Quantum computing and Symentic Web Qubits with RFD

Image via Wikipedia

The Semantic Web is a web of data. There is lots of data we all use every day, and it is not part of the web. I can see my bank statements on the web, and my photographs, and I can see my appointments in a calendar. But can I see my photos in a calendar to see what I was doing when I took them? Can I see bank statement lines in a calendar?

Why not? Because we don't have a web of data. Because data is controlled by applications, and each application keeps it to itself.

The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents. It is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.

Related articles by Zemanta

• UK Government Moves to Put Data on the Web (w3.org)
• What is the Semantic Web (slideshare.net)
• Enterprises, Struggling to Manage Your Data? Give The Semantic Web a Try... (readwriteweb.com)
• A simple explanation on the difference between Semantic Web/Tech and Linked Data (aldobucchi.com)
• Freebase, RDF and the Semantic Web (slideshare.net)
• Berners-Lee: Semantic Web will build in privacy (news.cnet.com)
• Linked Data is the First Step towards a Semantic *Web* (aldobucchi.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Quantum computing also offers the means of making our communications and business transactions far more secure than they are today. Quantum cryptography exploits several remarkable effects of “quantum entanglement.” One is the ability to generate pairs of utterly unique and unbreakable keys. Basically, two random but identical particle keys can be created using entanglement. Since reading a quantum particle alters it, any effort to eavesdrop on communication is detected and that communication is either disrupted or ended.

Using this technology, we can create completely secure communications networks. Recently, Toshiba’s R&D labs announced the successful testing of quantum cryptography over fiber-optic networks. Austrians were able to send entangled photons between two Spanish islands nearly 90 miles apart.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Quantum cryptography: now ready for space travel (engadget.com)
• Top 100 Stories of 2008: #43: Next-Level Quantum Spookiness (discovermagazine.com)
• Was Einstein Wrong?: A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity (sciam.com)

Image via Wikipedia

One important quantum effect that will be used in future generations of computer technology is “quantum superposition.” In a nutshell, this means that a quantum particle can exist in multiple states and everything in between at the same time. This is because a quantum particle, such as an electron, behaves as both a particle and a wave.

Have you heard of the particle wave theory? In practical terms, it means that bizarre and counterintuitive effects occur on very small scales, and they can be harnessed.

This “quantum superposition” effect will, for example, utterly transform how we do “computer math.” Currently, nearly everything done by computers is done in binary. The smallest piece of information a computer handles, the bit, is either one or zero, something or nothing. A quantum computer, though, would be able to store and work with number systems other than binary.

This means computers would become exponentially more powerful because each “quantum bit” (qubit) could store a much greater range of numbers than the two that binary math restricts us to. Imagine a laptop with the computing power of the world’s 10 most powerful supercomputers. Then you begin to grasp the potential of quantum computing.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Waves Superposition (slideshare.net)