Jobs and company brought forth some wonderful technology, which we honored by buying in the millions. For my money though, it wasn’t just the technology – it was the aesthetic. Apple products were insistently an amalgam of function and style, which I think it’s fair to say sometimes reached the level of art. This is Steve Jobs stamp on the future; he insisted upon style and demanded that his customers pay well for it. Only the best commercial artists are successful in doing that.

With Steve Jobs it was often my way or the highway, but a clever guide can often find the way along a road not yet taken. He was good at that, though at times deceived by his own vision, he was always looking, trying, finding the next ‘insanely great’ product.

I hope we remember his insistence on high standards for a long time.

Steven Paul Jobs – February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

He dreamed he had died…and gone to heaven. Yes, that was a surprise to everyone. Only heaven wasn’t what he’d envisioned, or even read about in the Economist. For one thing, it wasn’t awesome and well lit. Instead there was an amorphously huge area full of people, all waiting to get into heaven proper. Millions upon millions of people, waiting with nothing to do but look at each other, converse, and meditate. Some of them found this difficult, including Bill Gates, but unlike software there were no options.

Occasionally a being with wings would make its way through the throng, carrying a clipboard. After Bill had waited several weeks, one of the beings came to him. His face, instead of being celestial, was scarred by acne. He was wearing a T-shirt, dark blue with gold lettering that spelled TEAM PETER. The effect was vaguely holographic, as if it had been a good idea when somebody brought it up in a meeting.

“Hello.” The voice was bored. It could have been the voice of any typical customer service representative. “My name is Gabriel and I will be your guide, or more specifically, induction coordinator.” Bill was about to raise a question, but he was cut off – “Not the Archangel Gabriel. You don’t see any stupid horn do you? I was a Gabriel from Philadelphia. Now, your name – last name first, unless you’re Chinese.” The tone was peremptory.

“Gates, Bill.” Gabriel began flipping pages on his clipboard. While he fumbled, Bill recovered his usual assertive mode: “What is this? Why are all these people here? I’ve been waiting weeks! Where’s Saint Peter?”

Without answering, Gabriel continued his search. Finally he said, “Ah – your record of Earthly Works. Impressive! Things are looking pearly Mr. Gates!” Gabriel did indeed look pleased, but his tone changed again, “However, it shows here that you were also CEO of a very large software company. There are very few of you here, you know.” Looking directly upward, Gabriel sighed, “There must be a Reason.”

Gabriel continued, “You see all these people, Mr. Gates? Do you think Peter can meet them all personally? I think not.”

“I guess not,” Bill replied.

“Peter decided it was time to sub-contract. We call it Team Peter Enterprises, and I am a franchisee. We never see Peter, of course, he just sets policy.” Gabriel studied a paper on the clipboard. “Considering your history, it’s surprising but your paperwork is in order. With your background, I suspect you will get a plum job assignment.”

Somewhat stunned at the thought of working in Heaven, Bill stammered, “Job assignment?”

Gabriel looked at Bill as if he were a puppy that had just pooped on the carpet. “Of course! What did you think? That you’d sit on your ass sipping ambrosia all day? Heaven is a big operation. As in the memo from Saint Ayn, everyone has to pull their own weight!” With that, Gabriel put a triplicate form on top of the clipboard and pulling a pencil from under his right wing motioned to Bill. “Sign here.” After signing, Gabriel pulled out the middle copy and handed it to Bill. “Take this and proceed to the induction center for Gate 309b. Look for your occupational specialist, his name is Abraham.” Bill started to open his mouth, but Gabriel waved him off, “Not that Abraham.”

No sooner had Gabriel departed than Bill found himself already standing before Gate 309b. He decided the speed of transport was a rich feature of Heaven. However, it was another six hours before he met with Abraham. His frustration must’ve shown on his face. Even before he could speak, Abraham said, “Obviously Heaven is centuries behind in its data processing.” He pointed to the paper in Bill’s hand, “We’re still using paper. We have a Directive, of course. Have had it forever – to streamline the processing, but the rate of dying is unprecedented.”

Abraham put a finger to his head, as if thinking or perhaps receiving a message. “Ah. You are to supervise the new Heavenly Data Processing Center or HDPC. It will be the largest computing facility in creation, much bigger than anything operated by Google. Anything you can imagine – a billion computer server farm, fully fault-less, instant communications, completely distributed – as you see fit, the Works.”

Bill jumped up and down for excitement, though up and down are not sanctioned in Heaven. “Awesome! What a great job! This is really Heaven!!”

Abraham said, “The center is nearly finished. Would you like to see it now?” As Bill nodded, he was already there. He blinked. He rubbed his eyes. The glare from millions of computer screens faced him like an endless brilliant cloud, but that wasn’t what assaulted his eyes. Every single one of the computers was unmistakably an Apple.

“Not one PC,” he croaked. The thought of spending eternity tending to Apple products filled him with dread. “What about Windows?”

“You are forgetting something,” said Abraham.

Bill was afraid to ask, “What?”

“This is Heaven, where everything must run smoothly – heavenly. Just as specified to Saint Jobs. If you want a data center using PCs and Windows, well…you can GO TO HELL!”

This was a dream that Bill did not even relate to Melinda.

[Adapted from an HTML version by Omri Weisman]

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The tech stared at the paper. Then he remembered the specific instructions.
All passwords must be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.

The investigators were looking for an understanding of optical switching leading to an all optical micro-transistor that could operate inside a photonics chip. This has been for some time a high priority of optical computing research. As the key piece of their research, they used photonic crystals, dielectric nanostructures that selectively block photons of light at certain wavelengths in a way similar to what semiconductor crystals do to electrons. What they discovered was a way of creating areas of near-vacuum inside photonic crystals. Inside the vacuum were quantum dots (nanoscale crystals) that could be excited – brought to a higher state of energy, in this case by photons – by a color-coded pulse of laser light in as little as one-trillionth of a second. The quantum dots, in excited or non-excited state, could in turn control the flow of other laser pulses – in short, switching. As with traditional semiconductors, this type of ‘switching’ can be used for computer logic (digital gates).

University of Toronto quantum optics researchers Sajeev John and Xun Ma have discovered new behaviours of light within photonic crystals that could lead to faster optical information processing and compact computers that don’t overheat.

“We discovered that by sculpting a unique artificial vacuum inside a photonic crystal, we can completely control the electronic state of artificial atoms within the vacuum,” says Ma, a PhD student under John’s supervision and lead author of a study published in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters. “This discovery can enable photonic computers that are more than a hundred times faster than their electronic counterparts, without heat dissipation issues and other bottlenecks currently faced by electronic computing.”
…
“This new mechanism enables micrometer scale integrated all-optical transistors to perform logic operations over multiple frequency channels in trillionths of a second at microwatt power levels, which are about one millionth of the power required by a household light bulb,” says John. “That this mechanism allows for computing over many wavelengths as opposed to electronic circuits which use only one channel, would significantly surpass the performance of current day electronic transistors.”

[Source: Nanotechnology Today]

The principles behind optical computing are reasonably well understood. Much of the difficulty in creating optical computing has been more on the practical end. Photonic crystals are difficult to manufacture. Whether there will be similar difficulties in manufacturing photonic crystals with vacuum spaces remains to be seen. In any case, the road to development of a photonic computer may go through this research. There are big advantages – especially in the superfast switching allowed by using laser control.