Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 17:20:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: david@slack.com (David DiGiacomo)
Subject: (urth) Re: Optical connections

>From: "j e" 
>
>In the book of the short sun, I've noticed one of those nested significances 
>Wolfe loves to employ to drive his themes. First, to establish some 
>background, the technology of the Whorl is clearly photonic rather than 
>electronic.

The cards sound electronic to me.

>When Horn and his men are on Green, trying to find the last part needed to 
>repair a lander, the monitor tells them it's a wave guide coupler. A wave 
>guide is what it sounds like - a way of directing a wave, the coupler would 
>then join together waves of different length or waves from different 
>sources.

A waveguide is just a rectangular metal tube, and it is an electronic, not
photonic, device.  (Although optical fibers also act as waveguides, they
are not usually called that.)

Too bad Horn did not have access to eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1779221783


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