Intellectually Curious - Edition 26
Welcome to the 26th Edition of the Intellectually Curious Newsletter. I would like to thank all the subscribers and for those who haven’t subscribed, please do so that you don’t miss the editions.
Concept of the Book:
If you had grown watching American TV series The Jetsons (1962-63) or watched the much later or read enough Science fiction from 1900-1960 – you have one question: where is my flying car ? We should have had it by now.
The Jetsons was set in 2062 and they had a flying car so by now we should have had it at least in use by rich probably or in public service. But we don’t see any. The famous VC Peter Theil said: “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters”. So what happened to everything and that is exactly what the book for this edition is going to analyse in depth and detail and it can teach us lot of things of what has gone wrong at different places over a period of time.
Book for this edition:
The book that is going to explain to us everything on why we don’t have flying cars and many other scientific advancements that we were promised off is: Where is my flying car ? By J. Storrs Hall. Storrs Hall is a futurist and a nano-scientist and you can read more about him at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Storrs_Hall
This is one of the fascinating books that I read in 2024. It explains in details of where we got derailed from the future that we were promised in the numerous Science fiction books or as predicted by many famous futurists from 1900-75. The book explains the technological limitations in designing a flying car, what kind of technologies could have made it possible, what caused the general decline in many areas that we thought we would progress and have a future that is much more better for everyone and not just for the affluent.
What does the book offer us:
The book is very well researched and goes into every aspects from the promised future, where we failed and what can we do to recover.
Multiple world fairs before the World war-2 across America spoke about the city of the future, the future utopia that will be enabled by technology like vacations to the moon, electricity that will be too cheap to meter etc . The post-world war-2 America, it was all energy and optimism to build the future, with airplanes taking off the ground enabling ordinary people to travel around the world, the ability to put satellites in the space, space travel etc etc.,
Everyone was predicting the future and amongst many, Arthur C Clarke who wrote Profiles of the Future. He was accurate to many of his predictions coming true and one that is very relevant to the current times where there is debate about hybrid working or return to office full time he predicted the ability to work from anywhere concept which was super useful during the recent pandemic.
So we started with such wonderful dreams of Utopia but what we have got is a world still fighting wars, sectarian feuds and a very unstable world politics that is also facing a climate disaster. Hall goes into the details of what went wrong and what can we still dream and imagine and what can we still do to get to the future.
If you see from this perspective of predictions about the future (2000’s and beyond) we can very well say – we have stagnated. But if you think that futurists never predicted about stagnating then you are wrong. Arthur C Clarke again predicted on why we may not invent more in the fast transportation sector if there is huge improvement in telecommunications.
“There is, however, one trend which may work against the establishment of a virtually instantaneous global transportation system. As communications improve, until all the senses— and not merely vision and hearing— can be projected anywhere on the face of the Earth, men will have less and less incentive to travel. This situation was envisaged half a century ago by E. M. Forster in his famous short story The Machine Stops, where he pictured out remote descendants as living in single cells, scarcely ever leaving them but being able to establish instant TV contact with anyone else on Earth, wherever he might be.
In his own lifetime Forster has seen TV perfected far beyond his imaginings of three decades ago, and his vision of the future may be, in its essentials, not so far from the truth. Telecommunication and transportation are opposing forces, which so far have always struck a balance. If the first should ever win, the world of Forster’s story would be the result.” Issac Asimov also wrote about a planetary society that never meets anyone in their planet except through video screens.
If you take the aeroplanes, other than the composite body structure, there has been no improvements to the speed of travel and comfort of travel has definitely taken a nose dive. The author talks about Henry Adams curve that looks into the energy generation improvement of 7%? yearly and energy growth in US actually moved along with this curve till the 1970’s and post that has been around 10-12 kW per capita for the US. So with energy growth stagnating, the only area of progress has been in the area of computing and now that is also staring at the energy curve as they are putting in more and more data centers to deliver AI to everyone around the world and this has resulted in the investment in Nuclear power in US after many many decades.
What do we learn from this book ?
The book moves on the discuss the way we conquered the skies and the progress in creating a flying car starting in 1930’s and how the technology for doing so till 1970’s yielded good progress. This chapter details onto the research done by various key players in developing a flying car, the limitations and how it could be overcome. Then the book jumps into Nano technology, the author’s favorite field and why we haven’t made any progress there, about cold fusion how it was derailed by curtailing funds to the cold fusion research.
In this chapter, Hall brings up one of the key concepts of the book which he calls as Machiavelli effect – that was written by Machiavelli in his most famous book – The Prince in 1532 – “And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.”
This has happened to Cold Fusion and Nano tech and we are seeing not much progress there. You can see this playing in our current days for the opposition of EV's, autonomous driving and many other areas.
A month or so ago, there was video by Niel deGrasse Tyson that spoke about why the space exploration stopped in 1970's and we never went back to moon and he said the main reason is also there is no Geo-political need to do it. This book also talks about it. So that is also another factor for the stagnation of Space exploration.
So how does this effect play in the modern world – the author says it is through the centralized funding grants? that empowers the intellectual elite of certain fields to be resistant to new ideas that can change the world and we entered the Great Stagnation that is described by economist Tyler Cowen as a cost disease and also the amount of money spent in R&D came down drastically from 1970’s when the stakeholder economy took more foothold that what is the right thing to do for the world. The author quotes from D.S.L Cardwell to mention how science and technology progresses outside the bureaucracy citing the comparison between France and England in 1700-1800.
Post 1960’s the world entered a different phase – it was a world of movements from environmentalism? to many isms. This definitely created what H G Wells predicted in his book, the Time Machine about a group of human beings who have grown soft due to success in life calling them Eloi. In this book, Hall keeps returning to Eloi’s as people who block progress of science and technology by saying let us be as we are than by making changes. This was also accelerated in Europe by the world war 2 and in US after their Korean and Vietnam wars and the anti-nuclear movement that got accelerated further by the Two mile Island incident. Also regulations played a major role in slowing down our energy consumption per capita.?
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The author then moves on the explore what is possible in the current era and explains how a world with flying cars look like. He also discusses in detail about how to atomic age didn’t come through, that could have given abundant fuel that will be too cheap to meter to drive our energy needs and also power the flying car. He also delves deeply into how progress in Nano tech could have enabled us the promised future. He discusses in detail about how the future could be made possible through proper use of atomic energy, nano technology how Robots can be made cheaper and better, flying cars, ability to travel to other planets and stars, how our cities can be made better and how we all can lead a life of comfort with constantly advancing technology.
So should we read this book ? - Absolutely yes
If you want a book to understand why the future that was predicted by science fiction authors and other futurists has not happened you need to read this book. You will understand how energy plays a critical role in the modernization of a society and realizing its future goals. He elaborates stagnation not just in energy generation, but also the culture of innovation, the rise of the culture of green fundamentalism without real scientific understanding, how computer technology advanced because there was no government funding and all the new innovations have come from private organisations.
I really liked the way he had compared the academic prowess of France didn't usher the Industrial revolution there, but in neighboring England and we all await the day when regulations allow the flying car. It is a very enjoyable read and it goes into more details that I couldn’t cover in the review. A fascinating read and one that you shouldn’t miss.
New Technology / Scientific Curiosities:
Reionization and modern Universe – To learn more read:
Dangers of Mirror Life the latest scientific controversy:
End of the year reviews from the Web:
Podcast episode of this Newsletter:
Two episodes of a good interesting podcast interview to end the year from The Next big Idea:
Something Interesting to know about:
We keep asking why the day sky is blue, so why is the night sky dark ?
Interesting isn’t it ?
Hope you enjoyed this edition! ?Do share your feedback/suggestions on how it can be made better in 2025.
Wish you all a happy 2025!!