BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 6
Oct 13, 2004
social criticisms
by Vicente-Ignacio de Veyra III
PREDICTIONS:
The Changed
World
(or, Beyond 9/11)
MANY OF US are not into jewelry. Yet recent developments in the jewelry business speak of a trend that is certain to influence culture as a whole, inclusive of our economic standards.
DIAMONDS FOREVER?
Consider, for example, recent news in diamond manufacture and selling that sent the world's largest diamond seller's profits plunging. The news? The rising popularity of other diamond sellers who've perfected the science of simulating diamonds in all levels of preciousness.
The word 'diamond' means 'hardest steel' or 'hardest substance' in its Greek derivative, a fact that is not so much the reason for the valuation human beings have placed on it. Diamond is embraced by the wealthy who are into conspicuous consumption more for the fact that diamonds themselves are approximately 3.3 billion years old. Here's the amazing fact behind your congresswoman's diamond. Volcanic magma that solidified into rock where diamonds are found did not create the diamond, but they transported the diamonds from the Earth's mantle to the surface. Or perhaps your favorite lady senator's neck's set of diamonds were formed under the high pressures and temperatures at the site of meteorite impacts. Sure, "the diamonds formed during an impact may be relatively 'young', but some meteorites contain star dust, debris from the death of a star, which may include diamond crystals. One such meteorite is known to contain tiny diamonds over 5 billion years old. Therefore, these diamonds are older than our solar system!" (Source: http://about.com) The above are just the sort of informational bits that little expensive things carry with them to a party, arming politicians' wives with the knowledge stuff that enable them to avoid conversations regarding the most recent fiasco in their husbands' areas of responsibility. Such scientific cum historical artillery may not be here for long, however, and may be challenged by recent science's directions toward arming the masses with the same knowledges and flauntings at more affordable prices.
So like the fact that the wealthy and the poor both shit and pee (as Jonathan Swift would have it), or that both turn smelly as dead corpses, recent science/technology and diamond manufacture has offered the reality of man-made diamonds that simulate the molecular quality of their nature-made counterparts. The contextual difference between the man-made and the not are of course poles apart. Or rather, the context of the man-made is reliant on the context of the natural, but perhaps with the plus that man was able to do such a simulation at all. Should the natural run out, for instance, the context of the natural would remain, arming the man-made with the same contextual valuation upon the natural. Same context carried by a representative object, then. Translate this to the depletion of the earth's fossil fuel, and the possible simulation through laboratory techniques of such hitherto natural wealth, albeit oil is valued not for jewelry purposes. Or the purposes of providing wealthy wives with coffeetable conversation pieces containing exclusive knowledge.
The virtual democratization of the object diamond happened by virtue of the fact that scientists are often not driven by business considerations. However, business caught up with the potential of certain scientific findings and brought it all up into the boardroom. The scientist's mind is also often not driven by any political mission. Thus it would be naive to think that this democratization was motivated by populist concerns within the scientific community. For unlike businessmen and politicians, the scientist's sense of community extends to the world of atoms. And this rare point of view was what made possible the recent business cum social leap in diamond ownership.
What is this world of atoms? Could future business, religious, or political objectives be well-served by paying close attention to the scientist's point of view from now on? What, for instance, consists of the diamond from this angle? Well, "understanding the chemistry of a diamond requires a basic knowledge of the element carbon. A neutral carbon atom has 6 protons and 6 neutrons in its nucleus, balanced by 6 electrons. The electron shell configuration of carbon is 1s22s22p2. Carbon has a valence of 4, since 4 electrons can be accepted to fill the 2p orbital. Diamond is made up of repeating units of carbon atoms joined to four other carbon atoms via the strongest chemical linkage, covalent bonds. Each carbon atom is in a rigid tetrahedral network where it is equidistant from its neighboring carbon atoms. The structural unit of diamond consists of 8 atoms, basically arranged in a cube. This network is very stable and rigid, which is why diamonds are so very hard and have a high melting point." (http://about.com)
This
world seems beyond the ordinary businessman, it seems. Much less the
ordinary politician. But the influences of "scientific
perspectives" have always been with us, not because of direct
knowledge but because of usage knowledge passed on to ordinary mortals
like us by the scientific community itself. The rhum you drink each fiesta
was processed by artificial aging that advertising doctrine doesn't
require manufacturers to elucidate further on for honesty. For all you
know, the corn you eat each Saturday may not exactly have been enlarged by
organic means.
GOOD AS GOLD?
Recent
laboratory developments have uncovered potentials for producing material
that will replace wood, fossil fuel, rubber, and so on. Nanoscience (which
manipulates elements at the molecular level) has offered the possibility
of lessening our reliance on "natural resources" considerably.
This has not
exactly been absent. Solar energy has long been with us, except that the
lobby of oil companies and related interests have proven to be stronger
than the promise of the technology upon industries and consumers.
But such developments still cannot be underestimated, especially when their time arrives, as when Bush's family's oil interests begins to be threatened by the quasi-Naderian promises of a John Kerry regarding tapping alternative fuel sources. The world has changed, indeed. And not just because our perspectives have shifted from the ambitions and paranoia of communist states to the global ambitions of Islamic fundamentalism.
The world has changed because science and technology and the "atomic perspectives" of scientific minds have radically threatened our conservatism, our mythologies, our science fiction, our respective sense of self.
Imagine, for example, what will happen to the gold standard (or the small panners and tinkerers) when gold begins to be manufactured in laboratories instead of dug in mines. How many Jews would have been saved if silverware were as abundant then as they may be when silver too begins to be readily available as products of home laboratory kits. But these are still a long way away.
Still, products coming soon would have no less horrible effects upon many a man of the near future. Imagine, for example, what would happen to the corrupt traffic policemen of our land when flying cars begin to be run by cellphone companies before the end of the 2020s? How would CNN's coverage of a future Baghdad bombing-like scenario look like when the "invisible planes" presently being developed begin to be (latently, of course) used militarily? Or what will the Middle East turn to (or become) when humanity finally decides to do away with fossil fuel purchases?
Surely, the future is beyond any pundit on Fox News or CNN whose perspective may be solely fixed on political or economic science. For, after all, business and politics are really no more than reactors to the developments hatched in laboratories by scientists whose motives are molecular instead of messianically miracular, scientists who nevertheless are responsible for all the miracles and tragedies that have decorated mankind's centuries.
No, the picture of our children's future worlds cannot be gleaned through the mouths of CNN celebrities. It can already be glimpsed in science journals.
"Imagine, for
example, what will happen to the gold standard (or the small panners and
tinkerers) when gold begins to be manufactured in laboratories instead of
dug in mines."
artist's conception of a desktop
nanofactory