The Very Strange — And Fascinating — Ideas Behind Quantum Computing
In 1952, Remington Rand’s UNIVAC computer debuted on CBS to forecast the 1952 election as early results came in. By 8:30, the “electronic brain” was predicting a landslide, with Eisenhower taking 438 electoral votes to Stevenson’s 93. The CBS brass scoffed at the unlikely result, but by the end of the night UNIVAC proved to be uncannily accurate.
It was that night that the era of digital computing truly began and it was a big blow to IBM, the leader in punch card calculators at the time. It’s Research division, however, was already working on more advanced digital technology. In 1964, it launched its System 360 and dominated the industry for the next two decades.
Today, we’ve reached a similar inflection point. Moore’s law, the paradigm which has driven computing for half a century will reach its limits in about five years. And much like back in the 1950’s, IBM and other firms are locked in a race to see who will dominate a new era of computing for decades to come. If that sounds incredible, wait till you hear the ideas behind it.
A 90 Year-Old Argument
In the early 20th century, one of the fundamental assumptions was an idea, sometimes known as Laplace’s demon, that the universe was perfectly deterministic. In other words, if you knew the…
