The 100-Year View of Photonics: Part 3

Tom Hausken

What will shape the next century’s transformative technologies?

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Technology adoption life cycle: Selected optics and photonics technologies, with each broad technology mapped according to cumulative market maturity and normalized life-cycle stage as of 2016. [OSA Industry Development Associates (OIDA), 2016]

In the last two columns (OPN, May 2016 and July/August 2016) I’ve reviewed seven major commercial achievements and social transformations from optics and photonics during OSA’s first 100 years. The coming century may not feature similar transformations on the same scale. Yet the market is now greater than US$400 billion and is still growing. What technologies will prove transformative for the four big challenges of the 21st century—limited natural resources, life sciences, security and intelligent automation?

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