Where Is My Flying Car?

Why it’s on the list: J. Storrs Hall’s diagnosis of the “great stagnation” in energy and atoms — why the twentieth century’s curve of physical-world progress flattened, and what it would take to restart it.

Where I heard about it

• The progress-studies conversation — a Stripe Press book and a recurring reference in the progress-studies and technological-stagnation discourse I follow.
• @FilArons — on his recommended-reading list, November 2025.

Connections

• Historical Futurists — sits squarely in the lineage of thinkers asking why the predicted future of atoms (not just bits) never arrived.