2023-08-04
As a "computer scientist" I was taught to think bits bytes registers and code at a time when a computer needed quite a large air-conditioned room to itself, not to mention various peripheral units (card readers, paper tape readers, magnetic tape drives, printers) scattered around it in their own large cabinets, all connected by equally large underfloor cables, and requiring constant attention from an operator to load the right instruction programs and the correct data tapes on the right drives at the right time.
In fact, it was a time when the "operating system" had yet to be invented and the operator had to preset the "read a punched card" instruction into the program register, and the first card read had to contain the first (machine code) instructions to be executed. This was known a bootstrapping.
As time went on the next machines introduced the idea of an operating system (although it wasn't called that until later) whereby the small "executive program" sat permanently in the machine and the operator told this program where to find the next program to be executed and loaded the right tapes of data on the right drives, etc.
So because I was introduced gradually to the various components of a modern digital computer more or less as they came available over the years, I have a pretty good understanding of the engineering that underlies it all, right down to the hardware level. Whether it's a phone, a tablet, or a PC, it's all the same to me.
But with a new-fangled "quantum computer", all that counts for nothing. It's a totally new type of beast whose modus operandi is veiled behind a curtain of "it's high science and very complex and don't worry your simple little head about it". So until now, I haven't.
Still, Clif High is a very accomplished polymath so I have little hesitation in deferring to his wisdom in this matter. His conclusions, although controversial, should perhaps, given recent world events, not be unexpected?
(35 minutes, audio with unrelated pretty pictures)
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