The End of Scarcity.
A thought provoking article by Zita Subasinghe Perera
based on a BBC Radio 4 programme.1
The
end of scarcity, want, poverty, shortfall, deficiency? I know the above
pronouncement will catch the eye of any human being. But it’s exactly the meaning
behind a talk on this subject by James Burke on 26-12-2017 on BBC Radio 4. I
listened to the recorded version twice as I was fascinated by the idea and now
I am sharing it with you as it is thought provoking and it is not too
far-fetched. Well, let me get on with it. The idea is one we are familiar with:
The present state of science, technology and the advancements during the past,
nearly 150 years of industrial revolution, has provided us the means to live without ‘want’. The principle of
Mr Burke’s thesis is that ‘necessity sparks, sets off and keeps in motion,
Innovation’. So, the lack of ‘Want’ can spell
the end of Innovation.
Happily, the
first WW in the early 20th Century gave a spurt of energy to
advancement in ‘Innovation’. The piston pump was replaced by the rotary pump, a
Glasgow University repairman being credited with this. WW2 in the mid 20th
century gave rise to the need for units like ‘ladies who calculated the angle
at which a shot has to be fired to hit the enemy target’ and at that time they
were called ‘computers’.
The first mechanical Computer
And now in the
mid to late 20th century, the innovative geniuses produced the first
‘computer,’ a machine to handle the multiple calculations which were earlier
done by the ladies of WW1.Mr Burke refersto this as ‘the intention to give
humans a means to do complex activities in a very short time and expense.’
Big Data
The computer has
the ability to hold big numbers- called Big Data which big companies use for
‘predictive analyses. Big Data leaves a footprint whenever and wherever we do
something ‘online’ and companies use this to send us adverts and pressurise us
to buy stuff. Big data uses our smart phones in our pockets to learn where we
are and prompt us what to buy things and even the payment can be done
instantaneously by connecting us to our bank accounts. It happens already in
certain Big Stores the whole process being calledGrab and Go.
The Start of the end of Scarcity
In the 1950s
they were able to predict that if we went on with ‘business as usual ‘and
scarcity gradually ended we’ll face economic collapse by the end of the 21st
century as the stimulus of Scarcity to bring about Innovation would not be
there. Early to Mid 20th C saw the start of over population,
industrialisation, starvation and resource depletion driven by our consumer
life style. The international political reaction to this was putting the brakes
on fossil fuels and cutting back on urban expansion and industrialisation,
almost Apocalypse Now!
Making machines smaller the answer?
Fortunately, the
innovative thinker in the form of Nobel Prize winner Richard Fyneman comes to
the fore. He thought the answer is to make machines as small as possible. It
turns out that it is possible to make each ‘bit’ (a piece of info) as small as
one atom long. It took a while to get things moving but in 1987 two IBM ers
invented the scanning, tunnelling microscope to make molecules. There are ‘gazillions
of molecules everywhere, an inexhaustible resource’. Using this new device, one
could put atoms and molecules together and you could produce anything you want
even a cup of tea! These machines were in nanometres (the width of a hair is 80
nanometres.) This Nano processor is also called a moat a word derived from a ‘moat of dust’ as that is the size of
this machine!
Nanoproducts and Nanotechnology
These products,
called Nano-products, are already being made in about 2000 labs around the
world! Nano particles are found in cosmetics, bacterial bandaging and wrinkle
free, water-proof clothing. Using a Nano processor,one could ‘stick the end of
a straw into dirty water and drink clean water at the other end’. Nano
technology can be used to produce solar cells enabling the consumerisation of
the 8 billion people of the earth in one giant economy therefore costing no
fuel but just the energy of the sun in the solar cell. Many big Institutes around
the world are working flat out to achieve this.
Replication
Like in ‘Star Trek’ we are making the road map
to Replication, i.e. to replicate anything. You can call this ‘merging
computation and communication with fabrication to bring the programmability of
the digital world over to our analogue world’. But remember, you are making
what you CAN make and not what you NEED to make. And you can end up with a
surplus.
Digitising designs and materials.
So, as told above,
onecan digitise designs.
The next is to
digitise materials using elements H, O, C, N and 20 amino acids. That is all
you need. This is anyway what man has done in the past 4 billion years or so of
evolution. Difference? Now it will be so much faster. These machines called
moats do away with the need to cultivate the land and harvest or work in
factories. It’s all there in a machine at atomic level giving you all you need.
And all you need to do is talk to it. Yes, you actually ‘talk to it’. Science
fiction? No! It’s Fact and it happens now!
End of Innovation and Isolation of man
The problem is
that the End of Scarcity spells the End of Innovation, stand- still and
isolation of man. Family is not
necessary, under this scheme. Socialisation? No! You can have your grandma and
your pals and treat them to a slap-up dinner. You can tell your Moat and it
will enable you to talk to them and they will come as 3D holograms so real that
you forget they are not. You’ll never be lonely or bored.
Spending time with Nature
Want to visit
the countryside? You can create it where you are, with all the features you
want, a river, a farm, anything you like. All you do is tell your moat to do
it. Sounds like winning the lottery? Well Yes and No! Read on and you will see
the reason.
What’s awaiting mankind
You send a Nano
factory to every city country and village and they make all the extra ones they
need and make one available to every family, even every individual. There would
be no need for money, or a job, no need for taxes, in fact, no need for
governments as what they do is spend our tax money to maintain the infrastructure.
Education and Health?
Moats
controlling the medical devices made at home can look after health. As for
Education: education for what? In today’s world with robots taking over our
jobs, and education is to make us creative, one can ask, creative for what
purpose?
Culture
What about the
culture we shared? Well, we’ll never again need to group together to survive.
Abundance
We know how to
deal with scarcity, i.e. Innovate! But abundance? We have little experience of
that. But all this will take no more than 50 years to hit us. Is all this a
figment of the imagination? Well, even if some of it happens to be, surely, we
ought to think about it?
The final outcome
In the popular
joke, a man drops from the top of a sky scraper and as he is passing the 50th
floor you ask him how he’s doing. And he says ‘So far so good!’ But you know
‘hitting the bottom’ is not far away!
-
The End!-
Reference:1. James Burk
(B B C Radio 4 on 26 12 2017) End of Scarcity
