Upon joining Laser Focus World in mid-August, I heard the same story from many people introducing me to this intriguing world: though photonics technologies are ubiquitous, hardly anyone knows about them.
The narrative tracked with my experience. With significant embarrassment, I admit that I cannot recall reading many articles on the topic—let alone one heralding the outsized impact it’s had and will have on “almost every facet of modern life, from weather and climate monitoring to the fabrication of new automobiles, and from advanced agriculture to vision correction,” according to SPIE’s Optics & Photonics 2022 Industry Report. (And those in the field know that this range of applications only scratches the surface.)
Yet I’ve been writing about technologies essential to business for over two decades. More significantly, in recent times, I couldn’t avoid information about a similar collection of technologies—the Internet of Things—if I’d tried.
Let’s look at the numbers: an update of the SPIE Industry Report to be released next January at Photonics West calculates the total monetary value of light-enabled products and related services (such as cloud computing, streaming, and e-commerce) in 2023 at approximately 16 trillion—over 15% of global gross domestic product (GDP).
How could such a substantial part of the economy—and a segment that leads global scientific research—remain so largely unknown?
As a new advocate for photonics, I see this year’s Nobel Prize recognition of photonics research in physics and chemistry as a wake-up call, an opportunity to double down on efforts to increase the visibility of this field in mainstream business and society. The global recognition is a big deal, especially when last year’s physics award also recognized photonics research.
Based on the people in the photonics community I’ve met so far, I’m optimistic. Efforts to raise the profile and advocate for photonics research and application are evident in Optica (see their list of members who are Nobel Prize Laureates), SPIE (see their infographics explaining the technical applications of light), and EPIC (see information about their efforts to promote Day of Photonics), among others.
I’m excited to join these organizations and others as we move photonics from being perceived as an obscure, arcane, hard-to-understand scientific pursuit toward broader business adoption and general society awareness—while still celebrating leading-edge research.
