Metamaterials for Networks (Not Just Invisible People)

Scientists at UC Berkeley made news this week with a significant demonstration of light-bending metamaterials. For some reason, perhaps the excessive hours of Nethack we played in our younger years, this kind of research gets us excited about the idea of making (+0) cloaks of invisibility. This same technology, however, could be used for other, more realistic applications such as making high-speed networks route faster by slowing down optical signals.
→ See also - SONET - Synchronous Optical Network