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Comment by riverlong | Hacker News Reader

That being said, I'm not sure that we're actually leaving our bull run. We keep getting more efficient. Sure, we don't have flying cars, but for example, we've connected the entire world via the internet, and it's only getting better. The milestones of obvious tangible technological progress -- supersonic travel, life extension, etc. are different. We've had real progress, but in more abstract ways, along a different axis.

Perhaps because we've been progressing mostly along that less visible axis, we've forgotten how to dream big in the tangible, physical world.

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Flying cars are also an example of utopianism gone wrong; it turns out it's impractical for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to:

- energy; it's going to take a lot more energy to get something and keep it in the air, than it does to just fight rolling resistance

- safety; cars are dangerous enough, adding gravity as a potential additional vector in an accident sounds like even more of a disaster waiting to happen. transportation is already one of the biggest energy consuming sectors; in an age where we are trying to reduce fossil fuel use does throwing in more energy requirements make sense?

- noise and visual pollution; people are going to be upset when their nice upper story bedroom now gets inundated with traffic

Entire premise of flying car concept is: we have abundant and cheap energy and technology that makes them safe and easy to use.

Computer pilot will make them safe and easy to use. Nuclear fusion might provide us with a cheap energy. But there's another problem and it's light and dense batteries or other means to carry energy. Now that's not solved and I have no idea if that would ever be solved. May be with hydrogen?

will, when it exists; will, when it exists; currently unsurmountable energy density problem.

1. Airplanes are actually pretty energy efficient for their speed, especially since they can avoid fuel wasting terrain and avoid stopping and starting like cars.

2. Airplanes have an excellent safety record, far surpassing cars.

3. Maybe, but that's a small price to pay imho.

I understand that points 1 and 2 are based off commercial aviation and not general aviation, but I think it does reflect a general trend in society to try and reflexively say "it will never work, here's why" rather than "here are some reasons why it might not work, let's see if we can fix them"

1. They can only avoid these stops because they are only carrying their passengers part of the way on their journey. No one is flying just to get to an airport. They have to leave the airport to go somewhere else. Also, heavy cargo is typically carried on trains, barges and trucks for energy trade off reasons.

2. Flying cars would not necessarily have the same safety record as commercial airlines. These airlines are regulated and each plane is meticulously maintained. Each pilot is extensively trained. A mass market flying vehicle would not have these benefits.

The energy trade off problem is just physics. It does take a lot of energy to keep mass suspended above earth for any length of time. Unless someone develops antigravity tech or we discover a more dense form of energy storage than jet fuel, it's unlikely to happen.

1 is only really true for long distance travel, and in the context of planes where you have to pre-file a flight plan with the route planned out in advance. This would be wildly impractical for any sort of intra-urban travel with current commute volumes.

2 is true but planes are flown by professional pilots. The skill of the average American driver is extremely poor.

3 would lead to local jursidictions banning flying cars faster than one could blink. It is already pretty much impossible to route new highways through populated areas in the US for this exact reason.

the internet has enabled a new kind of bureaucracy where we now engage with commerce by filling out paperwork ourselves rather than having vendors manage it themselves. It used to be a business cost, now it's an externality. It reminds me of pollution - industrial processes that are "cheap" because no one is counting the damage done. Do you have more free time than your parents did when they were your age? I think our gains in "efficiency" are a shell game, that we're actually paying more to maintain an increasingly byzantine system

You can now map your room using LIDAR so you can fill your tax forms using VR goggles without leaving your room!

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