randform

randform wishes a happy new year to everybody!

just be careful – in particular given the rather bleak economic outlooks it will get even more easy to loose oneself in dreamworlds, so I wouldn’t wonder if the boom of the game industry is going to continue. In this TED video (via serious games) David Perry describes the evolution of video games, however of special interest in this video may be an -what he calls opinion of a student- which is a (realistic?) documentary about a self acclaimed video game addict (second part of the talk, the whole talk is about 20 min). The documentary describes the cognitive changes which are due to excessive video gaming.

As already mentioned in the last post I am going to supervise the exercises of a quantum computing class. Quantum computation was already a couple of times mentioned on this blog (like here), but I never really explained it to our art and design readership.

This blogpost belongs to series of posts related to the issue of focus and context.

So how can one describe quantum computation within a few words? Michael Nielsen, who actually wrote a whole book with Isaac Chuang about quantum computing (and who seems to be fed up with it?), tried this already on his blog.

I would like to try the same however differently with maybe fewer words (?), by using an analogy. So hopefully my post is kind of supplementary to Michael Nielsens.

In a natural language the information is conveyed in a way which may be ambiguous, i.e. words may have many meanings and thus the interpretation of their meaning depends on a given context. One can see this e.g. in the ambiguity of translations.

An example:

Look at the in the above art work mentioned german word “wegetreten”. “wegetreten” could be interpreted as “wege treten” (weg=path, treten=step), so the translation would be “pathmaking” or it could be interpeted as the word “wegetreten” read as: “weg getreten” (weg=away, getreten=stepped) meaning “pushed away” or -as a second meaning “stepped aside” or it could be read as “weh getreten” (weh=pain) (with a slight orthographic deformation) and thus would mean “to have injured”. So if a CEO gives a speech and would say the sentence: “Mit unserem neuen Ansatz werden wir Wege treten, die uns in neue Dimensionen führen” (with our new ansatz we will produce plathways which will lead us into new dimenions) then due to the addition: “which will lead us into new dimensions” it is rather clear what he/she meant – it’s quite a standard CEO sentence.

However without the addition the meaning of that sentence would depend on the exact pronounciation (i.e. the “e” in “weg” would be spoken slightly shorter in “weg-getreten” than in wege-treten, which sounds the same as weh-getreten). If you cant perceive the precise pronouncation like because this CEO is always mumbling then “mit unserem neuen Ansatz werden wir Wege treten” could also mean: “with our new ansatz we will be pushed away”, I.e. it would have rather the opposite meaning of “with our new ansatz we will be producing new pathways”. One could probably recover the correct meaning of the sentence if one would know the rest of the speech, or if one would know to whom this sentence was adressed, i.e. if one would know the given context.

(There is a bit about Homonyms in this randform post. In this post also metaphors were mentioned. However including metaphors would make things even more complicated so lets leave them out for a moment).

So conveying the information “wegetreten” (like in a SMS and allowing for a slight orthographic freedom) means to convey at least the above four meanings of “wegetreten” – all at the same time. And if you send this information like in a SMS then the interpretation will depend on what the receiver of the information knows about you and his/hers interpretation will depend on that given context (a bit on the different approaches towards context sensitvity was mentioned in this randform post).

Other forms of context may be that the interpretation may depend on the emotional and/or psychological state of the receiver a.s.o. (The interpretation of a code (which is here in our above example a word), or in other words the choice of an associated meaning was already discussed a bit e.g. in this randform post. The difficulty of choosing codes were indicated here and here or here)

A “state” in quantum mechanics is something like a “word”, i.e. you send some information, but its actual information, that is its meaning – may be blurred. I.e. instead of having only one definite meaning or none at all (“word switched on or off”) the meaning could be ambiguous.

Lets simplify a bit and recall briefly what’s in a normal computer: A computer program can be seen as a high level “translation” of a table of “yes'” and “no’s” or “on and offs”. These tables of “yes” and “no’s” provide rules of how to modify “switches” (electronic components) which are connected so that they form “circuits”. These circuits in the turn modify data (which is also given in terms of “yes'” and no’s”). Sometimes the programm is “hardwired” (like burned into a chip) and thus forms a kind of unit with the electric circuits. In particular a “cascade of switches” can be seen as a programm.

So the information in a normal computer is encoded in terms of bits, i.e. giant tables of the two possibilities “yes” and/or “no”. One calls this often “binary” (logic) which comes from the greek word “bi=two”. In a quantum computer this is different, i.e. the information is “blurred”. This means that the information is usually not a definite “yes” or “no”. So it is a bit like in our above analogy.

One can actually simulate a quantum computer with a normal computer by using the mathematical description of quantum mechanics, however in most cases you would need giant computers for the simulation of a relative small quantum computer.

But lets return to the analogy:
Choosing a “word”, i.e. choosing a bunch of certain possible meanings is in analogy to a “quantum mechanical preparation of a state”. A quantum mechanical “measurement” is in analogy to an “interpretation”. Since the context is influencing the probability of an interpretation one could see “context” in analogy to a set of “quantum gates” or “quantum circuits” which are the “circuits” of a quantum computer.

Quantum circuits are in in analogy to the usual electronic circuits you have e.g. on your ardunio board, i.e. they manipulate data. However the physical realization of quantum circuits is different from usual electronical circuits since quantum circuits make direct use of quantum mechanics and the usual electronic circuit boards make use of quantum mechanics only in a rather indirect way. In particular the encoding and processing of information in quantum circuits is different (this is what I tried a bit to explain above) from the one for electronic circuits, which use -as already pointed out- binary (or other like e.g. ternary) logics.

Due to this difference this in particular implies that if you remodel binary logical gates like in genetic design (like in synthetic biology e.g. with biobricks or within DNA computing) then the outcome will more resemble an ordinary computer (however with biological substituents and may be partly fuzzy logic) than it will resemble a quantum computer. Although there may be quantum logical effects also in biological composites, as e.g. indicated in this randform post.

Using the above analogies you could play being a quantum computer with your friends. I.e. by sending out ambiguous sentences and by waiting for their interpretation (which you somewhat see by their response). You could form chains (“circuits”), where you transmit the information, similar to the game “Stille Post” – just that you may also reformulate.

However it should be pointed out that the above is only a more or less weak analogy. There are major differences between such a game and real quantum computing. One important difference is that once a quantum mechanical measurement took place the original quantum state is usually considered to be distroyed. In our analogy this would mean that once an interpretation has been made no other interpretation would be possible any more.

In particular if you (I call you Alice) send your information to someone called Bob and someone intercepts your communication and would interpret it then Bob would know that someone intercepted your communication since he couldn’t interpret your message anymore properly. This feature is at the heart of “quantum encryption“. Another basic feature is the socalled “entanglement” which would mean that – looking again at the analogy – two words are entangled. I.e. if someone interpretes one word then the meaning of the other word would be instantanously determined. This feature is at the heart of the socalled quantum teleportation protocoll.

On the other hand if one assumes that there may be quantum mechanical effects taking place in our brain then this would shed a different light on such a game. Unfortunately it is also clear that a quantitative evaluation of such a game would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, since it is related to personal interpretation. Maybe one can find more thoughts on that issue in this new book by A. Connes, M. Heller, S. Majid, R. Penrose, J. Polkinghorne and A. Taylor (which I haven’t looked at yet) (book blog).

One should make some comments on the possible important applications of quantum computers.

One application is that they could be used for evaluating theoretical models of mesoscopic quantum systems, which could be incredible helpful for the design of new materials (like for solar cells or nano medication) (see also this research seminar)(if we generously assume that patent laws are abolished, because otherwise I see quite some conflicts ahead which will be due to patented genes, patented software algorithms, patented processes of nanofabrication etc. )

Another fact is that there are certain computer algorithms with which certain problems can be solved much faster than with ordinary computers. In particular the security systems of banks and military are relying on such algorithms. In other words having such a powerful new computer would mean that one could break more or less into all current security codes in the world.

And that is why i consider it to be highly problematic if private companies are pursuing research in such a security relevant branch. And it would be especially brisant if these companies would be known for pursuing rather restrictive politics with regard to openness, intellectual property rights etc.

But that is also why quantum computing is a rather hot topic and thus a lot of students want to learn it and even do the exercises..:).

In my mathematical work I mainly touched upon a part of quantum computation which is called topological quantum computation. The main (rather loose) connections are dating back to my Ph.D. thesis (from 1996…) which I may put online, if I should ever find the time to do so. I may eventually also write up some stuff, which is sofar still somewhat buried in my mind.

In this post a class/seminar about collaborative e-learning was mentioned in which I took part in 2004. The seminar was called “Ikarus”. I just noticed that the seminar, which was made accessible online in an anonymized fashion was taken offline recently (somewhat justifying the naming ikarus ;)). Since I found no documentation about the seminar, I would like to use this post to document a bit what this seminar was about, because I think it was a truly innovative occasion.

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image source wikipedia

The instantreality-framework is a high-performance Mixed-Reality (MR) system, which combines various components to provide a single and consistent interface for AR/VR developers. Those components have been developed at the Fraunhofer IGD and ZGDV in close cooperation with industrial partners.

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In theory it should be impossible to separate the notes in a chord. If you play a sine wave and add say a perfect 5th one perceives this either as a single note (now with a different timbre than the single sine wave) or as an interval – namely the perfect 5th. what one hears depends on several things. If for example both sine waves are given a slight vibrato of the same phase and rate one is more likely to hear this a one note. However in general it should be impossible to tell (algorithmically) whether the audiosignal is a chord or a timbre. Theoretically. In practice chords are allmost never tuned perfectly, the notes in a chord are likely to start with tiny (or even big) offsets, the instruments / strings / sources usually have their own characteristics. So it might be possible in practice to separate the notes in a chord. Still it should be a difficult task.
Now celemony – the company that makes the incredible Melodyne – anounced that they have takled the problem.
Here is a promo video that shows the possibilities (they use the slightly overused DNA acronym for their technology (this time as “direct note access”)) .
Impressive and somewhat scary.

As I received no protests – the article “On the need for a global academic internet platform” is now in the arxiv at : http://arxiv.org/pdf/0803.1360v1

To be precise: I only received NO comments at all.

But I see that xkcd already started an experts database on kilobytes :)

Any suggestions on where I could send the article to (without any extra costs) are welcome.

The below link contains an article in which I explain why I think that there is a necessity for a global academic internet platform. Most parts of the paper were already presented here on the blog. I now included the economy part to the earlier
version and made some additions. In particular I added a physics related remark concerning the constancy of natural constants and some thoughts on the diamond water paradox and on the price of digital items.

I put this here on the blog in order to enable people to add last-minute remarks, so it is still a draft but I envisage it as a final version and i will try to submit it somewhere.

->platform article version of 8.3.08 in pdf

I am currently putting together a pdf document with the title: On the need for a global academic internet platform. In this randform post you can find the first section. The therein contained links are leading to posts, which partially went into the below section or which will go into the third section.

Hence below is an excerpt of the pdf Draft containing some new arguments for such a platform and a little of the old arguments. In particular the suggestions for a workflow (scroll down to last subsection) are mostly new. Again-I put this here on the blog in order to encourage discussion about it.

->pdf draft of February 26

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“no nodes and ways in the paths of a root“, image by —|.

Dennis Lorson an Electrical Engineering/CS student at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium is currently looking for suggestions of how to enhance his program pathway, which is a graph vizualisation programm, which is displaying among others the various radii of information retrieval (screenshot demonstration).

From the website:

It accomplishes this by presenting you with a graphical “network” representation of your visited article pages. A node represents an article, a connection between two nodes means, of course, that you’ve gone from the first article to the second one. You can save the network you’ve created to disk and recover it.
This way, you’re able to keep track of everything: what you’ve looked at, how you got there and just how it all fits together.

via
metaportaldermedienpolemik

other wikipedia visualization links via IBM’s Visual Communication Lab

I am currently putting together arguments and structural comments (concerning realizability etc.) for a global academic platform which is organized as a kind of “global scientific parlament”. Some arguments were introduced in past blog posts (please see here and the corresponding links therein). A pdf document is on its way, regardless wether there is an interest in it or not. Comments are highly welcome….especially from bee, who made a comment to an earlier post!! this thing here needs a critical review.

The following text puts an emphasis on the representative character of such a platform:

In the last years internet communication has taken a leading role in overall societal life. This holds not only true for the western world, but is more and more also evident on a global level.

New forms of social networking and social communities grew within no time, partially furthered by networking tools, such as wiki’s, blogs, cvs repositories, commercial networking sites (e.g. myspace, facebook, xing) or other forms of community forming platforms reaching from online gaming platforms like world of warcraft, over environments such as second life, and online learning platforms to customer services of online stores.

Political life has partially merged into this process. Every major political party has at least a website. Political leaders have their own website. International organisations have their websites etc. Political messages are distributed not only via custom media, like newspapers, TV stations but more and more often via politically colored blogs or directly on media such as youtube.
Political communication platforms such as the World Economic Forum, Fora.tv etc. provide meeting and information spaces.

However academic life, which had online networking tools long before the internet and whose networking tools (like the html format, server architecture etc) laid the grounds for the current boom takes an astonishingly hidden role in this development.

Universities of course have their own website. Moreover a great deal of academic life takes place online. Online registrations, augmented learning, student networks, research overviews, publication lists, lecture notes etc. are almost standard at every bigger university. Moreover university members
take part in investigations or provide information for foundations and political and ecomomic institutions (like the IPCC) and thus they play a strong role in the political communication process. However all these contributions are rather hidden. Even in cases where the participation of academic members is emphasized these are usually mentioned in diffuse terms like “leading climate scientists” or “experts in genetic engineering”.

Another important hidden role of academia is the contribution to knowledge accumulation within the internet. This is not only provided via the university portals, but by the participation of university members in collaborative environments such as wikipedia.

In stark contrast to this there is an often strong neglectance of academia and educational institutions in politics. This neglectance takes on various forms. It may be as direct as budget cuts for research and educational institutions or it may be more subtle with methods reaching from restraining the autonomy of universities, interference of politics in academic processes with ideas like “elite formation” to concrete structural desicions like employment and funding regulations.

These political measurements take usually place on a national basis, although research is highly international.

The international organizations which are devoted to represent educational institutions like the UNESCO provide informations on educational topics, in part also on research content, they provide tools for collaborations, however they are mediators, moreover their mediating role is usually limited, which results e.g. in predefined priorities.

Similar things hold true for Science organizations, i.e. they represent scientific life to a certain degree and mediate between academia and society. This role is important however not exhaustive enough.

In particular the “weakness” of science organisations to represent educational institutions has a structural reason. On one hand it is the relatively small organisatorial size (like the UNESCO Sciences Sector has about 200 staff members (which could be small if you are looking for a direct adressee to set up on a science related question)) on the other hand it is the very role as a mediator which diminishes the influence of a science organization.

The above should serve as a fast explanation that there is and why there is a certain lack of a direct active representation of academia and academic questions in societal life. Such a representational lack could -at least in part- be filled by an official academic platform, which is directly and globally run by all (or almost all) educational institutions.