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Scientists and citizens: getting to quantum technologies

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Abstract

I will discuss the history and prospects for new machines and instruments as anticipated in the newly announced EU Flagship for Quantum Technology. The program of Richard Feynman, as announced almost 60 years ago, to go to the “bottom” in the miniaturization of information-processing technology, has come to fruition, and a set of well-defined technologies, in the areas of quantum computing, quantum simulation, quantum sensing and metrology, and quantum communication, have emerged. I give a perspective on the sometimes abstruse significance of these coming technologies. The scientists will continue beyond these technologies to new unfoldings of quantum knowledge, whose technological significance we can barely fathom today.

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Notes

  1. “European Commission will launch €1 billion quantum technologies flagship,” published on 17/05/2016. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/european-commission-will-launch-eu1-billion-quantum-technologies-flagship.

  2. Actually the subject of “quantum acoustics” is beginning to get off the ground, see Aref et al. (2016).

  3. This is such a subtle point that even some practitioners of quantum physics continue to believe in a kind of classical determinism within quantum theory; an example is Laughlin (2011). In my opinion these views are not tenable.

  4. Quoted in Conant (2003).

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Acknowledgements

I thank Barbara Terhal for discussions about the topics of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. JARA Institute for Quantum Information and Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany

    David P. DiVincenzo

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  1. David P. DiVincenzo
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Correspondence to David P. DiVincenzo.

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DiVincenzo, D.P. Scientists and citizens: getting to quantum technologies. Ethics Inf Technol 19, 247–251 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-017-9435-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-017-9435-3

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