Don't Fall For It

CHAPTER 8The Siren Song of New Technologies

Gold rushes tend to encourage impetuous investments. A few will pay off, but when the frenzy is behind us, we will look back incredulously at the wreckage of failed ventures and wonder, ‘Who funded those companies? What was going on in their minds? Was that just a mania at work?’

—Bill Gates

Glass was created millions of years ago when a comet struck the planet and emitted enough heat to create a chemical reaction that turned silicon dioxide into a liquid that changed into a solid as it cooled. But glass didn’t serve much of a purpose until another invention brought it to life. Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press led people across Europe to realize they were farsighted when they tried to read. Demand for reading glasses skyrocketed. This increase in demand led to a wave of innovation in other areas as scientists began to experiment with different lenses.

Lens experimentation led to the microscope, which literally opened our eyes to the inner workings of cells in the body. Then in the 1970s, researchers at Corning Glassworks developed an astonishingly clear type of glass. Scientists at Bell Labs took the fibers from that glass and sent laser beams down the length of the fibers using optical signals, which worked much like computer coding with zeroes and ones. Mashing these seemingly unrelated inventions together – clear glass with fibers and lasers – created what is now known as fiber optics. It turns out fiber optics are extremely ...