Reflections on Flying Cars

I’m currently on the plane from Toronto to Las Vegas. I’ve spent over an hour reading Where’s my Flying Car I finished Part 1 - Profiles of the past, having gone from chapter 6 to chapter 9.

The author makes the argument that “the great stagnation” was not a stagnation at all, and that it was in fact a strangulation that came as a result of

  1. Over regulation
  2. Over-politicization of science, entrenched powerful players stifling new innovations
  3. Fear-mongering from the “do-nots” (as opposed to “doers”)

What’s top of my mind is understanding what can be done about this. I am at this point ~45% thru the book and i understand that much of the remaining parts will be dedicated to this topic.

With that said:

things that give me hope for the future:

Open-source

Additive manufacturing

I think it’s difficult to understate the impacts of additive manufacturing on future prosperity. A new generation of builders and engineers is being crafted as a result and they are starting their journey in a world where nearly anything they imagine can be built almost instantly in their own homes with next to no operator input.

What can’t be ignored is that this wouldn’t be possible had it not been for the Reprap movement and the open-sourcing of the underlying technology. This example alone is enough to illustrate the value of open-source, and how it must be held high and championed. You can’t predict what the impacts will be of putting new, disruptive technologies in peoples hands will be.

Seizing the means of production

Adjacent to open-source and additive is the idea that the people are now being provided the tools to seize the means of production. Slowly, it’s becoming possible to completely bypass the incumbent gate-keepers. The OEMs, the government regulators, and the retailers. With an open-source FDM printer you can build open-source wire EDM cutters, “Mostly-Printed” CNC machines which can be used to cut metal and build more industrial machinery. Modestly sized printer farms with now open-source tool-changing capabilities can allow scale production of goods with limited initial capital investment and immense flexibility of goods produced. These goods can be distributed on a global scale using the internet. And all of this can take place without any oversight from the established gatekeepers, without the need to bend to their whims.

The future is being built by teenagers on discord and twitter.

The monumental growth happening in emerging economies

  • The author states that emerging economies are continuing to follow the Henry Adams curve of energy growth – this is optimistic as their rate of progress is faster than that of the western world during the industrial revolution since they’re catching up
  • This is optimistic since the same doers, and desire to societally progress should still be alive once they reach “feature parity” and would thus have less opposition to continued growth.
    • The people in those places are able to see the improvements in quality of life more clearly and might be less likely to oppose continued growth and regulators might be slower to catch up.