In this week’s lecture video Dr. J. Storrs Hall talks about his book “Where Is My Flying Car?”. In this lecture he discusses the issues our world has seen with stagnation in development and innovation since the 1970s. Hall discusses how past generations had visions of an advanced future with very advanced technology, such as flying cars. Our current generation has fallen short of these expectations though. Everything that these early generations dreamed of is still in reach we just must break down the wall for some of these regulations against entrepreneurial risk.
Hall talks about the famous show the Jetsons. He shares he loved that show as a kid and I must agree with him. It was always a favorite in my household. What makes it so interesting to watch is the possibilities for the future it makes look so possible. There are flying cars, robot maids, home floating, and video calling was common. The inspiration of this came from the vision and innovation that took place after the war in the 1950s-1960s. One thing Hall shared from this was that he came to realize that the flying cars were a representation of the past. In the 1800s many futurists predicted cars but not universal ownership of them. However, the Jetsons did, while it appeared the main purpose was them predicting flying cars, they were partially predicting the possibility that every family would one day be able to afford and own a car. Hall also shares that he discovered majority of these creative ideas from the Jetsons became possible in the 1970s. Yet if we look at our society today, we don’t have any flying cars or amazing robot maids. So, what happened to make our society sort of fall behind with our innovation of things? The government and regulations would be the answer to that question.
This time of interference can be called the great stagnation. Charts show us that there was a nice steady growth for a century and ¾ but then in the 70s that growth flatlined. After the war many entrepreneurs were able to rise and take risks with their ideas to create these awesome inventions. But with the interference of the government and regulations pushing boundaries to make an idea come to life became highly discouraged. This isn’t believed by hall to be due to a lack pf potential in our world but it’s due to a lack of societal and institutional factors that hindered innovation. These hinderances came from cultural shifts that has made society focus more on conservation rather than innovation and they came from regulatory factors that have hindered the development of possible new products.
The Jetsons is interesting because it demonstrates a fork in the road for our society. The Jetsons path is what could have been, abundance and advancement. The other path is where we are now, minor improvements and majority stagnation. I really thought about how true this is though considering some of our past paper topics on the manipulation tactics of government authorities and some the people in charge creating things quickly and not correctly. With all of this in mind, I wondered if society would be as advanced as we think it would be or if it would have ended up falling into corruption and we would be in an even more declining era at this time. The only way to really know would have been to take that other path and see what happened.
These thoughts really back up Dr. Halls main focus of discussion that the excessive government control and bureaucratic oversight only dims the possibilities for innovation rather than helps it. Entrepreneurs at their core are willing to take the risks needed to make ideas happen while the government focus on being safe and cautious with everything. So if we want to ever see a world as unique as the Jetsons or Meet the Robinsons we need to allow entrepreneurs the free will and space to take the risks and make it all possible.
