Why is Silicon Valley still waiting for the next big thing? – The Straits Times

NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - In the autumn of 2019, Google told the world it had reached "quantum supremacy". It was a significant scientific milestone that some compared to the first flight at Kitty Hawk.

Harnessing the mysterious powers of quantum mechanics, Google had built a computer that needed only 3 minutes and 20 seconds to perform a calculation that normal computers could not complete in 10,000 years.

But more than two years after Google's announcement, the world is still waiting for a quantum computer that actually does something useful. And it will most likely wait much longer. The world is also waiting for self-driving cars, flying cars, advanced artificial intelligence and brain implants that will let you control your computing devices using nothing but your thoughts.

Silicon Valley's hype machine has long been accused of churning ahead of reality. But in recent years, the tech industry's critics have noticed that its biggest promises - the ideas that really could change the world - seem farther and farther on the horizon. The great wealth generated by the industry in recent years has generally been thanks to ideas, like the iPhone and mobile apps, that arrived years ago.

Have the big thinkers of tech lost their mojo?

The answer, those big thinkers are quick to respond, is absolutely not. But the projects they are tackling are far more difficult than building a new app or disrupting another ageing industry. And if you look around, the tools that have helped you cope with almost two years of a pandemic - the home computers, the videoconferencing services and Wi-Fi, even the technology that aided researchers in the development of vaccines - have shown the industry has not exactly lost a step.

"Imagine the economic impact of the pandemic had there not been the infrastructure - the hardware and the software - that allowed so many white-collar workers to work from home and so many other parts of the economy to be conducted in a digitally mediated way," said Professor Margaret O'Mara from the University of Washington who specialises in the history of Silicon Valley.

As for the next big thing, the big thinkers say, give it time. Take quantum computing. Dr Jake Taylor, who oversaw quantum computing efforts for the White House and is now chief science officer at quantum start-up Riverlane, said building a quantum computer might be the hardest task ever undertaken. This is a machine that defies the physics of everyday life.

A quantum computer relies on the strange ways that some objects behave at the sub-atomic level or when exposed to extreme cold, like metal chilled to nearly 460 degrees below zero. If scientists merely try to read information from these quantum systems, they tend to break.

While building a quantum computer, Dr Taylor said, "you are constantly working against the fundamental tendency of nature".

The most important tech advances of the past few decades - the microchip, the Internet, the mouse-driven computer, the smartphone - were not defying physics. And they were allowed to gestate for years, even decades, inside government agencies and corporate research labs before ultimately reaching mass adoption.

"The age of mobile and cloud computing has created so many new business opportunities," Prof O'Mara said. "But now there are trickier problems."

Still, the loudest voices in Silicon Valley often discuss those trickier problems as if they were just another smartphone app. That can inflate expectations.

More:

Why is Silicon Valley still waiting for the next big thing? - The Straits Times