The Internet's sheer vastness and mind-bending growth rate make it impossible for anyone to get to know more than a tiny sample of the whole. This is one reason it is so enchanting: you ever know what you will find when you click the mouse and explore a new location. Google likes to remind us of that by adding the occasional “Easter egg” to its applications to surprise visitors. One editor at the Dallas Morning News complained that some of them were so funny they ruined the rest of her work day. In Google Hangouts, when you type “Happy Birthday” into the chat box to send your coworker birthday greetings, a lively emoji character in a pointy paper hat leaps onto the screen, surrounded by confetti. Various hidden commands also produce endless amusement. Typing “/ponystream” sends a colorful herd of animated ponies across the screen.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

Our nonrandom sampling of the net's neighborhoods may also contribute to the diversity of opinions about its value in our lives and to society in general. Each of us partakes of different Internet niches, and even within shared spaces such as social media, our experiences can leave us with markedly different views.

Some early net pioneers, such as the astronomer turned hacker-tracker Clifford Stoll, find little worthwhile in the Internet's virtual life. In Silicon Snake Oil, Stoll writes:

Nicholas Carr, best known for asking whether Google is making us stupid, laments how attention spans are plummeting because people now flit from link to link, scanning and skimming, without reading anything deeply:

Many people also are alarmed by the way online communications can dampen and “dumb down” real-world conversations, and thus dilute relationships.

Homo sapiens is a social creature, and we seek the companionship and support of others throughout life. Indeed, Aristotle opined that a person who did not do that was either a beast or a god. But while human groups have always existed, the Internet has not, and its effects on group dynamics are profound. It seems trite to even point this out, but the net is a social space that enables entirely new kinds of groups.

Within social networks, we create our own groups with ourselves in the center. On Twitter, we follow and are followed, fluidly joining discussions on trending topics and adding our two cents in the form of 140 characters or less. On Google Hangouts, we can join live, impromptu, multimedia group discussions, with webcam images of all the group members flashing across the screen, and text messages scrolling on the smartphone.

But exchanging text messages or status updates, or even viewing another's webcam image, is not the same as being in the same physical space with other people where you share the same sights, smells, sounds, and surprises. How exactly are online environments different for groups and how do the differences affect group dynamics?

THE EMERGENCE OF A GROUP, OFFLINE AND ONLINE

Defining the term “group” is difficult enough without prefacing it with the even more elusive adjective “virtual.” One succinct definition states that a group is a collection of two or more people who are interacting with and influencing one another. The definition seems clear and satisfying enough until you begin to think of humans on elevators, in theaters, or in the same subway car. Though interaction and influence are apparent in tightly knit work and social groups, they may be less obvious in elevator passengers, at least until the car jerks to a sudden stop between floors. The amount of interaction among people who are in physical proximity can vary dramatically depending on the circumstances, and one small change in the environment could quickly turn a collection of individuals into something that fits neatly into the traditional definition for the word “group.”

Technology elements have changed the world, and not just the modern world. Mercury was a magical metal to the ancient Egyptians, and thousands of years later its remarkable properties were the basis for gold mining that drew Europeans to the New World. Then came arsenic, which played a role in speeding dynastic successions around the world. And now, we have gallium, germanium, indium, and tantalum that are essential to computers and mobile communications. Whereas we have referred to the ferroalloy and the base and light elements as metals, this group is best referred to as elements because it includes both metals and metalloids.

Although many of the elements included in this group are in the news frequently, it might surprise you to learn that their total global production is valued at only about $14 billion annually (Figure 10.1), far behind the metals we have discussed so far. Rare earths, by far the value leader of the group at about $6.5 billion, are followed by antimony and lithium with totals of about $2.5 billion each. The rest bring up the rear with individual production values of $500 million or less (Figure 10.1).

Also surprising is the fact that only rare earths, gallium, indium, lithium, and rhenium have grown in production at a greater rate than steel since 1960; all the rest of have lagged steel production (Figure 10.1). The greatest laggards are mercury, beryllium, and tellurium, for which global production has actually decreased, and arsenic and tantalum production have remained just about constant. Of the remaining elements, antimony, bismuth, germanium, and selenium have increased production most, although they still lag behind steel.

This pattern of relatively low consumption reflects the fact that technology elements go into products that are used largely in MDCs. As these products become more widely used in LDCs, consumption will rise, a pattern that has begun to show up during the last decade. Thus, it is time to look into these elements and learn what they are used for, where they come from, and whether resources are sufficient to supply the expected increasing demand. Because of their tremendous variety of properties and markets, there is no obvious system to our discussion. In order to help readers locate their element of interest, we discuss them here in alphabetical order.

Precious metals and gems were among the first minerals to be valued by civilization and they have kept their attraction for millennia. Even in their raw state, gems and precious metals are easily recognizable as truly special and beautiful. Although other minerals, such as pyrite (fool's gold), might be confused for gold, it is rare to confuse gold for another mineral. Its rich color and luster are simply unique. The same is true for the brilliant play of light and color from gemstones. On top of it all, precious metals and gems are rare. We even use special nomenclature to discuss their abundances. Gold and silver abundances are commonly reported in terms of the troy ounce, which equals about 31 g; prices of precious metals are commonly quoted in troy ounces, and we have used them (referred to here as ounces) to describe the metal endowment of individual deposits. Weights of diamonds and other precious gems are measured in an even smaller unit, the carat, which amounts to 0.2 g. Because these non-metric units are widely understood, we use them in parts of this discussion.

In spite of their rarity, precious metals and gems are a big business, with world production worth almost $200 billion (Figure 11.1). Gold is the most important of the group, with silver, diamonds, platinum-group elements (PGEs), and the colored gems emerald, ruby, and sapphire following in that order. Gold production increased in the 1990s, but has declined annually since 2000 in all countries except China. Global production of PGEs increased by more than 1,000% from 1960 to 2008, and plateaued thereafter. Production of gem diamonds increased by almost 1,400% at the start of the twenty-first century, dropped slightly during the economic crisis of 2008–2010, and leveled off after that. Mine production of industrial diamonds, which are discussed further in Chapter 13, increased from 1960 to 2008, although with cyclicity, but fell dramatically after 2008 owing to the proliferation of synthetic diamonds for industrial applications.

Construction and industrial minerals are the least known of the world's mineral commodities, even though they are essential for housing and infrastructure (Harben and Bates, 1984). The average US home contains 60 tonnes of concrete products, 25 tonnes of sand, gravel, and stone, 7 tonnes of gypsum products, and 0.1 tonne of glass. The anonymity of these mineral resources is curious because mines and processing facilities for most of them are much closer to most of us than are gold mines and oil wells. This is because their unit values are low and transportation to market can increase costs by as much as 100% (Juszli, 1989). The good news about this is that production of many essential construction minerals is high in most more-developed countries (MDCs) and is an important source of employment. The bad news is that their proximity to populations makes these mines a common focus of land-use and environmental concerns, which directly affect our cost of living.

The mineral resources discussed here can be divided into four groups based on their main uses. Ranked in order of decreasing value and tonnage, these are the construction minerals, the glass raw materials, the fillers, pigments and filters, and the abrasives. World production data for crushed stone, sand and gravel, and common clay are not tabulated and have been estimated here by assuming that US consumption has the same relation to world consumption that US gross domestic product (GDP) has to world GDP. On that basis, the total value of global construction and industrial minerals is about $460 billion.

Construction minerals

The main mineral commodities used directly in construction include cement, aggregate and lightweight aggregate, dimension stone, gypsum, and common clay (Tepordei, 1999). Cement is by far the most valuable member of the group (Figure 13.1), largely because it is actually a processed mineral material like steel rather than a raw mineral commodity. Production growth for these minerals since 1960 has diverged significantly, with cement far outpacing the growth of steel, gypsum matching steel, and clays and aggregate falling far behind. Prices of all of the commodities have also diverged significantly, with clays and sand and gravel keeping pace with the CPI, cement falling slightly behind, and gypsum and crushed stone showing essentially no increase (Figure 13.1).

Among the topics and themes discussed so far has been the increase in state intervention in almost all sectors of social and economic life over the past 100 years or so: the growth of the welfare state, with the accompanying expansion of machinery for dispute prevention and solution through administrative tribunals and other bodies; the vast increase in legal controls over many activities which, in earlier times, were left to the private arrangements of the individuals and groups concerned; and the changing nature of the state itself, which has moved from a relatively non-interventionist stance to much more positive and direct regulation and control. In recent years, central government has sought to deregulate, and to return nationalised and public-sector industries and services to the private sector; but, paradoxically, in so far as this has been achieved, it has been done largely by placing considerable directive power in the hands of central government.

Private sector involvement in the provision of public services has blurred the distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ sector organisations and functions: what were previously regarded as the proper activities of the state have now often become the responsibilities of private companies – examples range from the privatisation of ‘public utilities’ such as the power and telecommunications industries, to the contracting-out to private companies of various aspects of the management of hospitals, schools and even prisons.

The reasons for this shift in the old notion of ‘public service’ are easily identified. Apart from ideological justifications based on the idea of ‘empowering the tax-paying citizen’ through enhancing the transparency and accountability of the operation of these services, the attempt has been made over the past twenty-five years or so to improve their efficiency. Usually, ‘regulators’ have been created to monitor and, to a certain extent, to control, the activities of the private organisations concerned. Thus, the communications industries are overseen by the Offices of Telecommunication (OFCOM), water services by OFWAT and so on.

The importance of legal concepts will already be appreciated from the preceding discussions, in which we mentioned such notions as ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’ and their role within the legal system. Apart from these concepts, however, which play a part in influencing the content and operation of the legal system, there are other fundamental concepts within the law itself, whose significance must be understood. Such concepts as ‘ownership’ and ‘possession’, for example, referring to what may be quite complex relationships between individuals and concrete things, are basic to the notions about property embodied in law. At a more fundamental level are concepts of ‘rights’, ‘duties’ and ‘persons’, which are so basic to the operation and implementation of rules of law that we can think of them as the ‘units of legal currency’ whereby rules become ‘translated’ and applied to specific social activities. If we say, for example, ‘Jones owns a car’, then in the event of Smith, another car owner, driving his vehicle so that it collides with Jones’ car, the fact that Jones’ interest in her car is one of ‘ownership’ will give rise to all kinds of possible relationships between Jones and Smith, turning on the questions as to what rights Jones may have in law against Smith, and what duties Smith may have infringed in respect of Jones and her damaged car. In this chapter, these basic legal concepts and the various attempts made by legal writers to analyse and classify them will be examined critically; in the second part of the chapter, the idea of ‘legal personality’, or what constitutes a ‘person’ in the eyes of the law, will be considered with various examples.

Rights and duties: problems of analysing legal concepts

The language and structure of the law take the idea of ‘legal rights’ as one of law's most fundamental concepts, together with the associated idea of ‘legal duties’. But what exactly do lawyers mean when they speak of ‘legal rights’? There are a number of contexts in which the notion of ‘rights’ may arise.

If history can be our guide, global mineral supplies will be a major factor in future world relations, as well as the focus of important environmental and economic controversies. At the heart of these disputes will be the fundamental questions of how much is left and how long it will last. Throughout this book, we have quoted reserve and resource figures, which are half of this equation. It is time now to review the ways that mineral reserves and resources are estimated, and then turn attention to the other side of the equation, mineral consumption.

Reserve and resource estimation methods

Recall from our first chapter that Earth's mineral endowment is referred to as a resource and the part that can be extracted at a profit is known as a reserve (Figure 1.3). Estimates of reserves and resources rely on geology and statistics (Singer and Menzie, 2010). Geological approaches range from simple enumeration of known deposits and their probable extensions to more complex assessments based on specific ore deposit types or favorable geological environments. Statistical methods range from those based on assumptions regarding characteristics of the population of mineral deposits to others that extrapolate exploration, production, or consumption trends (Wellmer and Becker-Platen, 2002; Sinclair and Blackwell, 2006; Singer, 2013; DeYoung, 2014).

Geological estimates

Geological estimates are the most traditional and probably the most dependable because they are based on actual observations about rocks. In the simplest method, reserve estimates for individual deposits are collected, evaluated, and compiled to determine the total reserve. Such estimates are useful only for measured and perhaps indicated reserves, and can therefore tell us only how much material has actually been observed and quantified. Geological estimates of resources are much more complex. In most cases these estimates involve the search for favorable geological environments likely to host deposits of interest. If more than one type of mineral deposit is involved, then each environment must be evaluated separately.

We have seen, at various points in this book, the ways in which certain activities and values come to be incorporated into law; such incorporation may be positive, as where the law is used to protect specific interests and values, or negative, as where the law, especially the criminal law, is used to proscribe certain activities because they offend certain dominant values (such as the sanctity of private property or the values attaching to particular moral beliefs), or because they are seen as an affront to the very foundations of social existence (such activities would include murder, rape and other violent behaviour). Definitions of ‘deviant behaviour’, then, are not something ‘pre-social’, that is, eternal, permanent and deriving from periods prior to social life as we know it; rather, they are dependent on particular social structural arrangements at given periods of history. Whatever the origins of particular legal rules proscribing ‘unacceptable’ behaviour may be, those legal rules do have certain things in common, one of the most important of which is that they invariably provide for some form of legal sanction to be visited upon the offender upon conviction by a court.

A second feature is that, through the operation of ideological currents as reflected in the mass media, judicial pronouncements and political policies (as enunciated in and implemented by legislation), the criminal offender who has infringed or flaunted dominant moral and ideological norms (we are not here speaking of the speeding motorist or car-parking offender) comes to be seen publicly as a marginal individual, acting in a way which is antagonistic or threatening to the lives, property or values of everyone else. We will discuss this in more detail later, but the corollary of this phenomenon is that the role of the legal personnel who administer the criminal justice system (police, magistrates, judges, prison and probation officers, and so on) is seen to be the apprehension, conviction, condemnation and disposal of these deviants on behalf of the rest of the social group – the ‘public’.

As we move into the twenty-first century, mineral supplies have become a truly global concern. For most of human history, developed countries have consumed far more than their per capita share of world mineral production. Everyone talked about the day when the rest of the world might want its share of the pie, but it was largely an abstract notion. Now, they are at the door. In fact, China has become the world's largest consumer of mineral resources, and India is not far behind. This momentous change poses two threats. First, there is the possibility that we will run out of the minerals even sooner than we thought. Second, there is the increased pollution caused by their extraction and consumption, which has already destroyed the environment in some areas.

These threats have generated a wide range of opinions about mineral resources and the environment. At one end of the spectrum are those who advocate a dramatic reduction in new mineral production with recycling and conservation providing for the future. At the other end are those who feel that vigorous exploration will always find new minerals and that they can be produced safely with minimal attention to the environment. Both camps are on perilous ground. Many mineral commodities, such as oil and fertilizers, cannot be recycled and the growing demand from developing countries will consume any minerals that are conserved by developed countries. To make matters worse, numerous studies have shown that Earth's storehouse of mineral deposits is indeed finite and that substitutes for important mineral commodities are scarce. Finally, we cannot ignore the environmental catastrophes that have been caused by past mineral production or the impending problems likely to be caused by increasing global mineral consumption.

Unless we are willing to make a dramatic reduction in our standard of living, however, we must find a way to produce and consume the enormous volumes of minerals that we need without significant degradation of the environment. In other words, we must find a middle ground in these arguments, and this means compromise. Unfortunately, compromise is impossible if the parties involved do not understand the problem. That is where this book comes in. It provides an introduction to the geologic, engineering, economic, and environmental factors that govern the production and consumption of mineral resources.

Most environmental debates require an understanding of the fundamental principles of geochemistry that govern the movement of pollutants. These principles control environmental decisions in the same way that geological principles control the distribution of mineral deposits. Failure to understand them creates the risk of advocating impossible solutions, such as disposing of radioactive waste by burning it. Thus, before beginning our discussion of mineral resources, we must review the chemical controls that determine their environmental effects.

Principles of environmental geochemistry

Just in case you have forgotten some of your high school science, here is a quick review. The fundamental building blocks of Earth are atoms, which consist of a positively charged nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The nucleus is made up of neutrons with no charge and protons with a positive charge equal to that of an electron. Different atoms, each with a specific number of protons, make up the elements, which are arranged in the periodic table (Figure 3.1). Elements lose or gain electrons to become ions. Those with fewer electrons than protons have a net positive charge and are known as cations; those with more electrons than protons have a net negative charge and are known as anions. Ions that lose electrons are said to be oxidized, whereas those that gain electrons are reduced. The valence or oxidation state of the ion refers to the number of electrons that it has lost or gained. Elements with different numbers of neutrons but the same number of protons are known as isotopes. They are commonly referred to by their number of protons plus neutrons, or mass number, and are written in the form 235U.

Atoms form chemical bonds with other atoms to produce compounds, substances with a definite chemical composition. A group of atoms is known as a molecule if it has no net charge, such as CO2, or a complex ion if it has a net charge, such as NH4+ or CO32–. Compounds are classified as organic if they contain carbon in association with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorous, chlorine, or fluorine, or inorganic if they do not contain carbon. Compounds that form during processes occurring in Earth are considered natural and those that are made in the laboratory are synthetic.