It's midnight, you're bored, the dog is asleep and your cat doesn't care. There's nothing on the box and you're in that zone where you don't want to talk but you do. So what do you do? You call yourself! Sounds off? Well, transport yourself to the year 2062 - there in your hand is the new iPhone 55. Touch the Video Chat-Me button and up comes yourself on the screen. Not an image but YOU ready for a natter with ... well, YOU. How is this possible? First some background.
These days computers are marvelled at for the variety of complex tasks they can perform. They just keep on improving by the year and we keep on marvelling. But they do have certain limitations, the most obvious being the binary code that a computer's processor turns into data.Though the code is digital it takes time to process, especially with supercomputers assigned complicated tasks of calculation, simulation and the rest. But what if the time taken was reduced to a fraction? Further, what if each # value of the code (1 or zero: 101010) had an infinite number of values? That's Quantum Computing.
As we've been told before, the world of the quantum is an odd little place where logic is turned upside down - an atom's electron detected here is actually... there.. or both places at the same time. So If science can utilize quantum properties to replicate the function of binary code then computing power could be millions of times more powerful than the best supercomputers we have today. The new wave would be a tidal wave of endless possibilities that we can only imagine today.
But what would it mean for ordinary people? It's likely it would spell the end of the silicon chip, further shrinking our devices. Theoretically an ordinary wristwatch could also function as an iPod, a computer and a phone, or we could have, say, an iPod implanted in our ear. Computing speed and capacity would be staggering, and a new reality from the manipulation of our own reality might be given birth. The YOU on the phone would in fact be a computerized YOU generated by the unfathomable power of the quantum - a simulation so identical in thought and features you would truly feel as though you were talking to yourself. Makes you think!