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Everything In Between

The crazy wonderful days of the newly-born Internet are over—so last century—and now we move into an entire new era. Right now, the looming Big Change appears to be quantum computing.

Long written about in dry scientific journals, and in even drier papers tracking ongoing research, quantum computing moves into the strange subatomic world of quantum mechanics. Instead of dealing with our current computing state of defining ones and zeroes, which can equate in our minds to ‘yes or no’, ‘on or off’, ‘do or don't’ and so on, quantum level computing can define that one as a one or it can be one and zero and everything in between. Yikes! Talk about gray areas. It almost sounds like taking the little transistor in your computer's processor—which is either turned on or turned off at any given time—and handing it over to hopeless bureaucrats for enhanced confusion.

But here's the deal. Lockheed Martin company claims to have put into service just such an animal. After over thirty years of research in quantum computing, Lockheed Martin says they are using quantum computing as part of their business.

Instead of the precision of ones and zeros that have been used to represent data since the earliest days of computers, quantum computing relies on the fact that subatomic particles inhabit a range of states. Different relationships among the particles may coexist, as well. Those probable states can be narrowed to determine an optimal outcome among a near-infinitude of possibilities.

Industry pundits are talking about replacing 50,000 parallel computing servers with one quantum computing machine that does even more enormous tasks far faster, in fact millions of times faster. That's amazing to say the least.

There is a lot of controversy regarding quantum computing and just how possible it is to achieve but, but with Lockheed Martin’s announcement, there is a general feeling that it will become a standard.

One of the most enticing aspects of it are the possibilities of computing so incredibly rapidly and deeply that it could make predictions in our lives real.

They talk about taking the human genome knowledge to levels previously not thought of in predicting life. You have to dangle your imagination way out there to get excited about this but in less than a century people and machines will be thinking quite differently in a world of crystal balls and entertainment.

So, what's in it for you? Oh come on. Certainly you're younger than I am. You don't realize just how close you are to having a quantum computer help you live far longer than you can imagine now. Go ahead and make plans. I'm dying to find out.

4/17/2013


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