From the Near to the Far: Ponderings from the Forbes Technology Council Quantum Computing Group & Others

Pravir Malik
3 min readSep 15, 2023
Source: canva.com

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of hosting a Forbes Technology Council quantum computing event — Redefining Quantum Computing Boundaries. Panelists included distinguished leaders Alan Baratz, CEO at D-Wave, Paul Lipman, Chief Commercial Officer at Infleqtion, and Steve Flinter, SVP AI, ML & Emerging Tech at Mastercard.

Executives from over 50 companies registered for the event, and the three areas we discussed included:

  • The need to create a vaster/more inclusive foundation for quantum computing
  • Current approaches where quantum computing is already being approached differently
  • Possible trajectories and futures for quantum computing

A recording of the event is available here:

Quantum computing is an area with massive potential. This derives from promises of exponentially speeding up computing by leveraging quantum mechanical properties and the fact that the quantum realm separates the visible from the invisible. The latter implies that no matter how much we know, there will always be more that we do not know. This, in turn, will always be a source of new technologies that will continue to drive us far into the future.

Source: a slide from the Forbes event.

While Redefining Quantum Computing Boundaries was focused on the practicality of further increasing the relevance of the quantum computing industry, it may be considered as a middle ground bridging the immediate with the foreseeable future.

Earlier this week, several members of the Forbes Technology Council quantum computing group, a group of industry experts I lead, contributed to a post, Seven Revolutionary Applications for Quantum Computing That Leaders Should Consider, that focuses more on the now.

Thinking about the far future, I revisit some basics that started the whole quantum phenomenon — the double-slit experiment — that has been instrumental in the birth and development of quantum mechanics. The experiment gives insight not only into the behavior of reduced quantum-objects but also into a minimum viable quantum computational whole, and in a short mini-series, I derive distinct quantum computational paradigms based on what exactly is being measured and how this is taking place:

Focusing on a minimum viable quantum computational whole leads to establishing links between quantum dynamics and layers of matter and life as a single computational system. This, in turn, surfaces a different quantum computing approach and vastly different application areas than those being imagined today.

Earlier this year, I hosted a Forbes Technology Council event on Abundance Through Quantum Computation to begin to focus on this. The event is summarized here:

The near-term, the middle-term, and the far future are all part of a single system. It is important to ponder all three to do justice even to the moment.

Index to Cosmology of Light Links

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