Welcome to the Glass Age

75 T 5. Glass in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Photonics* G iancarlo C. R ighini , S etsuhisa T anabe and J ohn B allato he area of information and communication technologies (ICT) includes all technologies related to the accessing, retrieving, transmitting, manipulating and storing of information in a digital form. As such, ICT play a significant role in all aspects of present life. The rise of ICT in the last decades would not have been possible without two fundamental material groups: semiconductors (for laser diodes, and most notably silicon for computers and processing devices), and glasses (for optical fibers and photonic components). This Chapter provides a brief overview of the properties of various types of glass and of their applications to the development * Acknowledgments: John Ballato acknowledges the support of the J. E. Sirrine Foundation. The authors are members of the Technical Committee on Photonic Glasses and Optical Fibers (TC20) of the International Commission on Glass. of optical fibers and photonic components. Introduction The 20 th century has been described by many authors as the Electronic Age, due to the advent of electronic components, computers, and digital information. Silicon has certainly been the dominant material, with a large impact on the modern world economy. The 21 st century, on the other hand, may well be considered the Photonic Age, to recognize the vital role that light plays in our daily lives, from architecture to biology and medicine, not to neglect