New Optical Switch Could Lead to Ultrafast All-Optical Signal Processing

"Engineers at Caltech have developed a switch - one of the most fundamental components of computing - using optical, rather than electronic, components. The development could aid efforts to achieve ultrafast all-optical signal processing and computing."

So now we have optical transport (fiber optic cable) and optical switching. All that's left is optical data processing and optical data storage.

The cynic in me can't help but think that all this ultrafast computing will be used for is for stock-trading and porn.