Lighting to be revolutionised by organic light-emitting-diodes. Not only will these new lights be flat and heatless, thus able to place on almost anything, but the light will be “more natural” and potentially 100% energy efficient. Sounds great eh?
Except I don’t like it when simple things become too complex. Its the Luddite in me, albeit the Luddite with a couple of science A-Levels. Said qualifications allow me to have a pretty good understanding of how stuff works. In a world where people can’t (and don’t have to) know how to wire plugs, I not only know how to wire one, I know how to create a fuse and work out what’s wrong with the transformer. It allows me to fix stuff, which in my job I often have to do.
Okay, lightbulbs are usually not fixable. But I know exactly how they work. Resistance, leads to heating of wire, leads to glowing bright. Equally I know how record players work. I could, if need be, build one pretty much from scratch. These so called organic-light-emmitting-diodes therefore make me feel uncomfortable, just because not only do I not know how they work, but even if I did I am not sure what that knowledge would give me. Make science simple stupid.