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HarryLaymanSecondPaper 5 - 10 Aug 2009 - Main.HarryLayman
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Who killed Trellis Photonics and is Verizon next? | | | The technology “involve[d] writing a holographic Bragg grating on a photorefractive crystal (such as potassium lithium tantalum niobate).” (Source). The technique resulted in switching time on the order of 10 nanoseconds, approximately 300x faster than current technology. Unlike conventional routers, electroholographic switches would not need to convert the light into electrons, and would require minimal inspection of the data being transmitted. Just bounce the light off the mathematically-calculated hologram, and it will reflect itself down the right tube. | |
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< | There was just one problem: it never worked. The company folded in an orderly and thoroughly unremarkable manner. | >
> | There was just one problem: it never worked, we are to believe. The company folded in an orderly and thoroughly unremarkable manner. | | | | | | June 13, 2009 saw millions take to the streets of Iran in protest of rigged elections. The events that followed were leaked to the rest of the world via Twitter, an otherwise asinine social media site designed for many-to-many communication in 144 characters or less. This was not the first revolution to be tweeted, but it was probably the most significant in its impact on the world to date. Its beauty was that it allowed everyone with a cellular phone to become reporters, and its strength in the numbers of followers who, blessed in their naivete, expected fair elections. While the diffuse and polymorphic information topology created by a mix of cellular phones, satellite uplinks, and pseudonymous social media proved difficult for censors to navigate, it was not impossible. The Iranian state deliberately crafted their communications network to all route through a single point, where they could (theoretically, at least) micromanage the flow of information through the country. | |
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< | Residents of most Western countries don't view their government and its control of telecommunications in the same light as Iran. Even when they read about warrantless wiretapping in the New York Times and its use to exert influence on key members of congress, they remain happy to pay seventy dollars a month for wireless phones whose workings they don't begin to understand. People trust that nobody is listening to their calls (because they're not important enough, because they have nothing to hide) if they think about the subject at all, which they probably don't. | | | \ No newline at end of file | |
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> | Residents of most Western countries don't view their government and its control of telecommunications in the same light as Iran. Even when they read about warrantless wiretapping in the New York Times and its use to exert influence on key members of congress, they remain happy to pay seventy dollars a month for wireless phones whose workings they don't begin to understand. People trust that nobody is listening to their calls (because they're not important enough, because they have nothing to hide) if they think about the subject at all, which they probably don't. But, once new technologies get a little more developed, and older technologies become more widespread and even cheaper, maybe it won't matter. In a self-organizing peer-to-peer network without backbones and last miles, where can anyone listen in? |
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