He compares this to a battery-powered light, in which you hook up the wires and electrons flow to make a light bulb turn on.

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Does it make sense to ban the old light bulb in a world where we are encouraged to store Terrabytes of pointless photographs forever on fire-hot Web-servers forever spinning in a Google server farm?

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Prof Carroll says his new bulb is cheap to make and he has a "corporate partner" interested in manufacturing the device.

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But when you crawl into the chair and reach up to turn on the lamp, you make two discoveries: The bulb in the lamp is more suited as a night light than a reading light.

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