A major part of the worldwide laser industry indeed emerged three decades ago here. An amazing number of everyday tasks will be done by light waves in the near future. In fact, many of us think optics and photonics will become as important in the 21st century as electronics was in the 20th. Even now, modern integrated circuits could not be made without sophisticated optical fabrication and measurement techniques. The Internet could not be what it is without light pulses flowing through millions of miles of fiber optic cables, and more and more of the data flowing through those fibers is collected, stored, and printed at amazingly low cost by lasers.
Optics is on the way to revolutionizing medicine and surgery.
Most of the physics and chemistry Nobel Prizes in recent years have arisen from sophisticated optical experiments. Educated people know that s wrong. Those who follow this practice are either ignorant or truckling to the ignorance of hoi polloi. Some of your writers do know the facts, and write about them properly, but no one among all your editors sets down a policy for your writers to follow. There are still 100 years in a century, not 99.