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2021 will be remembered for a lot of things, but when its all said and done we think itll eventually get called the year quantum computing finally came into focus.

Thats not to say useful quantum computers have actually arrived yet. Theyre still somewhere between a couple years and a couple centuries away. Sorry for being so vague, but when youre dealing with quantum physics there arent yet many guarantees.

This is because physics is an incredibly complex and challenging field of study. And the difficulty gets cranked up exponentially when you start adding theoretical and quantum to the research.

Were talking about physics at the very edge of reason. Like, for example, imagining a quantum-powered artificial intelligence capable of taking on the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.

That might sound pretty wacky, but this story explains why its not quite as out there as you might think.

But lets go even further. Lets go past the edge of reason and into the realm of the speculative science. Earlier this year we wondered what would happen if physicists could actually prove that reality as we know it isnt real.

Per that article:

Theoretically, if we could zoom in past the muons and leptons and keep going deeper and deeper, we could reach a point where all objects in the universe are indistinguishable from each other because, at the quantum level, everything that exists is just a sea of nearly-identical subparticulate entities.

This version of reality would render the concepts of space and time pointless. Time would only exist as a construct by which we give meaning to our own observations. And those observations would merely be the classical side-effects of existing in a quantum universe.

So, in the grand scheme of things, its possible that our reality is little more than a fleeting, purposeless arrangement of molecules. Everything that encompasses our entire universe may be nothing more than a brief hallucination caused by a quantum vibration.

Nothing makes you feel special like trying to conceive of yourself as a few seasoning particles in an infinite soup of gooey submolecules.

If having an existential quantum identity-crisis isnt your thing, we also covered a lot of cool stuff that doesnt require you to stop seeing yourself as an individual stack of materials.

Does anyone remember the time China said it had built a quantum computer a million times more powerful than Googles? We dont believe it. But thats the claim the researchersmade. You can read more about that here.

Oh, and that Google quantum system the Chinese researchers referenced? Yeah, it turns out it wasnt exactly the massive upgrade over classical supercomputers it was chalked up to be either.

But, of course, we forgive Google for its marketing faux pas. And thats because, hands down, the biggest story of the year for quantum computers was the time crystal breakthrough.

As we wrote at the time:

If Googles actually created time-crystals, it could accelerate the timeline for quantum computing breakthroughs from maybe never to maybe within a few decades.

At the far-fetched, super-optimistic end of things we could see the creation of a working warp drive in our lifetimes. Imagine taking a trip to Mars or the edge of our solar system, and being back home on Earth in time to catch the evening news.

And, even on the conservative end with more realistic expectations, its not hard to imagine quantum computing-based chemical and drug discovery leading to universally-effective cancer treatments.

Talk about a eureka moment!

But there were even bigger things in the world of quantum physics than just advancing computer technology.

Scientists from the University of Sussex determined that black holes emanate a specific kind of quantum pressure that could lend some credence to multiple universe theories.

Basically, we cant explain where the pressure comes from. Could this be blow back from white holes swallowing up energy and matter in a dark, doppelganger universe that exists parallel to our own? Nobody knows! You can read more here though.

Still there were even bigger philosophical questions in play over the course of 2021 when it came to interpreting physics research.

Are we incapable of finding evidence for God because were actually gods in our rights? That might sound like philosophy, but there are some pretty radical physics interpretations behind that assertion.

And, if we are gods, can we stop time? Turns out, whether were just squishy mortal meatbags or actual deities, we actually can!

Alright. If none of those stories impress you, weve saved this one for last. If being a god, inventing time crystals, or even stopping time doesnt float your boat, how about immortality? And not just regular boring immortality, butquantum immortality.

Its probably not probable, and adding the word quantum to something doesnt necessarily make it cooler, but anythings possible in an infinite universe. Plus, the underlying theories involving massive-scale entanglement are incredible read more here.

Seldom a day goes by where something incredible isnt happening in the world of physics research. But thats nothing compared to the magic weve yet to uncover out there in this fabulous universe we live in.

Luckily for you, Neural will be back in 2022 to help make sense of it all. Stick with us for the most compelling, wild, and deep reporting on the quantum world this side of the non-fiction realm.

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Neural's best quantum computing and physics stories from 2021 - The Next Web

We are living in a do-anything-from-anywhere economy enabled by an exponentially expanding data ecosystem. Its estimated that 65% of global gross domestic product (GDP) will be digital in 2022. This influx of data presents both opportunities and challenges. After all, success in our digital present and future relies on our ability to secure and maintain increasingly complex information technology (IT) systems. Here, I will examine near-term and long-term predictions that address the way the IT industry will deliver the platforms and capabilities to harness this data to transform our experiences at work, home and in the classroom.

The edge discussion will separate into two focus areasedge platforms that provide a stable pool of secure capacity for the diverse edge ecosystems and software-defined edge workloads or software stacks that extend application and data systems into real-world environments. We are already seeing this shift today. As we move into 2022, we expect edge platforms to become more capable and pervasive.

The opening of the private mobility ecosystem will accelerate with more cloud and IT industries involved on the path to 5G. The enterprise use of 5G is still early. In fact, today, 5G is not significantly different or better than WiFi in most enterprise use cases. This will change in 2022 as more modern and capable versions of 5G become available to enterprises.

More importantly, we expect the ecosystem delivering new and more capable private mobility, to expand and include IT providers, such as Dell Technologies, besides public cloud providers and even new open-source ecosystems focused on acceleration of the open 5G ecosystem.

Edge will become the new battleground for data management as it becomes a new class of workload. Data management and edge will increasingly converge and reinforce each other.

As the digital transformation accelerates, it has become clear that most of the data in the world will be created and acted on outside of centralized data centres. We expect that the entire data management ecosystem will become very active in developing and utilizing edge IT capacity as the ingress and egress of their data pipelines, and will also utilize edges to remotely process and digest data.

The security industry is now moving from discussion of emerging security concerns to a bias towards action. Enterprises and governments are facing threats of greater sophistication and impact on revenue and services. As a result, the security industry is responding with greater automation and integration. The industry is also pivoting from automated detection to prevention and response with a focus on applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to speed remediation.

Quantum computing: Hybrid quantum or classical compute will take centre-stage, providing greater access to quantum. In 2022, we expect two major industry consensuses to emerge. First, we expect the industry will see the inevitable topology of a quantum system in a hybrid quantum computer. The second major consensus is that quantum simulation using conventional computing will be the most cost-effective and accessible way to get quantum systems into the hands of our universities, data science teams and researchers. In fact, Dell and IBM already announced significant work in making quantum simulation available to the world.

Automotive: The automotive ecosystem will rapidly shift focus from a mechanical ecosystem to a data and compute industry. We are seeing a shift from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles, resulting in radical simplification of the physical supply chain. Dell is actively engaged with most of the worlds major automotive companies in their early efforts, and we expect 2022 to continue their evolution towards digital transformation and deep interaction with IT ecosystems.

Digital twins: Digital twins will become easier to create and consume as the technology is more clearly defined with dedicated tools. Over the next several years, we will see digital twins becoming easier to create and consume as we define standardized frameworks, solutions and platforms.

As a technology optimist, I increasingly see a world where humans and technology work together to deliver impactful outcomes at an unprecedented speed. These near-term and long-term perspectives are based on the strides we are making today. If we see even incremental improvement, there is enormous opportunity to positively transform the way we work, live and learn, and 2022 will be another year of accelerated technology innovation and adoption.

John Roese is global chief technology officer, Dell Technologies.

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Originally posted here:
The tech that will change the dialogue n 2022 - Mint

The conclusions to be drawn from the Glasgow-hosted twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties UN climate summit (COP26) that closed on November 13 should be clear for climate campaigners. They are certainly not new.

Once again representatives of the worlds most powerful capitalist nation states and the formally non-market economies in World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms also present were unable to overcome their competing economic and political interests to avert the prospect of future catastrophic climate change.

Nicholas Stern, author of the authoritative 2006 UK government commissioned report, at the time famously called climate change the result of the greatest market failure the world has seen a failure, in other words, of capitalism. Nothing that transpired in Glasgow contradicts that now well-established assessment.

Labour, the anti-Semitism crisis, and the destroying of an MP

By Lee Garratt

Published by Thinkwell Books, 2021, 11-99

The removal of Chris Williamson and Jeremy Corbyn from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), and Rebecca Long-Bailey from the front bench, was in each case based on accusations of anti-Semitism, or on comments on accusations of anti-Semitism. There was no actual evidence of anti-Semitism in their cases and they all made clear that it should have no place in the labour movement. However, that issue had become a battering ram of the Labour Party right wing against the Corbyn-led left and its prime method for removing certain individuals from positions of influence.

Lee Garratts book documents well the deliberate smearing of those prominent Labour lefts and many others such as former MP and London mayor Ken Livingstone who were targeted on similar grounds.

Ten years ago the revolt of the indignados (the outraged) erupted in Spain as a protest against brutal austerity. The government of Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero and the misnamed Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), loyal to the interests of the capitalists who backed him, demanded that ordinary working class people pay the bill for the economic crisis which convulsed the Spanish state and the rest of the world in 2007-08.

While Spanish banks received huge no-strings-attached bailouts, Zapatero held wages down and savagely cut back public services, pensions and welfare. Jobs were slaughtered and new attacks were launched on trade union rights in order to obstruct the efforts of workers to fight back.

On 25 December1991 asombreMikhail Gorbachev appeared on television screens across eleven time zones announcing that the vast federation known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was dissolved. Long before this date, it had been unravelling and the fate of Gorbachev, its president and the secretary of the ruling Communist Party, had been sealed.

This Christmas speech marked the end of the Soviet Union; it was by no means the end of history, as one infamous political scientist Francis Fukuyama argued, maintaining there was now no alternative to capitalism. And yet today the idea of socialism is becoming more and more popular amongst young people and ever more urgent in the fight against the destruction of the worlds people and resources.

Those on the left who have pinned their hopes on founding a new socialist party, wrote the veteran Labour left-winger Tony Benn on the eve of Labours Bournemouth conference, should note that the Socialist Alliance candidate only received 366 votes in Brent East and Arthur Scargills Socialist Labour Party (SLP) was only able to get 111 votes, which does not promise well for that strategy. (Morning Star, 26 September 2003)

When the leaders speak of peace, wrote the German socialist artist Bertolt Brecht while living in exile in 1937, the people know that war is coming. Brechts pithy epigram, from his German War Primer poem, should be kept firmly in mind as the representatives of the countries that agreed the 1992 Rio Earth Summit United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change gather this November in Glasgow for the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties to the convention (COP26).

Almost half of the atmospheres extra, human-made carbon dioxide has been put there under the watch of these representatives in the period since, almost thirty years ago now, they solemnly signed the Rio convention to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate.

Emerging from the Covid pandemic and following a decade of austerity, the capitalist class is once again determined to force the working class to pay the price for economic instability and crisis. But their success is not a foregone conclusion that depends on whether there is a struggle.

In an attempt to stave that off, and particularly to prevent struggle finding a political expression, when Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015 the Blairite right-wing embarked on a ferocious campaign. These representatives of capitalist interests in the Labour Party had spent years transforming it into a party safe for big business, and were not about to allow the door to open to the possibility of it becoming a vehicle through which workers could challenge the profit system.

Now with Corbynism defeated within the Labour Party framework the new battleground is in the biggest public sector trade union, with 1.3 million members, UNISON.

The consultation on the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) launched by the Tory government in 2016 was not the starting gun for the culture wars but it did create a battlefield. The Tories faced a Labour opposition led by Jeremy Corbyn. They hoped making it easier for trans and non-binary people to self-identify would be a cheap way to cut across some of the hatred felt, especially among young people, for their nasty austerity party. Five years on, as we warned, the Tories admit they have no intention of improving the GRA. The battlefield, however, is still active.

Those pushing themselves to the front of the so-called debate arising from the GRA reform consultation falsely present womens rights and the rights of trans and non-binary people as conflicting rights. They are not. All women and trans and non-binary people suffer in different and related ways because of the way capitalist society is organised and structured.

The United Nations climate change conference in Paris is the latest in a series of talks that has gone on for 23 years. They have thoroughly demonstrated how bankrupt capitalism is, in the face of the coming climate catastrophe it has created. The rate at which pollutants are spilled out has continued to grow, virtually unabated by the discussions held by diplomats around the world.

See the rest here:
Socialism Today Socialist Party magazine

Story Highlights

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Not only is socialism's image unchanged in the U.S. over the past decade, as reported in Gallup's recent in-depth review of attitudes toward socialism and government power, but positive views of socialism are flat across the age spectrum. Since 2010, young adults' positive ratings of socialism have hovered near 50%, while the rate has been consistently near 34% for Gen Xers and near 30% for baby boomers/traditionalists.

At the same time, since 2010, young adults' overall opinion of capitalism has deteriorated to the point that capitalism and socialism are tied in popularity among this age group. This pattern was first observed in 2018 and remains the case today.

The 2019 results are based on an Oct. 1-13 Gallup poll in which respondents were asked about their overall views of six different economic terms, including capitalism, socialism, free enterprise, big business, small business and entrepreneurs.

Despite the relatively high proportion of young adults who view socialism positively, a much higher 83% have a positive view of "free enterprise." This nearly matches the 88% of Gen Xers and 91% of baby boomers/traditionalists who view free enterprise positively. Still, opinions of free enterprise have weakened slightly among millennials/Gen Zers in the past few years.

All three age groups have a more subdued reaction to "big business" than free enterprise -- but the percentage viewing it positively among young adults has now fallen below 50% (to 46%). The image of big business also fell among Gen Xers between 2012 and 2018, but has since rebounded to 55%.

Among all Americans, "small business" is universally well-regarded, with a 97% positive rating. Nine in 10 view entrepreneurs positively, and a similar proportion (87%) say the same of free enterprise, while smaller majorities of Americans are positive toward capitalism (60%) and big business (52%).

There are no meaningful differences in the various generations' views of small business or entrepreneurs, with high percentages of all age groups viewing both positively.

Socialism is the only economic system rated positively by less than half of the public, now at 39%.

Americans' Views of Six Economic Terms

Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following?

Young adults mirror the country as a whole in having a range of reactions to the terms commonly used to describe aspects of the U.S. economic system. Small business, entrepreneurs and free enterprise earn positive reactions from large majorities of all age groups, while fewer view big business and capitalism favorably. Where young adults differ from older generations is their particularly low ratings of capitalism and big business combined with their relatively high rating of socialism. Taken together, their different reactions to the terms suggest that young adults favor Americans' basic economic freedoms but have heightened concerns about the power that accrues as companies grow, and that younger generations are more comfortable with using government to check that power.

Read more about Gallup trends on socialism, capitalism and the level of government involvement that Americans want in solving the country's problems.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.

Read the original post:
Socialism as Popular as Capitalism Among Young Adults in U.S.

Illustration by Alex Nabaum

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About the author: Vitaliy Katsenelson is CEO of IMA, a value investment firm in Denver, and the author of the upcoming Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life.

On Dec. 4, 1991, my family got off the boat from Russiawe landed at JFK, our stop on the way to Denver. I was 18 years old. My father moved my entire family to America for the shot at a better life for his kids; he had little inkling that the Soviet Union would collapse a few weeks later. I had learned about the U.S. mostly from American movies, which, with the exception of Westerns, were heavily biased toward coasts and skyscrapers. Denver was flat, sunny, and unusually warm. People wore T-shirts in the middle of winter.

That was not the only surprise for us.

We were picked up at the airport by a half-dozen strangers from my aunts synagogue. They drove us to our fully furnished apartment. That was shocking to me. I had been brainwashed into believing that Americanscapitalist pigswould sell their brothers to supersize their Happy Meals. These cold-hearted capitalists had taken their time and money to care for people they had never met.

In Soviet Russia, everyone (for the most part) was equally poor. My family, despite my fathers high salary (he had a doctorate, which boosted his pay), lived from paycheck to paycheck. Our understanding of money, especially mine, was very limitedwe never had any.

Money and power often unmask a person. Sometimes you like what is revealed; many times you dont. Im an investment manager. As an occupational hazard, Ive spent time around some very wealthy people, and I havent observed any extra dose of happiness in them.

Money solves money problems. It doesnt make people love you; your actions do. Money, just like education, is supposed to buy you choices. It should provide security. The first few years in the U.S., my parents worried how we were going to pay for groceries and rent. We dont have that worry todayand that is liberating.

After we arrived, I spent a few months knocking on the doors of every business within walking distance of our apartment. I didnt realize it at the time, but the country was in a recession. Getting a job was very difficult. Every member of my family needed to work.

When I eventually found work at a restaurant on the night shift, everything I earned, down to the last penny, I gave to my parents. This money went for food and rent. My stepmother, who was a doctor in Russia, was now cleaning rooms in a hotel.

Those were difficult years, but I would not trade them for anything. They taught me to work harder than anyone else. I dont know if I was driven by hunger for success, fear of failure, or by seeing the contrast of what this country had to offer versus my life in the Soviet Union. Probably all of the above.

Yes, this country has kept its promise. But as I reflect on spending the bulk of my adult life here, I realize I understand this country less today than I did 30 years ago.

Over the past decade, the country has turned tribal. We outsource our thinking to the mother ship of the tribe. Other tribes become our nemesis, and we lose nuance. Tribalism has started to impact our freedom of speech. No, the government isnt going to send you to the gulag for your political thoughts. We do it to ourselves by canceling one another.

The more we self-censor, the less free we become. As nuance is lost, we lose pragmatism and resilience, and we follow the paths of all empires. They get too rich, overextended, think they are better than others, and then fail.

I see the same thing happening on the corporate level. As great companies triumph, they lose a healthy sense of paranoia and perspective. Their culture stiffens, and they start thinking that success is a God-given right. Hubris creates an opening for the competition. IBM , GE, Xerox , Kodak , Polaroid, the onetime hallmarks of this country, are now sorry shadows of themselves.

It pains me to see the younger generation romanticizing socialism, as a person who lived under Soviet socialism and as an investor. When you tell them that every country that tried it failed, they answer that theyll do it better. Socialism fails not because of the quality of people involvednobody thinks that Russia or Venezuela would have succeeded if only they had better bureaucrats. Socialism simply runs counter to our genetic programming.

The alignment of incentives is paramount to the success of any enterprise. The incentives of government bureaucrats are aligned not with the success of the country but with keeping their jobs. Compare SpaceX to the space program run by the U.S. government. Capitalism is far from perfect, but it is the best system weve got.

I am still optimistic about the U.S. But we should not take our success for granted. Just like immigrants fresh off the boat, we should be hungry.

Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barrons and MarketWatch newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors. Submit commentary proposals and other feedback to ideas@barrons.com.

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30th Anniversary of the Soviet Collapse: An Investor Looks Back - Barron's