Shining Light On (And Through) MEMS

An unnamed correspondent pointed out this story at Red Herring about the small-but-not-nanotech devices known as MEMS (microelectromechanical systems). The article focuses on the use that these devices can have in the form of switches enabling optical routing. At present, despite the huge carrying capacity of fiber optics, routing their signals is slower to accomplish and less developed in general than that for data sent as electrical signals. (But on what planet are devices 1-10 millimeters in size "smaller than the width of a human hair"?)