The Internet lives on beams of light. One hair-thin glass fiber can carry as much data as thousands of copper wires. But inside your computer, copper still rules. The advantages of light haven't translated from long-distance connections on the Internet to the short jump between computer chips, in part because the lasers used in optical communications are made from exotic semiconductors incompatible with the standard processes for making silicon computer chips. As computers get faster and faster, they're near-ing the physical limit of copper's ability to carry more information, and they'll need something like the fiber-optic network in order to keep improving at the rate we've come to expect.
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