Riding the Wave of the Future

Flying cars. Ray guns. Robots. If film and television have taught us anything about the days to come, it is that the future will be overflowing with fantastic machines. Half of the appeal of franchises like The Jetsons or Star Trek is the boyish glee viewers get from hoping to play with some of the futuristic gizmos the shows put front and center.

But if flying cars are coming, what’s taking so long? In the book “Where’s My Jetpack?” published last spring, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson demands, “The time has come to hold the golden age of science fiction accountable for its fantastic promises.” Wilson’s tongue-in-cheek remark sums up the unspoken feelings of a generation of Americans who were told they would ride a jetpack to work, eat a whole meal in a pill, and vacation on the moon by the year 2000.

The future is here, and yet we’re still waiting for it. Instead of rocket packs, we’re stuck with buses and subways. Instead of x-ray goggles, we have to settle for contact lenses. Technology hasn’t solved our problems—if anything, it’s made them worse. Just look at global warming.

Yet in many ways, the future has indeed arrived, just not where we might have expected it. Take the internet: Though he’d miss his floating chair, George Jetson would be astounded by public WiFi or BitTorrent if he lived today. In particular, there’s no field where the future is more self-evident than in the world of optics.

On the night of the election, CNN claimed to display “holograms” of reporter Jessica Yellin and musician will.i.am. The wonky, Star Wars-themed image was a cheap stunt, and it existed only in the camera, not in the studio. But true holograms are commercially viable, as are a host of other emerging optical technologies, such as 3D optical data storage, LED lamps, and virtual retinal display, which is like projecting images directly onto the retina.

Even the holy grail of optics, invisibility, was nearly achieved this summer by researchers at University of California at Berkeley. Beforehand, scientists had only been able to bend longer waves, like radiowaves, around objects. The Berkeley team was able to engineer superior “metamaterials,” made from a fishnet-like lattice of metals, which could bend visible light around an object with little noticeable disruption. The process is still expensive, but the strategic benefits to the Army, which provided the funding, are obvious.

Though invisibility cloaks won’t be sold as Halloween costumes anytime soon, plenty of other consumer gadgets based on optical breakthroughs are hitting the market. Several companies are selling “pocket projectors” for less than $500 this holiday season that are the size of an iPhone and can project a digital image as wide as 50 inches onto any surface. Take it camping and project “Iron Man” onto the side of the tent. Bring it to a job interview and project a brief slideshow pitch about your Webkinz-Pokemon hybrid idea onto the wall of the room. Point it at the ceiling and check your email while tucked under the covers.

Also hitting the market are organic LEDs, or OLEDs, which are sure to render CRTs and LCDs obsolete once engineers overcome limits to size and longevity. They’re thinner and more energy efficient than LCDs and have a greater range of colors, including true black. The New York Times said Sony’s XEL-1 was like “looking out a window. With the glass missing.” OLEDs have much superior viewing angles, so that, unlike the typical laptop LCD screen, they won’t go dark when you turn your head away from perpendicular. But the coolest aspect of all is that they can be “printed,” using an inkjet printer, onto other materials. That means you can wear a shirt with a video on it. Or roll up your screen and put it in your pocket. A few years down the line it might even be economical to create newspapers with moving images imbedded into the page à la Harry Potter.

At times it seems like the “gee whiz!” factor inherent in these technological breakthroughs outweighs their substance. Given all the problems in the world, do we really need a tee shirt with animated dancing hamsters printed on it? In some sense, it’s reprehensible that we could reach such dizzying heights in optics in the same world where millions of children die each year of malaria.

This is misplaced guilt. A volunteer armed with a pocket projector in rural Africa could project an educational video onto the wall of a house. OLEDs will help people cut their power consumption and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Even those who buy gadgets for their own enjoyment are helping to fund optics research and encourage technical experimentation. Improving our mastery of optics will improve our ability to communicate and light the path to the future we’ve all been waiting for.


Adam R. Gold ’11, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.