The Onion - Science & Technology
November 17, 2009 | Issue 45•47

BOSTON—Members of the world's engineering and telecommunications communities admitted Tuesday that fiber optics, the supposed technological application that ostensibly allows light to carry signals across optical cables, is not actually a real thing. "Yeah, we sort of made that one up," renowned physicist Willard Boyle said of the fictitious technology around which a $40 billion-a-year industry has been built. "It started as more of a joke, really. We thought the two words sounded cool together, so we just started throwing that term out there. Trust me, no one ever thought it would take off the way it did." Sources added that if fiber optics were, in fact, a real thing, it would probably be utilized in some way with Bluetooth technology, if that existed.