More little things

Here’s an article about how some theorists at U Penn are thinking about how to make common electronic circuit components on a nanoscale that run on light instead of big, fat electrons.

Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have theorized a means of shrinking electronics so they could be run using light instead of electricity. In the search to create faster, smaller and more energy-efficient electronics, researchers have looked elsewhere in the electromagnetic spectrum, which ranges from the low-frequency energy used in everyday electronics to the high-frequency energy of gamma rays, to pass the limits of conventional technology.

Why even notice? Well, our way of life has been going through waves of change for decades because our communications devices have relentlessly become smaller, faster, cheaper. These articles from the frontiers of physics say to me that the changes will just keep coming. Think things will stay put? Not a chance.