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Nobels provide a snapshot
Nobel Prizes are often awarded for obscure-but-important advances that are difficult to explain and have little relevance to everyday life. Not so on Tuesday, when half of the Nobel Prize for physics went to two American "masters of light" who ushered in the digital photography revolution.
The 1969 invention of the CCD (charge-coupled device) by new Nobel laureates Willard Boyle and George Smith has delivered instant — often instantly viral — pictures to the masses. For better or for worse, younger people especially think nothing of snapping photos with iPhones or cameras and uploading them to the Internet for all the world to see. Discretion is sometimes regrettably disregarded.
But digital photography also has the power to reveal the cosmos (witness the amazing images from the
For all the advantages of digital photography, though, there's something bittersweet about the relentless march of technology. Tuesday's announcement came a year after Polaroid stopped making instant film (remember when 60 seconds was considered "instant"?) and several months after
(Smith: Nobel winner./AP)
Tuesday's Nobel awards also carry a less obvious lesson. The USA has always been a leader in innovation. In part, that has been by attracting and welcoming immigrants. Recent caps on work visas for highly skilled foreigners, including thousands who graduate with science degrees from U.S. colleges, endanger that tradition.
The Nobel Prize in physics is one more snapshot of why that's a shortsighted policy. Boyle was born in Canada, and Charles Kao, the American physicist who won the other half of the prize (for discoveries that set the stage for fiber optic cables), is a native of China. An America starved of immigrant talent is not a pretty picture.