The Bottom Line
Pros
- Explores quantum information theory and quantum computers in understandable prose.
- Incorporates clear examples, and even jokes, to get key concepts across.
- Explains how complexity can arrive from processing of quantum information in the universe.
Cons
- It is unclear from text exactly how quantum computers physically work.
- No index.
Description
- 2006 hardcover edition
- 221 pages
- 8 chapters + further reading
- Alfred A. Knopf publishers
Guide Review - Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd
MIT professor Seth Lloyd designed the first feasible quantum computer and in Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos, he goes beyond that to explain how our entire universe behaves exactly like a universe-sized quantum computer.This concept is at the heart of quantum information theory, which explores the ways in which information - and everything is information, in this view - gets processed by the universe. Just as a computer takes "bits" of information (1 or 0) and processes them in ways that yield meaningful results, it is possible to view this universe as a series of pieces of quantum information that get processed by the universe itself.
The major benefit of this view is that it explains how complexity could arise in our universe. If you have random bits of information which get processed, as in a computer program, then sometimes those pieces of information will yield results that make sense. The complexity in our universe grows from this sort of information processing over the ages, according to Lloyd. As he says in the first pages of the book, we get "it from bit" - that is the "bits" of quantum information yield "its" of matter.
Another benefit is that by exploring quantum computers that we create, scientists might be able to gain insights into the way the universe processes this fundamental quantum information.
Lloyd's approach to quantum physics does not require the multiple worlds interpretation adopted by some other quantum computer scientists, such as David Deutsch, but he does address this viewpoint and explains why he feels it is unnecessary.
Overall, Lloyd presents an understandable look at his work in this intriguing approach to quantum physics, in language that's accessible to any reader who has a basic background in science.
