A Glimpse Of A Future In A New Kind Of Light

from the focus-on-the-LEDs dept

The NY Times is really interested in LEDs these days, as they've had a number of articles on the subject recently. The latest article is definitely worth reading, as it goes a bit beyond most articles about LEDs in describing some of the more radical ideas about LEDs, and how they may create an entirely new "lighting industry". The article refers to current lightbulb technology as "heaters that happen to give off visible light". LEDs, though, have potential well beyond just replacing lightbulbs, and already people are working on all sorts of new applications that only make sense in an LED-lit world. Some of these ideas aren't life changing - like a videogame system that changes the color of all the lights in a room in order to better simulate what's happening in the game. However, things like flexible, low power, long lasting displays have huge potential in many different areas. Even the small things are worth noting - like the idea that LED brakelights light up a fraction of a second faster, allowing people driving behind those brakelights to stop faster. When new technologies come along, too many articles are written about how they simply replace an old technology - without realizing how they can completely change many different things as well.