OFC 2025: reflecting on the busiest optics show in years
The discussion covers the hot topics of the show and where the industry is headed next. Click here.
Books of 2024: Final Part
Gazettabyte has been asking industry figures to pick their reads of 2024. In the final part, Professor Polina Bayvel, Hojjat Salemi, Professor Laura Lechuga, and the editor of Gazettabyte share their selections.
Professor Polina Bayvel, Royal Society Research Professor & Head of the Optical Networks Group, Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, UCL
I recently attended a Royal Society Discussion Meeting where Leslie Valiant gave a brilliant talk on educability as a better definition than intelligence. A Harvard professor, he has developed many algorithms that underpin today’s networks, including Valiant’s load balancing. He is a profound thinker, and I wanted immediately to read his book, The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness.’
Although written in a popular style, it argues that educability (a precisely defined computational model) is a better term than intelligence, for which no agreed definition exists. He explains how we, as a human race, have been able to create the technological civilisation that we have and argues that this civilisation enabler is educability. He also implies that current AI models are not educable. The book is masterful in its lucidity in explaining complex concepts in computation. I really could not put it down.
Another read which has taken my breath away is A. N. Tolstoy’s The Road to Calvary (Russian: Хождение по мукам, romanised: Khozhdeniye po mukam, lit. ’Walking Through Torments’), also translated as Ordeal, is a trilogy set just before the Russian Revolution (starting 1914) and follows the lives of two sisters and their lovers/ husbands goes through the revolution and the Russian Civil War. It was a staple in Soviet schools, but leaving at age 12, I missed it and have only recently read it.
It’s a monument to history, and when one reads it, one realises that the well-to-do Russian liberals who argued for change and the removal of the Czarist rules had no idea what fate would face them or how their lives would change forever.
It made me think of today’s parallel – do we always understand the consequences of wanting liberal changes? The Russian pre-Revolution liberals, the intelligentsia, wanted democracy and more power for the people. What they got was the opposite – totalitarian oppression.
I was also struck by the stark realisation that had WWI not occurred, there would not have been a revolution, and the lives of so many people, including that of my own family, would have followed a completely different course.
Hojjat Salemi, Chief Business Development Officer, Ranovus
Several years ago, I decided to avoid social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, as well as the news channels Fox News and CNN. I found them to be major distractions and wasteful of time.
I used the time instead to read and listen to author interviews (podcasts) on YouTube, which often provide deeper insights into why they wrote their books and their key ideas. One of the best decisions I’ve made is controlling what I watch on YouTube—without ads! If you’re looking for good books about technology, here are my recommendations:
The book that won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year for 2024 is Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World by Party Olson.
It offers a fascinating narrative starting in 2012, focusing on how AI systems have developed, with a spotlight on two main figures: Dennis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind, and Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI.
The book explores three major themes:
- how AI could reshape society as it grows increasingly intelligent,
- the unintended consequences of the technologies we create,
- and the moral dilemmas and risks of pushing these innovations too far. It’s a fast-paced, thought-provoking look at the future.
Another suggestion is Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet by Chris Dixon. The book is written clearly and engagingly and explains complex ideas like blockchain, NFTs, and decentralised networks. Dixon describes the evolution of the internet: the early days of reading information, the read-write era of social media where people shared but didn’t own content, and the emerging read-write-own era (Web3), where blockchain allows users to own digital assets.
While I’ve been thinking about decentralised networks a lot, I’m still not convinced they can take off, given our geopolitical challenges. Take Bitcoin, for example; if something goes wrong, who do you call? Moreover, Web3’s dominant players still rely on centralised computing power. It’s a thoughtful read, but only time will tell how Web3 unfolds.
Lastly, I recommend Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies: An Introduction. The book, available as a free PDF, is highly educational on how new technologies disrupt societal norms and ethical frameworks.
The book examines four specific technologies: social media, robots, climate engineering, and artificial wombs. For instance, social media was supposed to give everyone a voice and bring people together. Instead, it has often divided us, spread misinformation, and allowed foreign powers to interfere in elections. It challenges the idea of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” today. This book is perfect for anyone wanting to understand new technologies’ unintended consequences.
Professor Laura Lechuga, Head of the Nanobiosensors and Bioanalytical Application Group at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2).
I love reading and do it frequently, especially during the many work trips I take throughout the year.
My favourite reading of 2024 was Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller. It is an impressive book about the development of microelectronics and the pivotal role of chips in shaping the world powers.
Having a PhD focused on microelectronics, I enjoyed reading a book that will become a masterpiece. What I appreciated most were the personal stories of the brilliant scientists and engineers who conceived, developed, and solved all the technical obstacles to transforming the semiconductor industry that helped found some of the most influential companies in the world. This is a must-read book.
My second favourite book was The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut. The book is a combination of history and novel in which Labatut tells the story of brilliant physicists such as John von Neumann, a genius able to invent new fields. But the same prodigy whose work impacted future advances in computing terrified the people around him, and his personal life was miserable. The book describes the evolution of von Neumann’s work through to the battle between AI and a world champion player of the game Go. It is a book that reflects on the limits of technology, an original, addictive, and beautiful read.
Another book I loved in 2024 was Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. It is a feminist novel about how difficult a professional career was for women scientists in the 1960s. I felt totally reflected in it, as our position has not changed much. It is a book that mixes funny and sad situations, is easy to read, very enjoyable, and has a clear message.
My last recommendation is the old Atlas Shrugged book by Ayn Rand. It isn’t easy to read due to its length but it is a fascinating futuristic story about a dystopian United States, and is now more actual than ever. It is a story of how human stupidity gains a significant advantage over intelligence and the devastating consequences for the U.S. This could also be extended to the rest of the world, perhaps a prophecy to be fulfilled in the coming years.
Roy Rubenstein, Editor of Gazettabyte
I read many books in 2024 and will highlight three. One is Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder. I had read his most recent book, Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People, and this was my follow-up read. Kidder is a master storyteller who finds the most remarkable individuals to write about. I highly recommend both.
Dame Hilary Mantel is best known for her Wolf Hall trilogy. Last year, a book of her writings—articles for literary magazines, essays, film reviews, and her BBC Reith Lectures—was published. A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing is an excellent read by a fabulous writer.
Lastly, I recommend the 55-hour audible version of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. While listening, I walked past the local cinema and realised there was a 2024 film version being shown. I entered, showed the attendant the audible version and asked if the film was shorter.
Books read in 2021: Final Part
In the final favoured reads during 2021, the contributors are Daryl Inniss of OFS, Vladimir Kozlov of LightCounting Market Research, and Gazettabyte’s editor.
Daryl Inniss, Director, Business Development at OFS
Four thousand weeks is the average human lifetime.
A book by Oliver Burkeman: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals is a guide to using the finite duration of our lives.
Burkeman argues that by ignoring the reality of our limited lifetime, we fill our lives with busyness and distractions and fail to achieve the very fullness that we seek.
While sobering, Burkeman presents thought-provoking and amusing examples and stories while transitioning them into positive action.
An example is his argument that our lives are insignificant and that, regardless of our accomplishments, the universe continues unperturbed. Setting unrealistic goals is one consequence of our attempt to achieve greatness.
On the other hand, recognising our inability to transform the world should give us enormous freedom to focus on the things we can accomplish.
We can jettison that meaningless job, be fearless in the face of pandemics given that they come and go throughout history, and lower our stresses on financial concerns given they are transitory. What is then left is the freedom to spend time on things that do matter to us.
Defining what’s important is an individual thing. It need not be curing cancer or solving world peace – two of my favourites. It can be something as simple as making a most delicious cookie that your kids enjoy.
It is up to each of us to find those items that make us feel good and make a difference. Burkeman guides us to pursue a level of discomfort as we seek these goals.
I found this book profound and valuable as I enter the final stage of my life.
I continue to search for ways to fulfil my life. This book helps me to reflect and consider how to use my finite time.
Vladimir Kozlov, CEO and Founder of LightCounting Market Research
Intelligence is a fascinating topic. The artificial kind is making all the headlines but alien minds created by nature have yet to be explored.
One of the most bizarre among these is the distributed mind of the octopus. “Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfery-Smith, is a perfect introduction to the subject.
The Overstory: A Novel, by Richard Powers takes the concept of alien minds to a new, more emotional level. It is a heavy read. The number of characters rivals that of War and Peace while the density matches the style of Dostoevsky. Yet, it is impossible not to finish the book, even if it takes several months.
It concerns the conflict of “alien minds”. The majority of the aliens are humans, cast from the distant fringes of our world. The trees emerge as a unifying force that keeps the book and the planet together. It is an unforgettable drama.
I have not cut a live tree since reading the book. I can not stop thinking about just how shallow our understanding of the world is.
The intelligence created by nature is more puzzling than dark matter yet it is shuffled into the ‘Does-not-matter’ drawer of our alien minds.
Roy Rubenstein, Gazettabyte’s editor
Ten per cent of my contacts changed jobs in 2021, according to LinkedIn.
Of these, how many quit their careers after 32 years at one firm? And deliberately downgraded their salaries?
That is what Kate Kellaway did. The celebrated Financial Times journalist quit her job to become a school teacher.
Kellaway is also a co-founder of Now Teach, a non-profit organisation that helps turn experienced workers in such professions as banking and the law into teachers.
In her book, Re-educated: How I Changed My Job, My Home and My Hair, Kellaway reflects on her career as a journalist and on her life. She notes how privileged she has been in the support she received that helped her correct for mistakes and fulfill her career; something that isn’t available to many of her students.
She also highlights the many challenges of teaching. In one chapter she describes a class and the exchanges with her students that captures this magnificently.
A book I reread after many years was Arthur Miller’s autobiography, Timebends: A Life.
In the mid-1980s on a trip to the UK to promote his book, Miller visited the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. There, I got a signed copy of his book which I prize.
The book starts with his early years in New York, surrounded by eccentric Jewish relatives.
Miller also discusses the political atmosphere during the 1950s, resulting in his being summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The first time I read this, that turbulent period seemed very much a part of history. This time, the reading felt less alien.
Miller is fascinating when explaining the origins of his plays. He also had an acute understanding of human nature, as you would expect of a playwright.
The book I most enjoyed in 2021 is The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World, by Joe Keohane.
The book explores talking to strangers and highlights a variety of people going about it in original ways.
Keohane describes his many interactions that include an immersive 3-day course on how to talk to strangers, held in London, and a train journey between Chicago and Los Angeles; the thinking being that, during a 42-hour trip, what else would you do but interact with strangers.
Keohane learns that, as he improves, there is something infectious about the skill: people start to strike up conversations with him.
The book conveys how interacting with strangers can be life-enriching and can dismantle long-seated fears and preconceptions.
He describes an organisation that gets Republican and Democrat supporters to talk. At the end of one event, an attendee says: “We’re all relieved that we can actually talk to each other. And we can actually convince the other side to look at something a different way on some subjects.”
If reading novels can be viewed as broadening one’s experiences through the stories of others, then talking to strangers is the non-fiction equivalent.
I loved the book.
Gazettabyte’s 10th anniversary
Gazettabyte’s 10th anniversary passed quietly sometime in August.
The work to create the website started earlier, as did the writing of the first stories to ensure there was content when the site went live in August 2009.
Gazettabyte has since published hundreds of stories and articles covering emerging technologies in the telecom and datacom industries.
The stories highlight the many changes that have taken place over the last decade.
Continual change
Many optical component firms have either folded or have been acquired, including industry-leading firms, in the last decade.
For example, the first Gazettabyte story featured the start-up, OneChip Photonics, that made photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for fibre-to-the-x (FTTx). The company had just received $19.5m in funding.
The company’s technology was impressive but the FTTx market experienced ongoing cost reductions with companies pushing discretes such that the promised benefits of integration didn’t materialise. The start-up, with leading PIC expertise, folded.
There was also an interview with BT about 10G PON in 2009. This highlights another trend in telecoms, technology can take a long time to come to market.
The fastest optical interfaces at the time were 40 and 100 gigabit-per-second.
Fast-forward ten years and now the talk is of 800-gigabit client-side modules and terabit-plus coherent interfaces.
Acacia, an example of a leading player being acquired, recently announced its second-generation AC1200 coherent module that supports 1.2 terabits in a 150-gigahertz optical channel. Nokia has just given a hint about its next-generation 100-gigabaud coherent solution – the PSE-4? – with a 1.3-terabit single-wavelength trial over 93km. The total capacity transmitted over the fibre using Nokia’s technology was 50.8 terabits.
The last decade has also witnessed the continual rise of the internet giants that deliver double-digit yearly revenue growth. Such hyperscalers have become significant consumers of optics and drivers of technology.
Their rise has also stirred the telecoms industry, with the network operators embarking on a radical re-architecting of how they build and operate their networks.
The network operators have seen how the hyperscalers use software and commercial-off-the-shelf hardware and they too want the benefits of disaggregated designs and open networking.
The rise of China is a further key development of the last decade. China’s unbridled ambition has seen it become a huge driver, manufacturer and consumer of leading telecom and datacom technologies.
Change on this scale is unsettling. But it is also to be welcomed. It shows telecom and datacom as healthy industries despite being mature.
Typically, a mature industry is settled: two or three players dominate a segment, the barrier for entry for start-ups is excessively high, and little changes with time.
No close observer of telecom and datacom would describe them as plodding industries.
Past and present
Over the years, Gazettabyte has conducted several feature series. These include CEO and CTO interviews, an acknowledgement of the silicon photonics pioneers and luminaries including Professor Richard Soref, described by another silicon photonics luminary, Andrew Rickman, as the ‘founding father of silicon photonics’.
Gazettabyte also proved a valuable resource during the writing of a book on silicon photonics that was co-authored with OFS Fitel’s Daryl Inniss.
Gazettabyte will mark its 10th anniversary with a series of features and special interviews.
It will revisit the CTO interviews and will focus on some key topics: the network transformation being undertaken by the telcos, co-packaged optics, and certain other key emerging technologies. The first CTO interview will be published next, Lumentum’s Brandon Collings, an ongoing insightful source for Gazettabyte.
This is also an opportunity to acknowledge the sponsors of the site, many of whom have supported Gazettabyte from the start.
Without Gazettabyte’s backers – ADVA, Ciena, Huawei, Infinera, Intel, LightCounting, Lumentum, Nokia, II-VI (Finisar) – the site would not exist.