The next time you log on to the internet, or watch DTV, think of Charles Kao. It was his discovery of how to transmit light signals through glass fibers that led to these and other technological marvels in communications.
When you use your digital camera the next time, thank Willard Boyle and George Smith for their invention of the camera “eye,” which turns light into electrical signals.
As the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences declared upon awarding these three men the Nobel prize in physics, they are “the masters of light” whose work “helped to shape the foundations of today’s networked societies.”
We have done some wonderful things with their marvelous achievements: instant messaging and live news reports from anywhere in the world, transoceanic phone calls for pennies, remarkably clear pictures without film and quantum leap advancements in astronomy, to name a few.
And of course we have created the dark side: pornography on demand, sexting, résumé-killing MySpace photos and instant blackmail.
Why cannot someone come up with quantum leap advancements in human behavior? Is it because humans are unpredictable? But the more scientists discover, the more they realize that nature is also unpredictable.
A “eureka” moment – human beings are just as much a part of nature as trees and rocks! As such, we can expect the unexpected from humans for as long as nature itself exists.
Vive mankind!
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