New Technology for the New Century

Thus, it is no longer necessary to conclude that the neutron went through one slit or the other, Schrodinger’s Cat is not necessarily dead if it is not alive…. There now exists a further intermediate logical state. The adoption of this quantum logic can provide an explanation of sorts forthe world of quantum strangeness, but only at the expense of giving up the logic that applies to every thing else Most physicists regard this as an acceptable schizophrenia. After all, one has to use ordinary logic to argue for the application of quantum logic (1)

Any computer no matter how complex consists of a bunch of little objects that can be in two positions 1 or 0. Allow them to interact and any pattern – a mathematical equation, a novel, a symphony, a painting, or a movie can be stored and processed (2)

Where a classical computer obeys the well understood laws of classical physics, a quantum computer is a device that harnesses physical phenomenon unique to quantum mechanics (especially quantum interference) to realize a fundamentally new mode of information processing (3)
The first chapter, The Future in Theory, in the book, The Next Fifty years, edited by John Brockman, is contributed by Lee Smolin, a physicist who is working on the unification of the fundamental forces (4). He has discussed seven big questions, which were faced by the physicists in the 1950s (about fifty years back) and has listed seven fundamental questions which are unanswered at present. The first of these seven unanswered questions is:
"Is quantum theory true as presently formulated or will it need to be modified, either to have a sensible physical interpretation or to unify it with relativity and cosmology?”
Deliberating on this question, Smolin wrote, “At present, powerful new techniques are being developed that promise to greatly extend the regime over which the quantum theory has been experimentally tested – techniques chiefly in aid of developing quantum computers. These are macroscopic devices that use quantum effects, such as superposition and entanglement, to do computations impossible for ordinary computers.”

Theory of quantum mechanics applies to the atomic and subatomic particles. If a computer can be built on the quantum mechanical principles (logic), which produces accurate and usable results in the macroscopic world, the deterministic world governed by gravity, it may be considered as a validation of the notion for unifying the fundamental forces of nature. This is probably to which Smolin alluded in his statement

Although the technology required for building a quantum computer is not yet fully developed, there is a great deal of optimism for its realization in the near future. In response to an interviewer’s (Filiz Peach) question, David Deutsch, one of the pioneers of the theory of quantum computer and a distinguished quantum physicist at the Centre for Quantum Computation at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University, remarked, “..I am not involved in any of the experimental work, except as a spectator. I work only in the theory. I can only say that I am extremely impressed by the power of the experimental techniques that are now available. These people routinely manipulate individual atoms and individual photons, and engineer interactions between them and measure them with extraordinary precision, and they are optimistic about the possibility of building working quantum computers. At the moment the most powerful quantum computer in the world probably has 3 or 4 qubits. One would probably need several hundreds to perform any quantum computation that was useful as such,” (5)