That great science man Burke

JAMES BURKE was back on Radio 4 this week with a talk titled The End Of Scarcity. He’s such a fantastic broadcaster, one of the original reporters on Tomorrow’s World and a BBC commentator for the Apollo moon landing in 1969.

Much as I admire David Attenborough I found his heartstring-tugging on Blue Planet irritating. Burke is the sort of scientist who can talk about the apocalypse in a cool and jaunty manner.

His thesis in this programme was that all progress and innovation is driven by the scarcity of things which we need or think we need. What is scarce becomes valuable.

Since prehistoric times our minds have been shaped by the concept of scarcity. But in the near-ish future, nanotechnology could mean that everything can be made without any cost, or pollution, or indeed labour. We can summon up anything from a sandwich to a new car. But, asked Burke, “If nothing is scarce does anything have any value?” We would have no need of money, or jobs, no need to socialise or congregate. How would we cope?

It is a thought both chilling and unimaginable. And if you reckon that Burke was predicting things that will never happen then bear in mind that in a piece in the Radio Times in 1973 Burke predicted the creation of metadata banks of personal information and changes in human behaviour, such as greater willingness to reveal personal information to strangers.

Me, I tend to think he is right about everything.