TECHNOLOGY I'M NOT SURE I LIKE!!!

If you're interested in the technology of the future, you've gotta read this excerpt of an article my son-in-law sent me. It seems that we're on the verge of something new called "Quantum Computing," which will change the world! If you'd rather stick your head in the sand, that's ok with me. I'm not sure how much I want to know either!

Article: Quantum Leap by Peter Schwartz, Chris Taylor and Rita Koselka
August 2, 2006: FORTUNE Magazine

She awakes early on the morning of April 10, 2030, in the capable hands of her suburban Chicago apartment. All night, microscopic sensors in her bedside tables have monitored her breathing, heart rate, and brain activity.

The tiny blood sample she gave her bathroom sink last night has been analyzed for free radicals and precancerous cells; the appropriate preventative drugs will be delivered to her hotel in Atlanta this evening. It's an expensive service, but as a gene therapist, Sharon Oja knows it's worth it. She steps into the shower. The tiles inside detect her presence and start displaying the day's top headlines. The manned mission to Mars is going to launch ahead of schedule. U.S. military drones have destroyed another terrorist training camp using smart dust. A top Manhattan banker has been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 10 years of low tech.

She dresses and picks out a stylish straw fedora. Quantum computing has brought an unexpected revival in haberdashery: Inside the hatband is Sharon's communication center and intelligent assistant, which has scanned and sorted the 500,000 e-mails she received overnight. By the time she reaches the car, it has beamed the 10 most urgent ones and her travel schedule to her visual cortex. The text scrolls down in the bottom of her field of vision.

The Hydrogen Honda knows it is going to be an unseasonably warm day - indeed, thanks to quantum computer simulations it has known today's temperature for five years - and rolls the top down for her. Sharon drives to the freeway, steers into the Smart Lane, then relinquishes the wheel. The hatband screens a birthday video from her parents and a super-encrypted memo from her boss.

At the airport there is no ticket check-in or security line. Sharon simply walks through the revolving door, which scans her for dangerous items, picks up her identity, confirms her reservation, and delivers her gate number, all in the space of a second. She doesn't even bother to check whether the plane is on time - since flight patterns are as computable as the weather, O'Hare hasn't had a late departure in five years.

At the bag drop-off, she sees a familiar man in a yarmulke-like brain cap. The hatband is already on the case and flashes his virtual business card alongside his top 10 Google results. "Dr. Horton," she calls out. "So nice to see you again. How was the diabetes conference?" Only the slightest flicker of Horton's eyes betrays that he is Googling her details too. "Hello, Ms. Oja," he says. "Many happy returns of the day." Sharon grins and gives silent thanks to the quantum computer's creators.

Science fiction, right? Sure - just like satellites, moon shots, and the original microprocessor once were. To scientists on the quantum computing frontier, this scenario is conservative.

Ask scientists to predict how quantum technology will change the world over the next 20 years or so, and their imaginations go wild.

Computers everywhere--Their most common prediction is that we will see - or rather, we won't see - computers everywhere, painted onto walls, in chairs, in your body, communicating with one another constantly and requiring no more power than that which they can glean from radio frequencies in the air.

'I won't have to remember anything' Exponentially smarter computers also raise the possibility of achieving a couple of computer science's long-held goals: a human-brain-imitating neural network and true (or near-true) artificial intelligence. "This is going to be my mental prosthesis," says UCLA's Yablonovitch. "Everything I want to know, I can look up. Everything I can forget, I can find. I'm going to get old, but it won't matter. I won't have to remember anything."

Computers in your headband--Of all the scientists' visions of the quantum future, Wolf's may be the most out-there. "The vision is that we don't have a laptop anymore," Wolf says. "We don't have a cellphone. We wear it. It's a headband. And instead of having a screen, we have direct coupling into the right side of the brain."

A creepy future?

Yes, some people will find it unsettling, which happens with almost every new technology. But while the contours of how quantum computing will apply to society are unclear, the map for how we get there isn't.

"The amazing thing is there's nothing I can see as a big roadblock to this," says Wolf. It's a question of when, not if; exactly when (and where) will be determined by the amount of research dollars available. The U.S. certainly isn't alone in this race; the Europeans and Japanese are funding huge research efforts. India and China are getting onboard as well.

But what about that headband? Won't it creep us out? "What people will not like is having it implanted," Wolf believes. "But if you're just wearing it and it's ultrasonically connected, I mean, you could always take it off."

As with all previous disruptive technologies - radio, television, the Internet - it will probably take a new generation raised to think of quantum headbands as normal for its potential to be truly realized.

Pleasant dreams, everybody!