Review of the book " Where is my flying car? Memories of the past future " by Storrs Hall
Let's say you managed to get into a parallel world, which is a mirror image of ours, and pulled out a book that is the exact opposite of the work of Robert Gordon "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" [voluminous book on the history of US economic growth from 1870 to 1970 / approx. per.].
Such a book would not have been written by a scientist, an economic historian immersed in the past, but by an engineer who has been engaged in futuristic technologies throughout his career. It would have been published not by a prestigious academic publishing house, but by samizdat. It would have poorly laid out tables, and lurid three-dimensional letters flaunted on the cover. Instead of conservative predictions of future technologies, it would have boldly speculated about the limits of the possible, from nanotechnology to cold nuclear fusion.... Instead of a sober review of the economic history of one country in one period, everything would coexist in it, from engineering and physics to philosophy. One chapter would discuss the power-to-weight ratio of jet turbines, while another would discuss the rise of the counterculture. Instead of announcing the death of innovation and the end of growth, it would paint a bold and ambitious technological future.
Such a book from a parallel world appeared, and it is called " Where is my flying car? Memories of the past future ." Its author is Storrs Hall.
Hall diligently tackles the title question: Why don't we still have flying cars? And a few chapters are really dedicated to the immersion in history, engineering, and economics of flying machines. However, to fully answer this question, Hall has to seriously expand and deepen his research - he quickly concludes that the barriers to the emergence of flying machines are not technological or economic, they lie in the cultural and political realms. And the explanation for the absence of such machines is associated with the explanation of the Great Stagnation itself [term from the pamphlet"Great stagnation: how America devoured all the readily available fruits, why it got sick, and how it (as a result) will get better" by Tyler Cowen, American economist and specialist in the field of cultural economics / approx. per.].
Bold predictions
The most valuable thing I learned from the book is an insight into some of the amazing technological possibilities.
Flying cars
Before reading the book, I thought that flying cars is one of those ideas that sound good but don't work in practice or turn out to be boring. They may be difficult to manage by definition, too dangerous or not so valuable. However, this book changed my understanding of this with a simple analogy. Today's air transportation system has all the same inconveniences that the railways had over a hundred years ago. Passenger planes are large mass transport vehicles that travel on specific routes with a given schedule connecting a small number of stations. Because of this, travelers face two problems. The first is the problem of three vehicles: you need to get from the place of departure to the nearest station, and then from the station of arrival to the real target.Every time you need to make transfers and drag luggage. The second is the inconvenience of the schedule: you need to arrive at the place on time to catch the train or plane. Personal transport is ready to receive you at any time. It makes sense: A 90-minute flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles takes you half a day when you factor in airport transfers, ticket check delays, security checks and boarding.
The book indicates that the main value of a flying car will not be that you will travel the same path, only a little faster. The value will be in the fact that it will allow you to fly on routes that seem inconvenient today. Such a machine will shrink your world, increase the maximum allowable distance to work, for shopping, for a visit, for a business meeting or for a weekend vacation. Hall cites travel research quotes that indicate that in any community, people spend about an hour a day moving around, whether it's hiking or driving. He points out that increasing the effective radius of such trips increases the effective area available to you in square proportion (doubling the radius quadruples the number of possible targets).
Hall carefully prepared for the book, conducted research and analysis, and even learned how to fly an airplane on his own. He recalls a history of flying car research and development that began much earlier and has far more success stories than I expected. He compiled a list of project types, which include transformer cars (capable of moving like an airplane and like a car) and vertical takeoff devices. It simulates engineering compromises and travel times. And he concludes that there are no economic and technological reasons that prohibit us from making flying cars with today's technologies. Why shouldn't they appear, if work on them has been continuously conducted since the 1970s.
Nanotechnology
Hall is a computer scientist by training, but most of his career has been in nanotechnology, and there are surprisingly many in the book. He emphasizes that he does not mean just nanoscale materials, but that he is talking about nanotechnology. The kind of technology Feynman dreamed of in the 60s and promoted by Eric Drexler in the 90s: Atomic precision manufacturing. Placing atoms one after another in specific places gives you complete control over the structure of matter. According to Hall, the physics of such technologies is real, and the basic concepts have been worked out, even if their appearance is still very far away.
The potential of nanotechnology is amazing. For example, assembly speed alone will drastically reduce the cost of any physical product. Hall estimates that any physical asset in the US - "any building, factory, highway, railroad, bridge, plane, train, car, truck, and ship" - can be assembled in a week. Nanotechnology will enable the creation of materials with extreme qualities such as diamond toughness in everyday manufacturing and construction.
The possibilities are comparable to science fiction. "Space pier" - a set of towers one hundred kilometers high with a magnetic accelerator that launches cargo into orbit. Such a structure will save fuel, which is spent on getting out of the Earth's gravity well, and will reduce the cost of putting the cargo into orbit by three orders of magnitude. The Weather Machine is a fleet of a quintillion of ubiquitous one-centimeter-diameter balls made of nanometer-thick diamond, equipped with remotely controlled mirrors and flying in the stratosphere. These balls will be able to reflect or transmit sunlight to form a "programmable greenhouse gas" that can regulate temperature and redirect the sun's energy. And, of course, inexpensive flying cars.
Energy, energy, energy
One of the obvious signs of stagnation in progress is a decline in energy consumption. Since the growth estimate for this metric was mentioned in the autobiography of Henry Adams (writer and historian, grandson of John Quincy Adams [6th President of the United States, son of the second President of the United States / approx. Per.]), Hall calls the long-term annual increase in energy consumption per capita in 7% "Henry Adams curve". And in the 20th century we deviated from it:
Energy consumption in the United States per capita. One kilowatt is equal to 8766 kWh per year [365.25 days for 24 hours].
Some techno optimists, like Andrew McAfee [MIT researcher who studies how digital technology is changing the world / approx. trans.], rejoice at the decline in energy use curves, saying that we get more by spending less. The hall reminds us that more is more. All other things being equal, of course, energy efficiency is a good thing. However, there is no reason to believe that flattening the energy consumption curve or decreasing resource utilization would be optimal for progress. One of the main components of progress is the collection of more and more resources and their productive use. And we need a lot more energy if we go into nanotechnology production, regular space flights, and fly cars. In fact, a good explanation for the presence of technological stagnation is the fact thatthat the only technological revolution in the last 50 years - the computing revolution - did not require more power than could have been produced in the 70s.
Where is all this energy coming from? You can collect solar energy: it comes to the Earth from the Sun 10,000 times more than is required by mankind today. It is, of course, difficult to collect practically, due to such minor annoyances as clouds or night time. However, a fleet of quintillion remotely controlled balloons, properly deployed in the stratosphere, must cope with this.
However, much of the energy discussion in the book focuses on the incredible potential of nuclear energy. It is argued that we must convert everything to nuclear energy. Nuclear houses with compact local reactors that do not require a grid connection. Nuclear vehicles, flying or ground. Even nuclear batteries - I was shocked to learn that some types of nuclear batteries were already developed several decades ago and are used in implantable pacemakers.
The main advantage, of course, will be the insane energy density of nuclear fuel - a kilogram of enriched uranium contains the same energy as 100,000 kilograms of anthracite coal, or 37,000 liters of gasoline. Nuclear-powered devices do not need to be recharged. By equipping your car and home with nuclear generators, you will be recharging them at the same time as your annual service. The efficiency of nuclear fuel makes its economy similar to that of renewable resources. The fuel is almost free compared to the fixed cost of the infrastructure. "A wind turbine uses more lubricating oil than a nuclear reactor - uranium, per kilowatt-hour output."
The book describes several engineering approaches to the use of nuclear energy, in addition to the generally accepted power plants today using fission of uranium-235. There are even theoretical possibilities such as "chainless reactors" that bombard fissionable materials with high-energy neutrons and avoid chain reactions. Hall says even cold fusion deserves more research - oh, sorry, "low-energy nuclear reactions" (LENR). This phenomenon may turn out to be useless, or even an artifact of an experiment, but there is still something that we do not fully understand. From the three chapters on nuclear energy, I learned that there are a huge number of opportunities in this area, and its potential is simply amazing.
The economy needs energy, and it is remarkable that our [American] culture is opposed to almost any form of energy - a pathology Hall called "ergophobia."
The fifth level
Putting it all together, Hall summarizes his vision of the future under the name of the "Second Atomic Age", combining nuclear energy, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. This is a dream of exponential or even super-exponential progress, in which improvements in the world of atoms occur at a rate that has so far only been available in the world of bits.
Hall cites global development advocate Hans Rosling , who breaks the world population down into four income levels on a logarithmic scale: from $ 1 a day (extreme poverty) to $ 64 / day (access to electricity, a car, a dishwasher, etc.).
Regarding this scale, he notes:
Now the miracle of the industrial revolution is easy to demonstrate: in 1800, 85% of the world's population was at the first level. Today only 9% are there. Over the past half century, a significant proportion of the population has moved beyond the first tier, narrowing the gap between rich and poor and bringing the income distribution curve around the world to the shape of a bell.
The average American went from tier two in 1800 to tier three in 1900 and tier four in 2000. It's
almost as easy to describe the story of the Great Stagnation: tier five doesn't exist.
The book draws a vivid picture of what level 5 might look like and why we should strive to grow to it.
The origins of stagnation
Why haven't we reached Level 5 yet? What caused the Great Stagnation? What straightened the Henry Adams curve? Why don't we have nanotechnology that makes everything, and not all machines run on nuclear energy? And where is my flying car?
Hal blames several political and cultural factors for this.
Centralized financing
He begins by studying nanotechnology. He says true nanotechnology has killed off federal funding. Not directly - due to the avalanche of academic policies that followed the Clinton Administration's $ 500 million National Nanotechnology Initiative. reacted in two ways. At first, they adapted the prefix "nano" to everything they did - even to projects of studying nanomaterials that were not related to the original idea of production at the atomic level. Then they began to aggressively attack the original idea. As a result, the funding and credibility of true nanotechnology evaporated.
Hall cites Machiavelli's work from the 16th century, which describes why innovation is politically dangerous. All those who lose if you win will turn against you. All those who will win are not motivated enough, because innovation is a vague and theoretical thing. Since sixteenth-century social theory describes modern academic politics beautifully, Hall calls it the "Machiavellian effect." He gives other examples, arguing that research in the field of cold fusion has buried a similar process.
He concludes that the main culprit is the "increasing centralization and bureaucratization of science and research funding":
Centralized funding for the intellectual elite makes it easy for cliques and politically savvy individuals to seize control of their field. And by their nature, they resist everything new, external, not consistent with their vision. There is a moat with crocodiles around their ivory tower.
At the very least, it can be considered suspicious that the large increase in civilian federal research funding almost coincides with the recent period of technological decline.
Burden of regulation
Hall cites a post from one of the forums that says that even if you made a flying car and were ready to take off, you would have been hit by: the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the mayor, the media, insurers and your neighbors. Regulators are tightening the screws on nuclear power even more - Hall blames this very situation for the sharp rise in the cost of nuclear power plants in the United States:
The cost of building nuclear power plants skyrocketed after the founding of the US Department of Energy [in 1977]. Horizontal line - average cost prior to 1980, $ 1177 per kW.
Apart from a direct impediment to development, this burden also absorbs human capital:
How much?
Tillinghast-Towers Perrin, 2% . , 1980-, , , . , . , , , , . , , , .
In the 1950s, the future was seen different, but always optimistic. People believed in progress and believed that technology was leading us to a better world. After a generation, everything changed, and this became especially evident towards the end of the 1960s. A "counterculture" has grown up that does not believe in technology and progress. An important part of it was the environmental movement, and most of its representatives considered technology and industry to be methods of actively destroying the Earth.
In HG Wells' Time Machine, the Eloi were a weak, lecherous race of useless people who made no contribution to society (and a parody of wealthy idlers in 19th century England). Hall calls the counterculture activists "Eloi Antagonists)," and accuses them of ergophobia and over-regulation:
Unlike the events of a century ago, today for every person working to promote progress, there is another who sincerely believes that he is saving the planet by slowing down progress.
Like legal chick-making, social activism simply sucks human capital:
One of the main reasons for the technological slowdown and the Great Stagnation is the diversion of most of the talented and motivated representatives of the last few generations from productive pursuits to costly demonstrations of virtue . If your neighbor is saving the planet, then keeping the water supply running, filling holes in the road, or building bridges seems to be less valuable than that. The Eloi antagonists have drawn upon themselves the respect and gratitude that people who really do valuable work should receive.
The shift in values is reflected and fueled by the shift in science fiction towards dystopias:
. , , , – – , , , , , , , , , , — , , . 60- – , .
Where did the Eloi antagonists come from, and why did they appear then? Hall suggests a couple of factors. One: the success of industrial civilization in closing the basic needs for food, clothing and a roof over their heads, forced people to climb higher up the Maslov pyramid , to seek self-realization, which they found in the form of social activism. Second: with the disappearance of border lands, people lost a world in which they had to directly fight with nature and reality:
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It seems to me that these explanations are not complete. If people needed self-realization, why focus on a crusade against technology? Why not realize yourself through inventions or art? I think the explanation must be sought not only in behavior, but also in the nature of people. Deirdre McCloskey suggests that the intelligentsia rebelled against capitalism and industry as early as 1848 (Ayn Rand traces the origins of this movement to the 18th century, accusing Immanuel Kant of killing the Enlightenment). So far, this question remains open for me.
There are many writers out there who are optimistic about the future. However, the most common goals I come across are goals related to eliminating something bad: curing cancer, ending poverty, stopping climate change.
All of this is good, but not enough. We need to do more than just cure diseases so that everyone can live to the age that is considered respectable today. We must cure aging itself, and extend human life indefinitely. We must not only maintain per capita energy use - we must go back to the Henry Adams curve and strengthen it. We must not only avoid a worsening climate, but try to actively control and optimize it for the benefit of humans. We must not just bring the whole world to the fourth level, but strive for the fifth.
Set only the first goal, as some so-called. techno-optimists are not optimistic enough. It is a drive for very limited progress, followed by stagnation. It is contentment with the current state of affairs, bringing the whole world to the current gold standards of living, but not improving them. In this context, the book “Where is my flying car?” Seemed to me encouraging. Hall bravely calls for unrestricted progress in all dimensions.
The only thing I really disliked (with the exception of poorly formatted tables) was the poor organization of the content. The order of the chapters is somewhat chaotic. Distractions and immersions in technical jungle often occur. I mostly liked it, but if you are not interested in them, you can skip them. Overall, I found the book exciting and became one of my favorite works on stagnation and progress.