🚀 What did they take from us, exactly?

A whole lot more than flying cars

Los Angeles of the future by Syd Mead

One of my favorite social media memes involves highlighting some retrofuturist image (bubble cities, flying cars, elevated highways, supertall skyscrapers) or some visionary, Up Wing plan (a thousand US nuclear reactors by the year 2000!) and giving it this zinger: “Here’s what they took/stole from us” or some such.

Usually, the “they” in this formulation are anti-growth bureaucrats, politicians, environmentalists, and cultural doomers in Hollywood.

But, you know, what did they take from us, exactly, through decades of regulatory overkill, pulling back on science investment, and immersing us in dystopian narratives and media?

In my 2023 book The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised, I identify two specific postwar periods as being deeply pro-progress in both economic and attitudinal terms. The first, Up Wing 1.0, spanned from the end of World War II to the early 1970s. This era saw rapid technological advancements, surging productivity, and cultural optimism, with bold projects like the Apollo moon landings and the rise of nuclear power. It faltered in the 1970s, however, as economic stagnation and cultural pessimism took hold.

Up Wing 2.0 emerged in the mid-1990s with the digital revolution, fueled by the internet, personal computing, and global connectivity. Productivity surged, and a renewed belief in technology’s transformative potential defined the era. Yet, this optimism was short-lived, with the dot-com bust and regulatory inertia stalling progress. These two periods underscore the power of innovation-driven optimism and the need to sustain it.

What were the visions of those two eras? What did they take from us?