Woods Hole, my home town, has six scientific institutions and a year-round population of under 1000. As Gloucester is to fish, as Pittsburgh was to steel, as Palo Alto is to venture capital, so is Woods Hole to science.
As I was growing up, the fall spectator sport wasn't the World Series. It was the Nobel Prize. We'd root, root, root for the home team.
This year's Nobel Prize for Physics goes to Charles Kao, who I had the honor of hosting at Bell Labs when I worked there. Ironically, the two other scientists sharing this year's Physics prize, Willard Boyle and George Smith, were Bell Labs scientists, but I did not know them.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences choice to honor fiber this year underscores how civilization-changing a technology it is. The whole spectrum, from DC to daylight, including all the frequencies that carry wireless communications, are replicated in each glass strand. A cable the width of a broomstick can hold thousands of strands. The leap from electronics to photonics will prove to be as profound as the leap from muscle power to mechanical power.
Wireless communications has its place; I'm confident we'll find the right mix of fiber and wireless communications technologies. But our grandchildren are likely to ask us why we didn't replace copper and coax cables faster. What will we tell them?
As I was growing up, the fall spectator sport wasn't the World Series. It was the Nobel Prize. We'd root, root, root for the home team.
This year's Nobel Prize for Physics goes to Charles Kao, who I had the honor of hosting at Bell Labs when I worked there. Ironically, the two other scientists sharing this year's Physics prize, Willard Boyle and George Smith, were Bell Labs scientists, but I did not know them.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences choice to honor fiber this year underscores how civilization-changing a technology it is. The whole spectrum, from DC to daylight, including all the frequencies that carry wireless communications, are replicated in each glass strand. A cable the width of a broomstick can hold thousands of strands. The leap from electronics to photonics will prove to be as profound as the leap from muscle power to mechanical power.
Wireless communications has its place; I'm confident we'll find the right mix of fiber and wireless communications technologies. But our grandchildren are likely to ask us why we didn't replace copper and coax cables faster. What will we tell them?
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