Google Automatons and the Future of Self-Driving Cars

Google’s incredible achievements as a search engine has led to their very name being synonymous with finding things on the internet. Their advancement into maps, email and phones have all been greatly successful as well. But these are just the information-absorbing platforms on which they will build the true future of their company.

When California Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill permitting the use of "driverless cars" in his state, he heralded the advent of automation and the various ways it will utterly change the face of our society. Google has spent years developing cars that can drive themselves around complex metropolitan streets, perform high-speed emergency maneuvers and react to a wide variety of external factors. Soon, car manufacturers across the world will be utilizing Google's incredible software to universally change the driving experience. 

Forbes published a recent article, focusing on the way Google's driverless cars might reduce traffic, collisions, and the overall number of vehicles on the street. By their estimates, over $300 billion dollars could be saved in damages, hospital bills, loss of productivity, legal costs and travel delays.

Sebastian Thrun, the lead engineer behind this incredible innovation, has been on a crusade to make driving safer since his friend died in a car crash many years ago. You can see his TED talkhere, where he explains Google's new technology and how it will save lives for generations to come. It may seem like we’re one step closer to a scientific utopia, but let’s fully examine what impact this technology will have on us.

Firstly, let’s recognize that automated cars aren’t going to create new jobs … in fact they’re going to do quite the opposite. The field of mechanics will be entirely comprised of people who have a thorough understanding of computing and electronics, drastically shrinking the number of individuals who are capable of performing the task. Trucking companies will be able to use far fewer trucks, because they’ll run 24 hours a day and not be limited by a driver who needs sleep. Farmers will easily be able to maintain thousands of acres of farmland, using tractors that drive themselves, making their need for inefficient workers redundant. As we transition away from gas-powered vehicles we’ll see gas stations disappear, replaced by Tesla’s recently announced free solar-powered refueling stations. 

One look at a New York City street will tell you a lot about other significant changes. Why would we have any cars parked along the street, cluttering up space when everything moves in an automated seamless fashion? Need to get somewhere? Simply hit the button on your phone app and a nearby “taxi” station will send over a vehicle to your location. Actual taxi drivers are certainly done for. Want to “rent” a vehicle? Why not sync with other people in the city who are going on a similar route and save money by sharing a car?

Overall, car use will become temporary and rent-based. Sales will go down and dealerships will disappear. Many cities will lose millions of dollars in revenue from no longer being able to ticket citizens over parking violations.

This is going to be a massive hit to our economy, a complete game changer. Moreover, there will be a vicious debate about human autonomy versus computer autonomy. What if I want to drive my car? Will I be permitted to? Will the controls over these vehicles be tightly regulated, with computer tampering being a punishable felony offense? Ford recently introduced an open-source kit to allow hackers and computer experts to augment certain car controls like navigation. What about hackers that can over-ride safety protocols? You could easily kidnap or murder someone if you can control the 60mph box they're sitting in.

We haven’t even seen the introduction of these vehicles into the mainstream marketplace, but they’re already generating heated debate. This is a necessarily progression, but the ripple effects it will cause need to be planned for and addressed with great political foresight. Whatever else may happen, a generation from now Google will be known as the self-driving car company, and people will fondly remember that they also once had a search engine.

How Spy Cams and Cyber Trolls Violate your Civil Liberties

Not too long ago, grabbing your secretary's behind with a wink and smile was an acceptable form of praise. It took a long civil movement and sexual harassment laws to slowly push the tendencies of the vulgar out of the workplace. More and more aspects of our lives are being lived online, and as such the criminalities, inequalities and injustices we experience are felt there. We're still struggling to figure out ways our biggest collective environment can remain open, accessible and safe.

If you were a voyeur in the old days, you used to have to climb suburban tree branches and peer through a bedroom window. Nowadays, perverts never have to leave the comfort of their own home. Instead, they utilize a million proxy spy-holes already integrated into our computers. This weekend, a hacker was arrested for blackmailing over 350 women, and forcing them to strip off their clothing in front of their webcams. He accessed their Facebook and email accounts, locked them out by changing the password and mined through their messages to find personal, compromising pictures. He then threatened to send the nude pictures to all their friends, co-workers and family members if they didn't perform live strip shows for him via webcam – which he would also record. He used the women's captured identities to pretend to be them with other friends online, and lure further women into compromising situations.

This might be one of the most visceral manifestations of the ongoing privacy debate, but it's certainly not the only one. Criminals can exploit the vulnerability of our computers and personal data as easily as they can be by governments or consumer businesses. The internet has become the ultimate communal platform, where we experience our daily dose of humanity: work, socializing, entertainment, crime and news. No one is immune to the changing nature of privacy, but not enough people are fighting to preserve our safety.

General Petraeus' recent affair could have been just another D.C. sex scandal, but invading the CIA Director's email has wide reaching implications. The storing of digital content and cyber harassment are certainly open to debate as a result of the incident. News Corps made headlines when they got embroiled in a very public phone-hacking scandal, targeting celebrities to gain extremely personal information. Anthony Weiner's political career came to a crashing halt when his Twitter account was hacked. A Florida-based Hacker was recently arrested for stealing nude photos and scripts from several Hollywood celebrities, including Scarlett Johansson and Mila Kunis. To some degree, people haven't been that outraged by these events, as our tabloid culture has normalized invading the privacy of those in the public eye.

But celebrities aren't the only ones who are vulnerable. Our lovers, roommates, friends and employers all have an avenue to affect our digital lives permanently. A Pennsylvania high school was recently sued for spying on children in their homes via the webcams of school issued laptops — perhaps a misguided attempt to catch 'pot smokers.' Last March, Dhuran Ravi, a former Rutgers University student, was convicted on charges of invasion of privacy for secretly spying on his gay roommate and posting a video of his sexual encounters online. His roommate committed suicide as a result. Many sites offer jilted men opportunities to shame their ex-girlfriends on an immense and permanent scale by posting their pictures online.

We put a lot of faith in the security of our devices and passwords, but if someone gained control over your computer, how much damage could they do? Webfecting, for instance, is a common practice of remotely accessing someone's webcam and turning it on without their knowledge. How many times have you walked across your room naked in front of your computer? If targeted by a hacker, would you choose to perform demeaning acts via your webcam for one pervert, or risk everyone you know getting an email with a picture of you naked? The potential for embarrassment doesn't stop there. Have you ever written an email about how much you hate your boss? Confessed that you still have deep feelings for an ex-lover? Ever bought something online you wouldn't want anyone else to know about? There's an incredible amount of damage someone can do, if they're motivated to devastate your life, and once the bubble is popped there's no putting it back together.

We've taken a passive approach to this problem so far, by relying on the numbers game and hoping hackers are too busy targeting someone else. That is the way most civil issues began: someone else's problem that eventually becomes big enough to involve us. So how do we go about balancing privacy and security online? How do we keep the internet an open platform where information is available, but also safe?

When it comes to online legislation, there are very few lobbies with political juice. Most notable are the internet providers, who represent the infrastructure but have conflicting visions for what the future of the internet should look like. American representatives walked out of the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai last year, demonstrating a looming divide between pro-censorship governments and anti-censorship governments. Media Conglomerates and the MPAA represent most of the content online, but they're far more interested in stopping piracy or going to war with Kim Dotcom, rather than protecting the privacy of their audience. Finally, we have Google, Facebook and Microsoft spending millions on lobbying. Their business model relies on selling their user's data to advertisers. They've often joined in on the fight against online censorship, going toe to toe with the MPAA to keep the internet open and free, but that does little to address security concerns.

These are companies motivated by profit, not civil movements motivated by ideology. The internet brings us together like nothing else, but it also separates us through the mechanical barrier of our devices. There is an inherent diffusion of responsibility for how we act, because we're doing it through a machine, and it feels less real. We have to reclaim a standard of humanity, and enforce it through laws we believe will affect our desired equality. Sexual harassment laws were a proclamation that abuse would no longer be tolerated as an acceptable standard. That very same notion of protection needs to be emphatically offered to the every day internet user.

To that end, there are flourishing movements that need our support. The F.T.C. is pushing for phone and internet companies to include "Do Not Track" software in their devices, and reduce the scale of personal data stored by various companies — a battle still very much being fought by both sides. Apple is among many companies trying to move away from passwords altogether, and use facial-recognition to access devices. Security is becoming an ever-increasing focal point in the debate, but the movement's tipping point will come when the punishments start reflecting the severity of the crime. As more victims suffer technological attacks, we will begin to understand that taking over someone's computer is no different than breaking into their home, reading their journal and looking at the private pictures on their wall. It is an appalling and unacceptable violation of our evolving personal boundaries. Most states and counties punish this offense with $10,000 and a year in prison, when those numbers go up, the offenses will most likely go down.

Motion Capture: Are Computer-Generated Actors the Future Of Filmmaking?

Andy Serkis has enjoyed a strikingly unique acting career. A classically trained performer, Serkis is best known for breathing vibrant life into computer-generated ghouls and apes. His portrayal of Gollum in the Lord of the Ringstrilogy helped launch his notoriety, while also highlighting the great potential for motion-capture filming — a technology which renders human performances into highly-detailed digital characters.

Rather than build on his successes and move towards more traditional roles, Serkis is choosing to double down on the motion-capture bet, launching his own specialty film studio – The Imaginarium. Serkis hopes to teach actors the craft of motion-capture performances, familiarizing them with the technology’s process. This is an investment in what Serkis believes to be the future of cinema, preparing a new generation of 'cyber-thespians.'

The movie industry has always adapted to the times — incorporating costumes, props, sets, technology, and locations to help bring imagination to life. The ever-increasing quality of computer-generated imagery (CGI) has helped engage audiences in a more immersive way. Steven Spielberg was once considered a pioneer for his use of an animatronic sharks in Jaws. Years later, he combined animatronic dinosaurs with innovative CGI for Jurassic Park.

Limited only by their imagination, animators and computer experts soon realized they could materialize any world for the big screen. The only limiting factor was that audiences often found computer rendered characters to look emotionally neutral, with “soulless” eyes and stiff movements. But motion capture places small sensory pins all over an actor’s body, including their various facial muscles, bringing every nuanced aspect of their movement into the animation. The result is a more fluid, expressive and “human” manifestation. Audiences are already getting used to seeing a film cast include, if not be dominated by, computer rendered characters.

To Serkis, this represents a new era of possibilities. An actor can be transformed into an alien, animal, demon or monster without having to utilize layers of make-up. They need only perform their role, and watch as the computer transforms them. Theoretically, this could allow one actor to play several roles — replacing a large cast with a few tech savvy performers. 

James Franco, who starred with Serkis in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, wrote about his awe for the technology's potential: "[Performance Capture] doesn’t mean that old-fashioned acting will go the way of silent film actors ... [it] actually allows actors to work opposite each other in more traditional ways, meaning that the actors get to interact with each other and look into each other's eyes."

The underlying skill required to bring these animations to life is still very much that of a talented actor. 

To that end, Fox Studios generated an aggressive campaign last year, pushing for Serkis' Oscar consideration for his performance of Caesar in the Planet of the Apes. This idea might seem laughable, but it was more than 80 years ago that Mickey Mouse won the first ever "non-human" Oscar.

Perhaps motion-capture is only a passing fad, and will simply be considered a skill any actor should know — alongside accents, stage combat or dance. But having worked in motion-capture for over a decade, Serkis believes it’s here to stay and worth investing in. Imaginarium Studios already has its own slate of films scheduled for production, including a motion capture rendition of Animal Farm. In his passion, we see a marriage between classic expressive acting and the endless possibilities of animation. As long as the boundaries and technology keep getting pushed forward, we may one day not be able to tell the difference between “real” and “make-believe.”

3D Printing: Instant Custom Designs

       For those of us raised on Star Trek and Jetsons cartoons, technology that could fabricate any object within minutes seemed a distant sci-fi fantasy akin to jetpacks and moon bases. But the era of 3D printing is near, rapidly setting roots in the manufacturing market place and poised to dramatically change the way in which we create our goods. 

       3D Printing is the revolutionary process by which digital designs can be transformed into real world physical objects, ranging from toys to jewelry and even complex machine parts. Thanks to an increase in government funding, box sized devices capable of custom molding metals, plastics and ceramics have dropped in price to approximately $1,000. 

       What does this mean for your every day consumer? Well for starters there will be a massive marginal increase in personalization. Utilizing a vast and open library of designs, anyone will soon be able to create customizable products in the comfort of their home. Imagine seeing something you like on Amazon, clicking on it and having a printer in your home create it right in front of you. Engineers and Inventors will also be able to create prototypes of their creations in hours, without having to utilize factories that can take several weeks to get back to them. Artists will be able to sell their designs digitally, and allow their customers to create the works in the comfort of their living room. 

       The printers achieve this by segmenting a 3D design into thin horizontal “slices”. It then creates the object layer by layer, bound by a heated nozzle or electron beam…the futuristic equivalent of “brick by brick”. This is an undeniably huge leap forward in scientific capabilities, but before we start demanding an update on our teleportation devices, we should examine the technology’s limitations. 

       The most obvious of these are the required raw materials and machine complexity. Most of us don’t have access to precious metals or expensive resources. Moreover, if you want to create something more complicated than metallic parts, plastic molds or ceramic shapes, the machine you use will be significantly more expensive. This isn’t an insurmountable hurdle, however, as it opens a marketplace for stores that are willing to facilitate the niche demands.

       A pop-up shop in Soho called MakerBot, for example, is offering customers the ability to print off customizable goods in store. Rows of colorful raw materials decorate the walls, while the futuristic machines take center stage on the store floor. This might be the future of the shopping experience: browse a digital catalogue on a computer screen, choose your materials and colors, then watch your creation come to life right before your eyes.

       Another application for the technology exists outside of commercial goods. Biomedical specialists at Wake and Cornell University are pursuing fascinating advancements in printing human organs and cartilage from raw biological materials. Although the viability of these might be a few more years down the line, the implications are a potential revolution in organ replacements, customized to each patient’s DNA. 

       There are some other, potentially dangerous, manifestations for the technology as well. If companies share digital designs for gun molds, people will be able to construct functioning pistols in their homes made of metal or ceramic. This would allow people to circumvent the registration process of in store purchases, and create problems for metal detectors incapable of sensing ceramic guns.

       Despite all the possibilities, no one actually knows what service model people really want with this technology. Venture capitalists have invested millions, but it is unclear whether the start-ups have a solid idea for how to make 3D printing real to the masses. We may very well be at the onset of a new industrial revolution, where cottage industries re-emerge and even bring manufacturing back to the American shores. Whatever the future holds for 3D technologies, we won’t have to wait too long to find out.

Virtual Sex

       The pleasure center of the brain was discovered in a famous 1950s lab experiment utilizing rats. Two researches attached wires directly to certain regions of the rodent’s brain. The rats would then receive a current whenever they pressed down on a paddle in front of them. At the peak, some rats were pressing the paddle as much as seven-hundred times per hour. They ignored their food and sexual partners, eventually dying of exhaustion. These were the first instances of arousal addiction. 

       We are undergoing an interesting experiment ourselves. Since the late ’90s, every young male with internet access has been able to venture into the boundless world of online pornography (often before they’ve even begun to develop sexually.) Without a comparative control group - i.e. boys who don’t have internet access, it’s hard to know what changes this magnified convenience has had on the collective sexual psyche. Masturbation has always been a healthy and necessary part of sexual development, but humans have never had access to a limitless resource like the internet before. Just like the lab Rat’s paddle, our unending pleasure is just a few mouse-clicks away.

       We’ve learned from the rats, and general human behavior, that any activity which rewards the pleasure center does so by releasing the chemical Dopamine. This makes us want to repeat the behavior more frequently, and with greater potency. It’s why we eat ourselves into obesity, play video games for hours, measure our self worth in facebook likes and chain drink our coffee. When online pornography first rose to prominence, some worried it would lead to an increase in male aggression. They saw a danger in the unending novelty of internet porn, allowing more nudity to be seen than any of our ancestors could have fathomed. But in place of barbaric Hunters, docile Gatherers have thrived; voyeuristically enjoying a harem of fantasies collected through electronic windows. 

       Real courtship requires facing our anxieties, interacting in person, the rush of hormones, attraction, conversation, seduction, humor and confidence. If people begin to find that comparatively daunting to pressing a few buttons, we will probably continue to see rises in diagnosed depression, erectile dysfunction and social anxiety. A similarly modern social shift can be found in the online dating debate. Those in favor, advocate access to larger pools of partners, offering pairings that otherwise might never have occurred. The other side fears online dating has changed people’s perception of monogamy, turning meaningful courtships into a form of algorithmed virtual shopping.

       So is there an inherent harm in enjoying online pornography? The brain has always been elastic, and we change the circuitry with almost any repeated action. We avoid the dangers of fast moving cars, reward our work ethic with a sense of accomplishment and cultivate hobbies that give us joy. We are constantly learning, so why is our curiosity with virtual sex so different? It seems even for those among us who enjoyed open and honest discussions about sex growing up, online pornography still carries a stigma of shame. It’s been two decades…surely everyone is doing it by now, right? Watching online porn is a normalized activity, and yet we still seem uncomfortable discussing it for some reason.

       Let’s picture the average adolescent. Whatever they view online, generally tends to be divorced from the concepts of sex that teachers and parents explain to them. There is simply too much explicit vulgarity, uninhibited experimentation and shock value exhibitionism to be found online. What does a latex clad slave being whipped by an array of men in furry animal suits have to do with real intimacy or the creation of a family? As morbid curiosity sets in, more and more unseen novelties must be discovered. As a result, this isolated young mind creates a wall of shame between his online ventures and the reality of the world around. This has become a routine facet of modern sexual development.

       Millennials were exposed to this circus of erotic imagery at a young age, long before we ever began having sex. How would real intercourse compare with the deviant imagery embedded in our young neural pathways? Life doesn’t have a fast forward button to skip to favorite parts. It doesn’t offer a diversity of partners, costumes and toys with every sexual encounter (outside of Las Vegas.) Would all those long stored, hard wired fantasies rooted in our adolescent minds be a hindrance or a help? The answer is, of course, that no porn will ever compare to real sex. It is a fast and cheap imitation, of something passionately tactile and engagingly layered. 

       In the end, the habit of watching online porn seems less about nudity, sex, power or even lust, and more about ease of access. You don’t do it because you’re sexual drive is surging or you’re particularly horny, you do it because you’re bored and it’s available. Porn isn’t a drug, it’s junk food! We consume it even though we aren’t really hungry, and it might ruin our appetite. Just like junk food, it is comprised of the vulgar fundamentals of real food: sugar, salt and fat. We’d be terribly mistaken to confuse its easy comfort with nutritional value. Pornography itself has been around since our earliest civilizations, in every form of art and expression. But it’s undergone the same evolution as food, arriving at its most base manifestation. It is yet another temptation in which we should seek moderation, despite our drooling brain’s compulsive desire, lest we go the way of the exhausted rats.

The Foods of Tomorrow

       Our ancestors had two distinct food acquisition roles: Hunter and Gatherer. If the animals were scarce, fruits and vegetation would hold us over. For a time, that was all we needed to gain Nature’s bounty. But then we migrated, populated new territories, farmed crops and built cities. Any new life forms found in our travels were soon added to the menu. After the industrial revolution, as our global population exploded, there wasn’t an animal in the sky, sea or field that we hadn’t tasted. But mass consumption and extinction have claimed several species. Wildlife and farmed animals alike can no longer sustain human demand, there is little virgin land left open to agriculture, oceans are being overfished and futuristic super pills packed full of nutrients still seem out of our reach. So how will we feed the mouths of billions as our resources continue to grow scarce? 

       A scientifically intriguing suggestion that often comes up isSynthetic Meat, also known as Lab Meat. Before we come to understand the process, we should speculate its necessity. China and India both have a large emerging middle class. When GDP goes up, so does demand for meat and a westernized diet. Raising cattle requires an exorbitant amount of water, food and fuel. Approximately 100 pounds of inefficient resources go towards producing 15 pounds of edible meat. Alternatively, the process of developing synthetic meat involves very few cells being cultivated into large portions within a lab. Specialized proteins applied to these base muscle cells help them grow and duplicate. One animal’s cells could realistically provide millions of pounds of in vitro meat, in turn feeding the world’s population. If brought to market and made commercially viable, synthetic meat would produce 90% fewer greenhouse gases than farm raised meat, use 99% less land and require 85-90% less water usage. Compared to an agriculture that is fast becoming too expensive for consumers to support, synthetics might very well be the best economic option. 

       But food is also about taste! The biggest hurdle artificial meat faces is the lack of blood and fat cells that give meat its unique flavor. Many animal rights activists will be happy to know that lab meat is never connected to a brain, nervous system or any form of consciousness, but the catch is that the muscles produced never exercise or gain that natural leanness found in active creatures. If the progress of the technology keeps accelerating at its current pace, perhaps we can address these issues and make a viable, inexpensive supermarket product.

       It’s worth noting, that a cluster of new and intriguing ethical issues arise with this technology. For instance, will it potentially end the farming culture in America altogether? Would it be morally problematic if people wanted to eat human flesh produced in this manner?  If this cannibal cuisine trend arose, would celebrities sell their skin samples as a luxury food? What sudden biodiversity affects could occur, if most of the land and animals return to a “wild” un-farmed state? Most importantly, because In-Vitro meat has yet to be placed on the market, what are the potential health risks we need to investigate? 

       It’s apparent that many issues have yet to be addressed, and demands for new food might arrive sooner than we’re ready to answer them. So what are the formidable contenders to synthetic meat that could theoretically fill the void?

Algae seems to be a sensible candidate. The single-cell organisms can grow very rapidly at sea. The bio-fuel produced from Algae already has shipping and airline companies looking into the viability of algae oil. Algae farms could produce up to 10,000 gallons of ethanol biofuel per acre, compared to 350 gallons from maize. Its energy uses aside, algae can also act as a fertilizer. Kelps fix CO2 in the atmosphere and provide sugars, oils and fats. Algae may hold a rather low rank on the food chain, but China and Japan already widely consume it in the form of seaweeds, and animals of all sizes from shrimp to blue whales eat it regularly. The hurdle seems to be in diversifying the culinary styles in which we might enjoy it. As soon as a few trendy restaurants cultivate Algae based specials on their menus, we may see a new kind of green revolution.

Leaving no stone unturned, we can’t forget the obvious option: Insects! The human population is easily dwarfed by insects, both in biomass and numbers. Eating insects, or Entomophagy, is already widely practiced across the world (Mexico has a popular Grasshopper taco.) Spiders, worms, ants and beetles are eaten across Latin America, Asia and Africa. Compared to our current livestock, insect farms require far less land, are far more efficient at converting plants into edible meat and emit fewer greenhouse gases. They are rich in proteins, low in fat and high in calcium and iron. They can even flourish on waste and paper, offering an auxiliary cleaning service. The ants crawling all over your picnic may soon become the main course themselves.

       There are many new horizons available to us, but we should learn from the blunders we’ve made in the last century when it comes to modifying nature. For every step towards progress, we’ve suffered new dangers as well. Antibiotics kill most bacteria, only leaving the strongest and most resistant to come back in a wave of powerful vengeance. Hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and genetically modified crops helped us feed millions of starving people in drought stricken lands. But now the weeds have cross bred with the crops, and have become resistant to herbicides of ever increasing potency. We’re poisoning the soil and water supplies, and cannot afford to fell more forests for new farmland. The genetic modification lobby continues to promise fruits infused with vaccines, rapidly maturing animals and more efficient crops, but it might be wiser to stop combating nature and instead separate our experimentations from it. 

       Zhikang Li is a Chinese plant breeder, who has spent years working with his team to produce “green super rice”. His rice produces more grain, is more resistant to droughts, floods, salty water, insects and disease and was created without any GM technology. He took the natural route, working with hundreds of farmers and researchers in several countries to cross-breed more than 250 plants into his bountiful creation. This is the way we should be interacting with nature.

       Meanwhile our lab meat, insect cuisine and algae productions might be better suited in isolated Vertical Farms, encased laboratories and modernized greenhouses. Controlled environments can offer us less exposure to chemicals, pesticides and toxins. We can create a firewall between the “natural” world food supply, and our scientific efforts. That way, much like the Hunters and Gatherers of old, we’ll have two separate and equally important sources of food we can rely on! 

Bloody Diamonds

       Alcohol is often praised as a recession-proof industry. In times of economic woes, we spend what little money we have to drown our sorrows. In times of great fortune, we celebrate generously with imbibed cheer. Libation, in all its forms, has permeated civilizations for millennia, interlaced in song, dance and feast....so in a very human way, the product's consistency makes sense. There is, however, another industry displaying the same economic invulnerability, and yet offering none of the same rationale: Diamonds!

       Despite what the Tiffany's receipt might suggest, diamonds have no inherent value. They are far more abundant than we are led to believe, and they cannot be resold at even a fraction of their purchase price. For inexplicable reasons, our modern culture continues to celebrate their supposed rarity and glamour. Many men have fallen on the uphill battlefield of questioning this social norm. How did this mineral gain a monopoly on representing love? At what point did romance become synonymous with a stone dug from the earth? The history of the diamond industry is riddled with brutal corruption, brilliant ad campaigns and the slick corporate maneuverings of one of the world's most deplorable cartels. As more of my dear friends commit to loving marriages, I thought I'd offer an uninvited and thoroughly unappreciated look into the blood-spattered lineage behind this industry's success.

       In the mid 1800s, diamonds were an actual rarity mined solely in India and Brazil. The global supply could be measured in a few pounds and they were donned by Monarchs or Aristocrats as frivolous symbols of stature. In 1870, an unimaginably vast bounty of diamonds was discovered in South Africa. Tons of the gems were being pulled out of the ground, signaling a potential flooding of the market and diminishment of the stone's value.

       Sensing the untapped opportunity before them, several mining companies joined into a conglomerate, establishing a virtual monopoly in South Africa called "the De Beers Mining company". By 1888 De Beers controlled all production and distribution of diamonds coming out of South Africa. They created international syndicates, which many other diamond claim holders and distributors soon joined (quickly realizing the profit potential of faking scarcity and fabricating high prices.) By 1902, De Beers controlled over 90% of the world's rough-diamond production and distribution. When Ernest Oppenheimer took over control of the company in 1927, he established exclusive contracts with buyers and suppliers, essentially making it impossible to deal in diamonds outside of De Beers.

       The formula remained the same for much of the 20th century: an auxiliary of De Beers would buy diamonds from various sources, De Beers would then decide how many diamonds they'd like to sell (and at what price), and finally buyers would cultivate the market hubs in cities like New York, London or Antwerp. All the while, De Beers continued to amass a stockpile measuring in the tons, hidden away in their vaults. It was during the 1930s depression, however, that the company utilized their boldest and most successful tactic.

       Wanting to turn America into their next big market, De Beers met with advertising agencies to form a battle strategy. Their aim? To convince consumers that "Diamonds = Love". To romanticize the stone, the campaign sought to change the public's idea of how a man (successfully) courts a woman. They engaged the fledgling film industry, and covered movie idols (the paragons of mass audience romance) in their product. Magazines and select publications were flooded with stories that reinforced the idea of diamonds representing an indestructible devotion. Conspicuous photographs of celebrity's bejeweled fingers splashed across news pages. Fashion designers promoted the "rising trend" of diamonds on the radio. Even the British Royal Family was convinced to wear diamonds over other jewels, under the assertion that it could greatly aid an industry in which Great Britain had a controlling interest in.

       By 1947, the campaign had forged a psychological necessity across several classes and markets, forming a near overnight "tradition". Those who could not afford a ring, chose to defer the purchase rather than forgo it altogether. It became a common notion, that one's devotion was measured by the size of the engagement ring. The now immortal De Beers tag line: "a diamond is forever" was cemented in the common psyche. Diamond sales continued to skyrocket, as De Beers exported the campaign to a number of new countries, creating multi-billion dollar profits.


       Meanwhile, behind the scenes they utilized any and all tactics to ensure control over the flow of stones in the market. If a new discovery of diamonds threatened De Beers' autonomy (like the large Siberian mine of the 1950s) the company simply bought the entire inventory, continuing to channel the world's supply through a restricted funnel. When countries like Israel or Zaire attempted to protest or challenge the monopoly with diamonds of their own, De Beers would flood the market with similar products from its stockpiled inventory and drive down demand. The only threat to their dominance was the potential discovery of a giant new untapped source, outside of their control. To that end, De Beers used their colonial connections to weave discoveries of diamonds in Africa into the fold of their cartel, also bringing Russia into the conglomerate and turning a blind eye to the warlords and slavers who savaged the lands, brutalized their people and fed the company's ever brimming vaults.



       This is the hidden history of the Diamond invention. They are a fabricated fantasy, born of the greed of one tyrannical syndicate which has dictated the price for decades. Consumers have been fooled into perpetuating the idea that these abundant pieces of carbon are somehow unique symbols of esteem...tokens of wealth and romance. De Beers propogated this illusion of scarcity to become one of the most successful cartels in the history of commerce. Almost any other commodity has fluctuated in response to economic conditions, but diamonds have steadily advanced upwards in price since the 1930s. People continue to wear them, or hoard them in safes as "family heirlooms". The most painful irony is, none of them could be sold for even a tenth of their original purchase price. The diamond market relies on consumers never parting with their rings or necklaces or earrings. That way, only the distributors can dictate value. It is a sad, cyclical delusion which costs lives, corrupts nations and materializes our affections.

**** Postscript****

       I am not without romance or an appreciation for symbolism. So for those looking for a token of their courtship and affection, please consider one of the many alternative stones, which display the same glittering, enduring beauty... but are free of the inherent blood cost or price fixing trickery. Some options for your convenience listed below, happy holidays: