On one hand, fibers are starting to creep into essentially conventional electronic systems, replacing wires that were causing data bottlenecks. On the other, researchers are devising entirely new optical connection architectures, networks and backplanes for future generations of machine. What all these workers seem to have in common is a requirement to think cheap, resistance from electronic engineers, and a certainty that optical interconnects is inevitable.
Resistance is the wire's opposition to having a current flow through it.
The longer the wire is, the more power has to be expended overcoming resistance. This is one of the reasons that fiber optics has completely taken over from copper cables for telecommunications transmission lines. Capacitance, on the other hand, is the ability to store charge. In order to transmit energy down a wire, this capacity has to be filled. The wire can be compared to the water pipe under a sink.