The Quantum Computing Era

tl;dr: The debate about the arrival of quantum computing has existed for a long time. Is it finally here? Even if it’s not, it will be soon, and that’s worth thinking about.

One of the things that reading Peter Diamandis’ blog has reinforced for me is how all of these “exponential” technologies affect each other.

It’s not wise to look at development in crypto or social media or politics or any discipline in a vacuum.

And, these days, it’s even more foolhardy to not spend some time understanding ancillary and complementary technologies.

So, recently, I’ve been exploring quantum computing.

The Implications of Quantum

It’s an entirely new paradigm that turns our silicon-based, binary computing model on its head. The number of calculations that a quantum computer can perform per second dwarfs those that a traditional machine can do.

The good news is that quantum may be able to help us solve some of the biggest, most elusive problems we face as a planet.

The bad news is that much of what we rely on in terms of security, cryptography, big data, and, well, everything, is going to get altered.

As my friend, Dave, said, “once quantum is here, it’s like history starts again.”

To say that I fully understand concepts like superposition or entanglement just is a gross understatement. I’m working my way through a book, Quantum Theory: A Crash Course, which introduces the principles, but have a long way to go.

However, like previous waves of technology, it’s not so important to understand how it works. It’s important to understand THAT it works.

Even more important than that, though, is to think about how it will impact society and business.

Today, it may be obvious that a company like IAAI is going to-eventually- get disrupted by a blockchain-based system for title management.

What is less obvious is…what happens when Quantum-as-a-Service is a thing?

Quantum-as-a-Service is a Thing
The big question that has been circling around quantum, like every other new technology, is “when will it be ready for primetime?”

It’s one of those “it’s 10 years away…always” scenarios.

But maybe not.

Recently, however, Google made an announcement declaring “quantum supremacy,” Amazon introduced quantum services on AWS, IBM has an offering, as does Microsoft. So, the requisite big players seem to be getting into the pool.

And they aren’t alone, the WSJ recently highlighted The Quantum Computing Threat to American Security and The Entanglement Institute is a public-private partnership to create a vendor-agnostic quantum computing environment.

Now, I don’t know much of this is hype vs. reality and, to be fair, running a quantum query is far from trivial. It’s not a “next-next-next” WYSIWYG scenario just yet. These are highly specialized machines requiring optimal conditions. It’s still very early.

But, it seems like it’s not “too early’ yet.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing large companies (and some of these vendors claim to have customers) signing up to run quantum pilots. You could see it on chip design, drug research, and marketing applications.

Getting quantum proficient will become a competitive advantage that could become insurmountable.

At a moment like this, the key is curiosity.

It’s coming and it’s better to play around with it, learn about it, and get your head around it while things are relatively immature.

It’s as if we are going back to the first commercial applications of the microprocessor in the 50s and 60s and the projecting forward 60 years.

Now, we just get to do that all over again.