O brave new quantum world!
Job talks in the next few weeks, so I have been wandering around looking for advice. Here is a nice, calming quote from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
As a doctoral student or postdoc seeking a professorship, your academic job talk may well be the most important presentation you will ever give. An excellent talk can get you the job, while a poor one will almost surely eliminate you from contention.
No pressure, eh?
Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s CTO, on quantum computing from this interview:
For nearly a decade there has been talk about the coming quantum computing revolution, yet it seems no nearer. What is it that is causing the delay?
It will probably be talked about for another decade too. It certainly won’t be relevant for another decade. That doesn’t mean it’s bad research but it’s far from coming to the commercial sphere. We need to challenge some of the assumptions about quantum computing and what it will be used for. We’re now building 3bit quantum computers with possibly a 5bit one under construction. That’s fine, but I’m already building 64bit computers. When we get quantum to 14bit then it can be used for encryption, which is one of the key applications for it. The country that gets a quantum network first will have a real competitive advantage.
I wish I had a 3 bit quantum computer in the same sense that he has a 64 bit computer! I wonder, however, where his 14 bit claim comes from?
Me be
Tree be
I think
It not
(think about it)
Bumper sticker spotted last night: “God bless the whole world. No exceptions.”
Things fall apart. Normally we think about our computers as deterministic machines which never make a mistake. But with a very small probability, your hardware will make a mistake (information in a storage device is probably the most likely place where this will occur.) The point, however, is that for the task we need our computers, writing an email, ordering a product from amazon.com, etc, the rate of failure does not come into play.
Now suppose that humanity learns to prolong its lifespan to some enormous timescale. Will this change our fundamental concept of what a computer is? When the errors of a computer factor into your life in a real, albeit slow, way, will we think of computers in the same way we do today?
Computers are not invincible. It is not clear to me that their method of achieving fault-tolerance is even the best or most effective method for computation. When we build our computers small, so small that errors become unescapable, will we continue to try to maintain the model of the transistor and the near deterministic completely controlled system? Or will we take a cue from biology and maybe find that complex erring systems can be programmed in ways we haven’t thought of yet?
(Lisa is bowled over by a college girl.)
LISA (awed): “Are you reading `Gravity’s Rainbow’?”
COLLEGE GIRL (snidely): “Well, rereading.”
Today is supposed to be a “day of purity” which I’m told is a supposed to be a day to promote abstinence. But don’t worry. Tomorrow is valentines day where you can root as much as you want.
Well, I’m almost to my goal! Over the past few months I have lost a small child’s worth of weight. The key? 1hour exercise every morning, low low caloric intake, and if I feel stressed I go to the gym and take it out on the machines there.
If physics is an artform, then what would be in a physicist’s studio? How can we sell physics like artists sell their works of art? What is the business of physics as art. Most of a theorist’s art is knowledge. Maybe physics is more like poetry. So does that mean we have to write books? Is that our art?