Monthly Archives: November 2019

8 posts

Carbon copy of 1971 order form for the book Future Shock.

Quantacalypse Now

Or maybe it’s the Cryptocalypse That Will Happen at a Later Date.  In any case, predictions are often where the money is. Here is a brief literature review. Now that quantum supremacy has been achieved, there is a lot being written about it being the end of the world in one way or another.  The most predictable is Roger A. Grimes’ Cryptography Apocalypse, ISBN-13: 978-1119618195, which just […]

Quantum Supremacy and Blockchain: Things to consider

This breakthrough is from a corporation, not a government.  Previous innovation, such as ARPANET, came from such sources.  It is likely that the priorities will be different. The sudden increase in speed implies the possibility of intermediate steps. As IBM reminded everyone after Google’s announcement, they too have a 53 qubit machine, albeit one that runs much slower and steadier. Google’s innovation is likely to be […]

Is quantum supremacy a flying car?

A standard field trip in elementary school was the aerospace museum.  They had two flying cars that had been built in the 1930s.  Looped videos of grainy black and white footage ran showing them driving down the street, then flying over San Diego.  As we sat in traffic on the way back to school, students and teachers alike wondered aloud about what happened. Who wouldn’t want […]

Quantum Supremacy and Blockchain

The Blockyball or Blockhelix is on the way.   Quantum computing is here.  Google made it work with a 53 qubit processor called Sycamore cooled to nearly absolute zero.  The 3 minutes and 30 seconds of calculations done would take 100,000 computers 10,000 years to replicate.  IBM says that their own 53 qubit processor, with conventional engineering, could replicate Google’s results in 2 1/2 days. It […]

Ford Model T

When you’re behind, Way behind

Learning from Healthcare Healthcare is one area of Blockchain application that libraries can learn from.  For example, it is currently under consideration as a means of helping stem the tide of counterfeit prescriptions. It would be more important than most applications, because counterfeit drugs are a 200 billion dollar market.  They are often made with wrong ingredients. Other sources point to issues in other arenas that […]

Causes and Effects

A number of issues have been bouncing around in my head lately: Can you really have a sovereign identity on someone else’s network? Sovereign identity might mean “Your identity is your problem.” Blockchain might be oversold, but for the wrong reasons.  Blockchain: the Emperor’s New PKI looks at this.  Amazon was oversold back when it was a book catalog, but no one predicted that it would […]

Sovereign identity on how many networks?

So far, I have been unable to find an identity that works on multiple networks.  Please comment if you have. In the library world, we have OCLC, which is a network of networks.  Melvyl linked the UC system and was eventually subsumed into the larger co-op. If libraries make their own network (again, remember it would replace a co-op), would it be only one network?  Would […]