Ok here's a perfect example of what I was talking about in the openning post of this thread, on the growing inarticulateness of the scientific community and their inability to express knowledge in terms understandable and meaningful to the general public:
Below is the first few paragraphs of the wikipedia entry for "Quantum Computer". This entry is the product of no less than 4 years of constant updating and editing by hundreds of supposed "experts" in the field (a non-expert would dare not try to make an entry or would very quickly be corrected and edited out by an expert). Now obviously people write these wikipedia articles with the lay masses in mind, since what expert would rely on a wikipedia page for their knowledge. Here it is
Wiki QComputer
A quantum computer is any device for computation that makes direct use of distinctively quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. In a classical (or conventional) computer, the amount of data is measured by bits; in a quantum computer, it is measured by qubits. The basic principle of quantum computation is that the quantum properties of particles can be used to represent and structure data, and that devised quantum mechanisms can be used to perform operations with these data. For a generally accessible overview of quantum computing, see Quantum Computing with Molecules, an article in Scientific American by Neil Gershenfeld and Isaac L. Chuang.
Overall the first paragraph is not bad, but here already in the first sentence we are asked to go learn about the not-insignificant quantum properties of superposition and entaglement before we can understand anything about what sets a quantum computer apart from a conventional computer. Some unanswered questions a typical lay person might have after reading this first paragraph:
* What the hell is an "operation on data" (1st and
4th sentences)?
* When and how did "particles" (4th sentence) come
into this?
* What is meant by "structuring data" (4th
sentence) and how the hell do you
"represent data" (4th sentence) in a computer in
the first place, I thought computers just
"stored data"?
The first paragraph ends with an obviously self-conscious instruction to read another article about quantum computers in Scientific American which supposedly is "more accessible" than this one (but which is in fact just as poor), all but admitting its own failure before even getting started. The entry continues:
Experiments have already been carried out in which quantum computational operations were executed on a very small number of qubits. Research in both theoretical and practical areas continues at a frantic pace; see Quantum Information Science and Technology Roadmap for a sense of where the research is heading.
A link to a highly technical page which contrary to the stated objective provides NO SENSE to the lay person but serves instead to further alienate him.
Many national government and military funding agencies support quantum computing research, to develop quantum computers for both civilian and national security purposes, such as cryptanalysis.
Great. I guess this was supposed to make the lay person feel better and more trusting of the technology??
See the Nature article in the references below reporting on work at IBM Almaden Research Center, where scientists implemented a seven qubit computing device that ran Shor's factorization algorithm.
Oh great, they ran Shor's algorithm. What the F*ck is factorization and what the F*ck is an algorithm? But it was done at IBM so I guess that means that I should trust and believe it. Maybe I'll pray to IBM.
And THAT WAS JUST THE PREFACE. Here's the first paragraph of the first entry listed as chapter one in the contents of this wikipedia page:
The basis of quantum computing.
In quantum mechanics, the state of a physical system (such as an electron or a photon) is described by an element of a mathematical object called a Hilbert space. The realization of the Hilbert space depends on the particular system. For instance, in the case of a single particle system, the state can be described by a complex-valued function defined on R3 (three-dimensional space) called a wave function. As described in the article on quantum mechanics, this function has a probabilistic interpretation; of particular significance is that quantum states have a property called superposition. A similar realization of the Hilbert space exists for systems of interacting particles. The time evolution of the system state is given by a family {Ut} (with t denoting time) of unitary transformations of H. Thus if ? is the state at time 0, then Ut ? is the state at time t. Note that this is true only if the system is isolated and the phenomenon of decoherence does not occur.
I rest my case with that one!
