If you needed any more evidence that the pace of the stock exchange is blinding, traders on the cutting edge of technology are now making use of military communications lasers to transmit data, because fiber optics and microwaves are just too darn slow. Just nobody tell them light is faster in a vacuum, OK? I like having air to breathe.
The laser transmitters and receivers being installed on the rooftops of commercial and residential buildings in New Jersey as we speak were developed by AOptix Technologies Inc for military use and by another company called Anova. The military uses the system to send data back and forth between jets and command centers, but soon they’ll be carrying your financial future.
Aside from speed, AOptix’s system has the advantage that its beam can be dynamically aimed at the receiver, which eliminates the problem many similar data systems encounter when the tower they’re attached to sways or moves due to weather conditions. That means they can be placed almost anywhere.
The ones being installed right now in New Jersey will be used to directly connect two New York Stock Exchange data centers that are 35 miles apart. Yes, the competition to be the fastest stock trader has finally come to shooting data back and forth in beams of light, so there’s really not much better they can do until they figure out instantaneous psychic trading.
Aside from the technical limitation of “that’s probably not possible,” (a minor detail) psychic communication would also probably be maddening, so lasers are really the way to go for the future of communications. Or just the future of anything, because if school picture day taught me anything, it’s that everything is better with lasers.
(via Gizmodo, image via AOptix Technologies Inc)
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