Ladies and gentlemen, allow me a toast tonight, 1st of January 2040, to mark our passage into the decade of quantum photonics.
We've travelled far, having pushed micro-computing as far as it would go, compressing circuits into ever tighter spaces until we could compact the tangle no further. Cloud computing helped us weather the storm thereafter, doing away with the personal computer as we knew it, replacing workstations with terminals of limited personal power yet drawing infinite might from the collective cloud of processing power. But it was only in recent years that the promise of nano-computing came to fruition, and we started to bypass the limits of simple electronics.
Nanotubes and single electron transistors became the flesh and bone of the modern circuit. Instead of painstakingly crafting each organ of our creation, we delegated our jobs to workers far more capable. Nano-robots catalyzed the raw materials into intelligent matter: self-assembling chips whose properties fell down to the choosing of our minute workers. Machines were no longer rigid but transformed in shape, size and colour according to our needs and wants, from wristwatch to telephone to full-fledged computer.
Yet the past pales in comparison with where we stand today, at the dawn of a paradigm shift. The ghost in the machine, the electron has been superseded by the photon. We have harnessed it into our microchips, using its quantum power and velocity to multiply the speed of computation a myriad times. The photon's efficiency nearly eliminates the need for energy, which is harvested directly into our devices from the bountiful sunlight at our disposal, slowly yet surely weaning technology from our carbon addiction.
Discovery began with the light of Prometheus' fire, and to feed it we burned our world piece by piece. We can finally stop.
