By Theodora Lau and Bradley Leimer, with some interesting musings on Quantum computing and blockchain

Everything that happens is connected to everything else.

There are then, moments in time, that act as trigger points for a series of interconnected events that result in significant human progress, whether through a new technology or a period of transformative societal change. This rejects both the conventional linear and teleological views of history those focusing on the procession toward the result rather than threaded causation of historical progression and looks for sparks of connected ingenuity that further develops the thrust of human advancement.

And so begins the heralded documentary series Connections created by science historian James Burke. Throughout the series, Burke demonstrates why we cannot view the development of any portion of our contemporary world in isolation. He asserts that advances in the modern world are the result of a series of interconnected events and moments of progress, whether that be an invention of necessity or a curious progression of culture from the seemingly disjointed motivations of humans, all of whom had no concept or perhaps little intention of the final result of their activities.

Human progress flies blind until everything becomes very transparent. This interaction of these isolated events drives our history, our innovation, our progress.

Evolution feels slow until a sudden series of tremors makes it all feel far too real.

This is how we often feel in our very modern world.

We are lost in the world of the dim light of glass, until we are awoken from our slumber of scrolling by something personally transformative to our lives.

The promise of technology is that it will improve our society, or at least make our lives more efficient, freeing up our time to pursue some of lifes pleasures, whether that be leisure like reading and writing and expressing ourselves through art, or toward more time working to solve lifes more pressing problems through the output of our work.

Certain technology especially recent improvements in computing, from faster processors, cloud storage, and advanced quantum computing combine with others to create opportunities to alleviate significant challenges like climate change, water scarcity, and global poverty. Others, like blockchain (distributed ledger technology), hold the promise of reigning in the issue around defining the source of truth within certain forms of data, some of which are life defining.

The creation of trust through technology is an interesting thread to pull. From the source of goods and services traveling through our supply chain to the authenticity of our elections, new technologies hold the potential to rapidly improve the future and the advancement of humanity. Closer to our focus on financial services, quantum computing addresses market risk, credit risk, digital annealing, dynamic portfolio selection, ATM replenishment and more. Blockchain technology has focused on AML/KYC, trade finance, remittance, central bank backed digital currency, security tokens, and has the capacity for continued innovation in the financial space.

What if these two elemental forces were viewed together? What if we channeled our inner James Burke, and looked for connections between these two transformative technologies? This is exactly what our partner Arunkumar Krishnakumar did in his new book Quantum Computing and Blockchain in Business: Exploring the applications, challenges and collision of quantum computing and blockchain. Though a seemingly impenetrable title, we can more than assure you its worth a read to understand where the future is headed.

Aruns book dissects the genesis of these twin technologies and how they intersect. Similar to how James Burke rejects the threading of historical events, the first time author writes about the impacts of these technologies on healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, governance, elections, smart cities, the environment, chemistry, logistics, and much more. We are left with the question of whether there is anything that a blockchain powered by quantum computing cannot do? Fortunately the book answers that as well.

As the book discusses in the last few chapters as viewed through Aruns critical lens there are also darker sides to these technologies where they could threaten nation states, launch a new cyber arms race he details the dangers of these technologies and how they might impact every life. He also concludes with some blue sky ideas both dreams and realized aspirations derived from the power of these complementary tools of knowledge and how writing this book provided him with a sense of hope for the future of humanity, in the age of rapidly developing and highly interdependent technologies.

Perhaps it is fitting then, that Arun uses a quote from the opening of the Charles Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, to tell his story. The conflict between good and evil, between light and darkness, can be won. Technology is just another means to this end.

There is a lot of hype, but somewhere amid all the hype, there is still hope.

How we write the next chapter and the future of the human race is entirely up to us.

The sky is indeed blue.

We must never lose hope.

Listen in via iTunes and Spotify as Theo and Bradley of Unconventional Ventures have a conversation with our partner and co-host Arunkumar Krishnakumar, as he talks about his new book Quantum Computing and Blockchain in Business: Exploring the applications, challenges and collision of quantum computing and blockchain, and how he is finding solace in this summer of COVID-19. Listen to this, and every episode of One Vision, on your favorite player.

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Quantum computing and blockchain, is this our bold future? - Irish Tech News

Steve Reinhardt, vice president of product development, will discuss the company's Mukai middleware while demonstrating its QCI NetworkX for solving graph problems

Quantum Computing Inc (), an advanced technology company developing quantum-ready applications and tools, will host a webinar to discuss its technical strategy and Mukai middleware while demonstrating its QCI NetworkX for solving graph problems.

The webinar, scheduled for 12 pm ET on April 28, will be hosted by Steve Reinhardt, vice president of product development.

Quantum Computings Mukai middleware, announced in January, is quantum-ready application-development middleware, developed to help users and application developers solve extremely complex discrete optimization problems, which are at the heart of some of the most difficult computing challenges in industry, government, and academia.

The Mukai software stack enables developers to create and execute quantum-ready applications on classical computers, often with superior performance, while being ready to run on quantum computers when those systems can achieve performance advantages.

The Leesburg, Virginia-based company said it has already demonstrated superior performance for some applications built on Mukai and running on classical computers.

Discrete combinatorial optimization is one high-value class of problems expected to benefit greatly from quantum computers, and techniques for exploiting quantum computers for optimization have been deeply explored, evidenced by the work on quantum annealers by early D-Wave researchers and on gate-model QCs by researchers of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA).

The company's Mukai software stack is centered on the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) formulation well known to quantum annealing users.

The Mukai software product includes two primary user/developer interfaces the QCI NetworkX graph-analysis package and the QCI qbsolv QUBO solver. Modeled on the D-Wave NetworkX package targeting quantum annealing, QCI NetworkX implements a set of extremely compute-intense (NP-hard to mathematicians) graph kernels that are expected to benefit the most from QCs; the kernels use the QUBO formulation.

Quantum Computing said the April 28 webinar will conclude after a question and answer session. Questions regarding QCIs strategy, Mukai, and QCI NetworkX can be sent in advance to [emailprotected]

To attend the webinar, free registration will be required. To register for and attend the webinar, use this URL:https://zoom.us/s/98851767288.

Contact the author: [emailprotected]

Follow him on Twitter @PatrickMGraham

More:
Quantum Computing will host April 28 webinar on its technical strategy - Proactive Investors USA & Canada

AWS, Microsoft and other IaaS providers have jumped on the quantum computing bandwagon as they try to get ahead of the curve on this emerging technology.

Developers use quantum computing to encode problems as qubits, which compute multiple combinations of variables at once rather than exploring each possibility discretely. In theory, this could allow researchers to quickly solve problems involving different combinations of variables, such as breaking encryption keys, testing the properties of different chemical compounds or simulating different business models. Researchers have begun to demonstrate real-world examples of how these early quantum computers could be put to use.

However, this technology is still being developed, so experts caution that it could take more than a decade for quantum computing to deliver practical value. In the meantime, there are a few cloud services, such as Amazon Bracket and Microsoft Quantum, that aim to get developers up to speed on writing quantum applications.

Quantum computing in the cloud has the potential to disrupt industries in a similar way as other emerging technologies, such as AI and machine learning. But quantum computing is still being established in university classrooms and career paths, said Bob Sutor, vice president of IBM Quantum Ecosystem Development. Similarly, major cloud providers are focusing primarily on education at this early stage.

"The cloud services today are aimed at preparing the industry for the soon-to-arrive day when quantum computers will begin being useful," said Itamar Sivan, co-founder and CEO of Quantum Machines, an orchestration platform for quantum computing.

There's still much to iron out regarding quantum computing and the cloud, but the two technologies appear to be a logical fit, for now.

Cloud-based quantum computing is more difficult to pull off than AI, so the ramp up will be slower and the learning curve steeper, said Martin Reynolds, distinguished vice president of research at Gartner. For starters, quantum computers require highly specialized room conditions that are dramatically different from how cloud providers build and operate their existing data centers.

Reynolds believes practical quantum computers are at least a decade away. The biggest drawback lies in aligning the quantum state of qubits in the computer with a given problem, especially since quantumcomputersstill haven't been proven to solve problems better than traditional computers.

Coders also must learn new math and logic skills to utilize quantum computing. This makes it hard for them since they can't apply traditional digital programming techniques. IT teams need to develop specialized skills to understand how to apply quantum computing in the cloud so they can fine tune the algorithms, as well as the hardware, to make this technology work.

Current limitations aside, the cloud is an ideal way to consume quantum computing, because quantum computing has low I/O but deep computation, Reynolds said. Because cloud vendors have the technological resources and a large pool of users, they will inevitably be some of the first quantum-as-a-service providers and will look for ways to provide the best software development and deployment stacks.

Quantum computing could even supplement general compute and AI services cloud providers currently offer, said Tony Uttley, president of Honeywell Quantum Solutions.In that scenario, the cloud would integrate with classical computing cloud resources in a co-processing environment.

The cloud plays two key roles in quantum computing today, according to Hyoun Park, CEO and principal analyst at Amalgam Insights. The first is to provide an application development and test environment for developers to simulate the use of quantum computers through standard computing resources.

The second is to offer access to the few quantum computers that are currently available, in the way mainframe leasing was common a generation ago. This improves the financial viability of quantum computing, since multiple users can increase machine utilization.

It takes significant computing power to simulate quantum algorithm behavior from a development and testing perspective. For the most part, cloud vendors want to provide an environment to develop quantum algorithms before loading these quantum applications onto dedicated hardware from other providers, which can be quite expensive.

However, classical simulations of quantum algorithms that use large numbers of qubits are not practical. "The issue is that the size of the classical computer needed will grow exponentially with the number of qubits in the machine," said Doug Finke, publisher of the Quantum Computing Report.So, a classical simulation of a 50-qubit quantum computer would require a classical computer with roughly 1 petabyte of memory. This requirement will double with every additional qubit.

Nobody knows which approach is best, or which materials are best. We're at the Edison light bulb filament stage. Martin ReynoldsDistinguished vice president of research at Gartner

But classical simulations for problems using a smaller number of qubits are useful both as a tool to teach quantum algorithms to students and also for quantum software engineers to test and debug algorithms with "toy models" for their problem, Finke said.Once they debug their software, they should be able to scale it up to solve larger problems on a real quantum computer.

In terms of putting quantum computing to use, organizations can currently use it to support last-mile optimization, encryption and other computationally challenging issues, Park said. This technology could also aid teams across logistics, cybersecurity, predictive equipment maintenance, weather predictions and more. Researchers can explore multiple combinations of variables in these kinds of problems simultaneously, whereas a traditional computer needs to compute each combination separately.

However, there are some drawbacks to quantum computing in the cloud. Developers should proceed cautiously when experimenting with applications that involve sensitive data, said Finke. To address this, many organizations prefer to install quantum hardware in their own facilities despite the operational hassles, Finke said.

Also, a machine may not be immediately available when a quantum developer wants to submit a job through quantum services on the public cloud. "The machines will have job queues and sometimes there may be several jobs ahead of you when you want to run your own job," Finke said. Some of the vendors have implemented a reservation capability so a user can book a quantum computer for a set time period to eliminate this problem.

IBM was first to market with its Quantum Experience offering, which launched in 2016 and now has over 15 quantum computers connected to the cloud. Over 210,000 registered users have executed more than 70 billion circuits through the IBM Cloud and published over 200 papers based on the system, according to IBM.

IBM also started the Qiskit open source quantum software development platform and has been building an open community around it. According to GitHub statistics, it is currently the leading quantum development environment.

In late 2019, AWS and Microsoft introduced quantum cloud services offered through partners.

Microsoft Quantum provides a quantum algorithm development environment, and from there users can transfer quantum algorithms to Honeywell, IonQ or Quantum Circuits Inc. hardware. Microsoft's Q# scripting offers a familiar Visual Studio experience for quantum problems, said Michael Morris, CEO of Topcoder, an on-demand digital talent platform.

Currently, this transfer involves the cloud providers installing a high-speed communication link from their data center to the quantum computer facilities, Finke said. This approach has many advantages from a logistics standpoint, because it makes things like maintenance, spare parts, calibration and physical infrastructure a lot easier.

Amazon Braket similarly provides a quantum development environment and, when generally available, will provide time-based pricing to access D-Wave, IonQ and Rigetti hardware. Amazon says it will add more hardware partners as well. Braket offers a variety of different hardware architecture options through a common high-level programming interface, so users can test out the machines from the various partners and determine which one would work best with their application, Finke said.

Google has done considerable core research on quantum computing in the cloud and is expected to launch a cloud computing service later this year. Google has been more focused on developing its in-house quantum computing capabilities and hardware rather than providing access to these tools to its cloud users, Park said. In the meantime, developers can test out quantum algorithms locally using Google's Circ programming environment for writing apps in Python.

In addition to the larger offerings from the major cloud providers, there are several alternative approaches to implementing quantum computers that are being provided through the cloud.

D-Wave is the furthest along, with a quantum annealer well-suited for many optimization problems. Other alternatives include QuTech, which is working on a cloud offering of its small quantum machine utilizing its spin qubits technology. Xanadu is another and is developing a quantum machine based on a photonic technology.

Researchers are pursuing a variety of approaches to quantum computing -- using electrons, ions or photons -- and it's not yet clear which approaches will pan out for practical applications first.

"Nobody knows which approach is best, or which materials are best. We're at the Edison light bulb filament stage, where Edison reportedly tested thousands of ways to make a carbon filament until he got to one that lasted 1,500 hours," Reynolds said. In the meantime, recent cloud offerings promise to enable developers to start experimenting with these different approaches to get a taste of what's to come.

More here:
The future of quantum computing in the cloud - TechTarget

Zapata, a firm whose primary focus is on quantum computing and software, launched early access to Orquestra today. Orquestra, dubbed as a novel end-to-end, unified Quantum Operating Environment (QOE), is meant for designing, manipulating, optimizing, and running quantum circuits. These quantum circuits are then generalized to run across different quantum computers, simulators, and HPC resources.

Orquestra enables advanced technology, R&D and academic teams to acceleratequantum solutions for complex computational problems in optimization, machinelearning and simulation across a variety of industries.

Some of the noteworthy features of Orquestra are as follows. First, it provides an extensive library supplying optimized open-source (VQE, QAOA) and proprietary (VQF) algorithms. The environment allows users to combine modules written in different libraries, some of which include Cirq, Qiskit, PennyLane and PyQuil.

In addition, it also offers hardware-interoperable layering and is the only quantum platform that goes beyond hardware-agnostic capabilities. This allows users to compare various devices in the context of particular computational problems and benchmark how workflows perform across them.

Users can also submit these workflows to the Orquestra Quantum Engine (OQE) servers with command-line tools and orchestrate workflow tasks across a variety of backends that include gate model devices, quantum annealers, quantum simulators, and HPC resources. Automatedparallelization through container orchestration and management of complex records is offered as well.

Orquestra is currently in early-access and is aimed at users with backgrounds in software engineering, machine learning, physics, computational chemistry or quantum information theory. To be a part of the program, and request further information, you can send an e-mail to Zapata.

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Orquestra, an end-to-end, unified Quantum Operating Environment is now in early access - Neowin

In the most recent episode of his YouTube series Science vs. Cinema, UC Santa Barbara physicist Andy Howell takes on Star Trek: Picard, exploring how the CBS offerings presentation of supernovae and quantum computing stack up against real world science.

For Howell, the series that reviews the scientific accuracy and portrayal of scientists in Hollywoods top sci-fi films is as much an excuse to dive into exciting scientific concepts and cutting edge research.

Science fiction writers are fond of grappling with deep philosophical questions, he said. I was really excited to see that UCSB researchers were thinking about some of the same things in a more grounded way.

For the Star Trek episode, Howell spoke with series creators Alex Kurtzman and Michael Chabon, as well as a number of cast members, including Patrick Stewart. Joining him to discuss quantum science and consciousness were John Martinis a quantum expert at UCSB and chief scientist of the Google quantum computing hardware group and fellow UCSB physics professor

Matthew Fisher. Fishers group is studying whether quantum mechanics plays a role in the brain, a topic taken up in the new Star Trek series.

Howell also talked supernovae and viticulture with friend and colleague Brian Schmidt, vice chancellor of the Australian National University. Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for helping to discover that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

"We started Science vs. Cinema to use movies as a jumping-off point to talk science Howell said. Star Trek Picard seemed like the perfect fit. Star Trek has a huge cultural impact and was even one of the things that made me want to study astronomy.

Previous episodes of Science vs. Cinema have separated fact from fiction in films such as Star Wars, The Current War, Ad Astra, Arrival and The Martian. The success of prior episodes enabled Howell to get early access to the show and interview the cast and crew.

"What most people think about scientific subjects probably isn't what they learned in a university class, but what they saw in a movie, Howell remarked. That makes movies an ideal springboard for introducing scientific concepts. And while I can only reach dozens of students at a time in a classroom, I can reach millions on TV or the internet.

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The Force is With Physicist Andy Howell as He Discusses Star Trek Science With Cast and Crew - Noozhawk

We may not be living on Mars or traveling to work using jet packs, but there's no doubt the coming decade will bring many exciting technological advances. In this article, I want to outline the 25 key technology trends that I believe will shape the 2020s.

These 25 Technology Trends Will Define The Next Decade

1.Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The increasing ability of machines to learn and act intelligently will absolutely transform our world. It is also the driving force behind many of the other trends on this list.

2.The Internet of Things (IoT). This refers to the ever-growing number of smart devices and objects that are connected to the internet. Such devices are constantly gathering and transmitting data, further fueling the growth in Big Data and AI.

3.Wearables and augmented humans. What started with fitness trackers has now exploded into a whole industry of wearable technology designed to improve human performance and help us live healthier, safer, more efficient lives. In the future, we may even see humans merge with technology to create augmented humans or transhumans.

4.Big Data and augmented analytics. Big Data refers to the exponential growth in the amount of data being created in our world. Thanks to augmented analytics (highly advanced data analytics, often fueled by AI techniques), we can now make sense of and work with enormously complex and varied streams of data.

5.Intelligent spaces and smart places. Closely linked to the IoT, this trend is seeing physical spaces like homes, offices, and even whole cities becoming increasingly connected and smart.

6.Blockchains and distributed ledgers. This super-secure method of storing, authenticating, and protecting data could revolutionize many aspects of business particularly when it comes to facilitating trusted transactions.

7.Cloud and edge computing. Cloud computing where data is stored on other computers and accessed via the internet has helped to open up data and analytics to the masses. Edge computing where data is processed on smart devices (like phones) will take this to the next level.

8.Digitally extended realities. Encompassing virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, this trend highlights the move towards creating more immersive digital experiences.

9.Digital twins. A digital twin is a digital copy of an actual physical object, product, process, or ecosystem. This innovative technology allows us to try out alterations and adjustments that would be too expensive or risky to try out on the real physical object.

10.Natural language processing. This technology, which allows machines to understand human language, has dramatically changed how humans interact with machines, in particular giving rise to

11.Voice interfaces and chatbots. Alexa, Siri, chatbots many of us are now quite used to communicate with machines by simply speaking or typing our request. In the future, more and more businesses will choose to interact with their customers via voice interfaces and chatbots.

12.Computer vision and facial recognition. Machines can talk, so why shouldnt they see as well? This technology allows machines to visually interpret the world around them, with facial recognition being a prime example. Although we will no doubt see greater regulatory control over the use of facial recognition, this technology isnt going anywhere.

13.Robots and cobots. Todays robots are more intelligent than ever, learning to respond to their environment and perform tasks without human intervention. In certain industries, the future of work is likely to involve humans working seamlessly with robot colleagues hence the term cobot," or "collaborative robot."

14.Autonomous vehicles. The 2020s will be the decade in which autonomous vehicles of all kinds cars, taxis, trucks, and even ships become truly autonomous and commercially viable.

15.5G. The fifth generation of cellular network technology will give us faster, smarter, more stable wireless networking, thereby driving advances in many other trends (e.g., more connected devices and richer streams of data).

16.Genomics and gene editing. Advances in computing and analytics have driven incredible leaps in our understanding of the human genome. Now, were progressing to altering the genetic structure of living organisms (for example, correcting DNA mutations that can lead to cancer).

17.Machine co-creativity and augmented design. Thanks to AI, machines can do many things including creating artwork and designs. As a result, we can expect creative and design processes to shift towards greater collaboration with machines.

18.Digital platforms. Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb are all household-name examples of digital platforms networks that facilitate connections and exchanges between people. This trend is turning established business models on their head, leading many traditional businesses to transition to or incorporate a platform-based model.

19.Drones and unmanned aerial vehicles. These aircraft, which are piloted either remotely or autonomously, have changed the face of military operations. But the impact doesnt stop there search and rescue missions, firefighting, law enforcement, and transportation will all be transformed by drone technology. Get ready for passenger drones (drone taxis), too!

20.Cybersecurity and resilience. As businesses face unprecedented new threats, the ability to avoid and mitigate cybersecurity threats will be critical to success over the next decade.

21.Quantum computing. Quantum computers unimaginably fast computers capable of solving seemingly unsolvable problems will make our current state-of-the-art technology look like something out of the Stone Age. As yet, work in quantum computing is largely restricted to labs, but we could see the first commercially available quantum computer this decade.

22.Robotic process automation. This technology is used to automate structured and repetitive business processes, freeing up human workers to concentrate on more complex, value-adding work. This is part of a wider shift towards automation that will impact every industry.

23.Mass personalization and micro-moments. Mass-personalization is, as you might expect, the ability to offer highly personalized products or services on a mass scale. Meanwhile, the term micro-moments essentially means responding to customer needs at the exact right moment. Both are made possible by technologies like AI, Big Data, and analytics.

24.3D and 4D printing and additive manufacturing. Although this may seem low-tech compared to some of the other trends, 3D and 4D printing will have very wide applications and will be particularly transformative when combined with trends like mass-personalization.

25.Nanotechnology and materials science. Our increasing ability to understand materials and control matter on a tiny scale is giving rise to exciting new materials and products, such as bendable displays.

Read more about these 25 key technology trends including practical examples from a wide range of industries in my new book, Tech Trends in Practice: The 25 Technologies That Are Driving The 4th Industrial Revolution.

See the article here:
These 25 Technology Trends Will Define The Next Decade - Forbes