Forget about all the company's work on its incredibly durable Gorilla Glass. No one's going to care if their smartphone's screen gets scratched when Corning's other major innovation hits consumers. Because when their device is covered in Fibrance, a fiber-optic thread-like material that glows in any color and looks like a prop straight out of the TRON universe, they'll be too distracted to care.

Corning claims the Fibrance threads are flexible enough to be incorporated into anything from headphone cords to trim on a jacket. And they're so thin that when not glowing they're completely invisible, so turning your outfit from 'corporate casual' to 'party time' could be as easy as flipping a switch—as long as you don't mind carrying around a battery-powered light source. But who says that's not yet another device our smartphones could eventually replace? [Corning via Ubergizmo]