the book Where is My Flying Car? that explains how this was a result of the early 70s explosion of product liability regulations + a FAA that was and continues to be completely apathetic to general aviation
on “Details emerge of Air France B777 landing incident” ↗The book Where is my Flying Car traces a lot of different developments back to the late 60s/early 70s explosion in number of pages of federal regulations and lawyers per capita. The massive cultural obsession with danger and liability…
on “Young adults are struggling with their mental health” ↗