“The disruptive potential of quantum technology will make the change of the Internet era look like a small bump in the road!” -Kevin Coleman (Chief Strategist at Independent Software)
Oh boy
For those of us of a certain age, Quantum Leap wasn’t just a TV show—it was a weekly thought experiment. Dr. Sam Beckett found himself dropped into unfamiliar lives, unfamiliar problems, and unfamiliar contexts, armed with little more than his own instincts and a somewhat temperamental supercomputer named Ziggy. Sam didn’t always understand what was happening, but Ziggy – fed nearly limitless information – would offer probabilities, context, and guidance, even if the answers were incomplete or maddeningly vague to Sam (though often amusing to the audience).
Fast forward a few decades, and – while we aren’t yet leaping through time – people are incorporating artificial intelligence into more of their daily processes, like drafting emails, summarizing documents, writing code, explaining unfamiliar concepts, and planning travel. Like Ziggy, today’s AI tools aren’t making decisions for us – but they are quietly influencing our inquiries and conclusions.
As advanced as the internet and the latest AI technologies seem, to the point of Mr. Coleman’s quote, perhaps we “ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” I’ll never pretend to know what’s coming in the future, but with next-level computing on the horizon, we may be facing our own quantum leap, and that’s what we’ll explore today. Here we go!
A different category of change
Most technological shifts are linear. They make things incrementally faster, cheaper, smaller, or more convenient. Similar to the miracle of compound interest, those consistent changes have produced powerful enhancements over time. Perhaps in the most ubiquitous example, since the early days of dial-up, the internet has accomplished all of the aforementioned improvements; in doing so, it has rewired how commerce, communication, and culture function – beyond most of our (or at least my) wildest dreams. However, quantum computing belongs to a different category entirely.
Rather than simply processing information more efficiently, quantum computing proposes a fundamentally different way of thinking about computation itself. Classical computers – everything from smartphones to supercomputers – operate using bits that are either on or off (ones or zeros). Quantum computers, on the other hand, use qubits, which can exist in multiple states simultaneously, allowing them to evaluate many possible outcomes at once. This isn’t faster arithmetic; it’s parallel reality‑testing.
If that sounds abstract, that’s because it is. Even the physicists who work in this field routinely acknowledge how unintuitive it feels. But abstract does not mean theoretical. Governments, cloud providers, research labs, and large multinationals are pouring capital and talent into making quantum computing practical—not because it will make email load faster, but because there are entire classes of problems classical computers simply cannot solve efficiently.
I cut two slits in the morning
I always loved physics for its ability to blow my mind. And one of the classic experiments that always stuck with me is known as the double-slit experiment. For those interested, the Wiki page is here (worth looking at to see the visual examples), but, concisely (ish), it goes something like this (my apologies to any real physicists; feel free to send hate mail or threats to ):
- Imagine a laser aimed at a plate with two parallel slits in it; behind that plate is a wall, and the point of this experiment is simply to make sense of the pattern the laser makes on the wall.
- If you point a laser at a wall, it looks like a dot. If you shine a laser through a slit, you would expect a shape the size of that slit on the wall. BUT, that is not what happens.
- If it shone through a single slit, the light spreads out on the wall. And if through two slits, the light not only spreads out, but also exhibits a striped effect – as if the beams from the two slits are canceling one another out (because they are).
- The implication, then, is that light is a wave, rather than a beam of particles, as we might expect. If you imagine light waves working their way through the slits, then it makes sense they would spread out on the wall behind and sometimes bump into each other, creating the cancellation.
- BUT: if we measure the light to see which slit it is passing through, it becomes a particle, and the cancellation pattern disappears. WHAT!?
- => light (and other physical phenomena) is both a wave and a particle, which is known as “wave-particle duality.” AND, it is effectively doing multiple things and in multiple places at the same time (until it’s not).
If you’ve ever heard of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which boils down to the inability to simultaneously measure particular pairs of properties (like position and momentum), the wave-particle duality is the reason why. This seemingly unbelievable notion that things around us are in two places (or two states) at once is thus known as “quantum superposition.”
Why should anyone care?
Now that we’re physics experts, we can bring this full circle to the topic at hand. Quantum computing uses the idea of superposition for advanced processing capabilities. While normal computers use bits (which are either zero or one – “on” or “off”), quantum computers use qubits (a mashup of “quantum bit”), which are both zero AND one (until they’re not). I’ll spare you the lecture on entanglement (seriously, more mind-blowing than wave-particle duality), but suffice it to say that these qubits aren’t necessarily operating independently.
Having gone down this physics rabbit hole, I’m imagining a classical computer having to do a ton of trials to solve a complex problem – iteration after iteration after iteration, in all combinations of the bit states (zeros and ones), until it arrives at the right answer. A quantum computer, on the other hand, does all of those computations simultaneously by using all the bit states, and BAM! – You get an answer in seconds that may have taken your MacBook Pro 10,000 years to figure out.
SWOT
First, quantum computers involve crazy science and are still emerging. And don’t worry, your PC isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. As this Quantum Insider article points out, “The future computing landscape will likely feature hybrid architectures where classical computers handle most workloads – data processing, machine learning, business applications – while quantum processors tackle specific bottlenecks where quantum algorithms offer exponential or polynomial speedups.” Complementary solutions.
There are multiple ways that people are going about building them, so who knows which (if any) will ultimately prove to be the best model. In the meantime, let’s do a quick SWOT analysis of quantum computing and then move on with our lives:
Strengths: incredibly powerful. Promise to deliver next-level computational capabilities.
Weaknesses: very expensive and complex.
Opportunities: the ideas are vast; such computing power likely exceeds human understanding to such a degree that it’s difficult to imagine, but surely the ability to analyze complex systems like drug discovery, medical treatment, financial markets, logistics, energy, machine learning, and, of course, communication and cybersecurity, will have massive implications.
Threats: You probably guessed it, but a lot of these I’m finding have to do with cybercrime.
Where this leaves us
If people are already concerned about AI and technology, then quantum computing will probably pour gas on that fire. More optimistically (and far beyond my personal capabilities), this NIST publication may be a good assessment of the current state of quantum computing. I like their takeaway that “…this suggests quantum computers may provide economic benefits before they threaten cryptography.” So, we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. And – ensuring we have an honorable mention for Alts – I’m sure Venture Capital is already helping to drive this space forward, and there will be more quantum-focused opportunities in the future.
Sam Beckett never knew exactly where or when he’d land next. He only knew he’d have to adapt once he arrived. To the point of today’s quote, quantum computing may represent a similar leap for technology, markets, and society. We don’t yet know exactly where it will take us—but it’s clear that standing still won’t be an option.
Until next time, this is the end of alt.Blend.
Thanks for reading,
Steve
