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Optical Technology

Big Picture

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Every once in a while, there is something on the web that knocks my socks off.
As many of the readers of this Weblog know, I was once an astronomer; my PhD is in that field from the University of Virginia. During that time, I studied the structure of spiral galaxies (1), (2), (3) like [...]

Our Abstract World

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

We live in a world that is increasingly different from the one in which our ancestors received their genetic programming. Today, our minds constantly use abstractions to negotiate our way through the world.
An example of this is the process we use to steer an automobile.
(A fun fact to know is that when automobiles were first [...]

Optical Networks and Earth Limits

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

George Gilder is a widely published columnist and pundit. His thoughts about man’s technological future are widely respected. Lately, he has been evangelizing a vision of an all-optical Internet, plentiful bandwidth and the demise of many traditional Internet technologies like Cisco routers. Some of this vision is underpinned with assumptions that are [...]