Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have made an important advance in this frontier of photonics, fashioning the first all-optical photonic switch out of cadmium sulfide nanowires. Moreover, they combined these photonic switches into a logic gate, a fundamental component of computer chips that process information.
The nano-wires can manipulate light to make switches, the basic component of computers. Did you get that? Nano-switches. As in really, really, really tiny.
Vernor Vinge wrote a novel a few years ago, Rainbow's End, that postulated people being able to access the Internet through their clothes. Sony, I think, has already debuted a prototype of a computer built into eyeglasses. With this, they could build computers into contact lenses.
It's an amazing world. It's sort of sobering to realize that we're living in a science-fiction novel.
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