“Gems” or “Maybe the first diamond I buy will be for my computer”

I appear to be in a news reporting mode. I guess that’s ok; I hope you aren’t bored to death with my tidbits. My latest run-in concerns the future of manufactured diamonds. Crazy, eh? Apollo Diamonds has began mastering the process of growing diamonds in the lab, shortcutting the billions-of-years process that formed the ones we mine from Mother Earth today.

Surely the first industry you expect to be impacted is the jewelry industry. And you’d be right. Some of the big-wigs are furious that real, actual diamonds can be made in a lab; they can’t be distinguished from mined diamonds because…they’re diamonds. They aren’t CZ diamonds. "Need a 2 Carat diamond? Give us a few weeks and we’ll grow you one…" That’s the reality. No big drills and big explosions and big truck and tractors.

But the way this advancement will impact your life on a daily basis will be through technology. Apparently, developers have been salivating at the prospect of diamonds for decades, but they’ve just been too scarce and too expensive to implement. Thus, the importance of this breakthrough.

USA Today compares it to the emergence of the transistor and steel to the development of industrial America. Like the idea of the 10,000 song iPod? How about the 10,000 movie iPod? Yep; 3-D holographic storage technology that only the purest crystal make possible will allow for the storage of MASSIVE ammounts of dafa in a small space. I read about the idea maybe 5-8 years ago; it’s interesting to finally hear somebody talking about it like it is around the corner.

And just as microprocessor manufacturers like Intel and AMD were running into a speed wall that was blocking Moore’s Law (double in clock speed every 12 months), diamonds may save the day. Out with silicone wafers, in with indestructable, heat-tolerant diamond wafers.

Anyway, you can read the article yourself if you’re interested: Man-made diamonds sparkle with potential.