The coming photonic revolution

摘要

If they remade The Graduate today, the buzzword tossed at Benjamin Brad-dock wouldn't be "plastics" but rather "photonics"—the use of light, rather than electricity, for transmission of data. The use of photons over electrons is what lets fiber optics handle high-bandwidth communications over long distances, but the expense and complexity limit their use. And as researchers put greater effort into cramming more information through copper wires, photonics' day in the sun, as it were, was always pushed further out. For mainstream applications, copper wire continues to dominate as the communications medium of choice.