by Rob Reid
“So. I get degree, I work, then finally start company two years ago. And raising first capital is easy! But growth capital?” He shrugs, frowns broadly, and raises his brows and his gaze quizzically toward the heavens. “I don’t give good PowerPoint. I don’t have beautiful accent. And D-Wave, they kick my ass.” Another shrug, frown, and upward gaze. “But here at Phluttr, I can keep building things!”
Mitchell knows about D-Wave from Time (yes, Time, dammit—it was on the table at the dentist’s office, OK? Jesus!). They’re the quantum computing market’s giant. Of course, giganticism is relative, and even D-Wave is teeny in social media industry terms. But with its systems selling into Google, Lockheed Martin, and several mysterious government shops, D-Wave ran circles around Ax’s inaptly named Quantum Supremacy Corporation.
“The interesting thing about quantum computing is, it’s all or nothing,” Kuba points out. “Amazing experimental work is happening in the field. But the world’s still waiting for a great practical application. Which could come from anywhere, Ax’s lab certainly included. Because he’s taking a novel approach to things. A fairly radical one that lots of researchers favor. And the next true quantum breakthrough could be colossal. Maybe even as big as the invention of the microprocessor.”
“No, bigger!” Ax says. “And maybe,” he adds conspiratorially, “next week!” Kuba arches a brow, and Ax reveals that he’s about to test a quantum processor with more potential horsepower than anything ever created. Then, finally at the head of the line, he orders a large dish of a very specific sort of olive, and a pint—yes, a pint—of Half & Half.
The server not only fails to find this odd but passes over a preset tray of precisely this. Scanning the room, Mitchell sees dozens of people choking down this very combination. In fact, demand for this weirdness apparently caused the three thirty rush! This must be a posse of so-called body hackers—folks who spend their off-hours sprawling across the sacrificial altars of various extreme dietary and workout fads. Mitchell’s own choice of a large chocolate donut and some OJ triggers a scandalized rustle of pivoting necks. Eating as he does often makes dietary zealots murderously judgmental and ravenously jealous in equal parts—like Taliban soldiers hearing about an emigré cousin who’s drowning in sunshine, booze, and pussy in Miami.
“Hey, you should join the party,” taunts a familiar voice. Mitchell turns to see Raj and a pair of Half-&-Half-chugging buddies. He points at the donut. “That shit’ll kill you, Homer.”
“Sure, when I’m eighty-five. And eighty-six sounds like a bad time.”
“Yo, eighty-six is the new thirty, dude. Or it will be by the time I get there! So I’m keepin’ the pipes clean.” Raj makes a Vanna-like wave at the revolting spread in front of him.
“Are you eating Paleo or something?”
“Paleo?” Raj glances at the wrist that would hold a watch were he backward enough to own one. “Uhhh, someone check the calendar! Is it 2016 again?” His compadres chuckle scornfully. “We’re eating Medici. Have been since December.”
“And Medici is…?”
“The pinnacle of ProgReg living, duh.” Delighting in Mitchell’s blank look, Raj translates. “Progressive/Regressive. Because repurposing ancient truths is progressive!”
As always, the word “repurposing” fills Mitchell with a fleeting urge to punch somebody. Onward. “And the Medici Diet is…?”
“Renaissance eating. Mashable did a Big Data analysis of like, every portrait, ever painted. And Renaissance noblemen had the lowest body fat of anyone, ever. Plus perfect BMIs, killer abs, and the second-best hairlines in history! I mean, after the Counterreformation, obviously.”
“It was a totally ketogenic era,” a voice simpers from behind them, and Mitchell makes way for a hairless medicine ball of a man, who he pegs to be Danna’s new boss, O. O is carrying the ketogenic ProgReg platter (as well as a bonus helping of Half & Half). “Almost no sugar-based fuels. What else could explain the creative peaks they attained? Heights we have yet to rescale?” As O prattles on, Mitchell learns that “going Medici” entails olives, beets, barely cooked meats, intact fish, unprocessed dairy, and ancient, knuckle-hard superwhole grains called “proto pastas.” It also means gagging down narrowly “prescribed” dishes at rigid intervals during (and only during!) daylight hours.
Scant choice collapses the thought and prep time required by on-boarding calories—another great Medici Diet virtue, he’s told. This afternoon’s snack is one of just five zippy daily peptic intakes, which together free up untold hours to found companies, post selfies, and tweet. Crazy as this is, Mitchell actually knows several techies who grind even more efficiencies out of their eating schedules. A new category of goopy foodstuffs with names like Schmilk, Keto Chow, and (inevitably) Soylent are ingestion one-stop shops—simple cartons of glug you slurp down n times per day for the precise mix of calories, vitamins, and (of course) ketones required by the hypermodern optimizer with better things to do than eat. Schmilk and its ilk manage the astonishing feat of making the Medici crowd look moderate and reasonable.
Mitchell pulls himself away and takes an empty seat next to Ax, who’s explaining that olives and cream were so scarce during his Soviet childhood that he now finds them irresistible. “So when I hear these Medici crazies have this new teatime here at Phluttr, I say”—he shrugs and frowns extravagantly—“why not?”
“In other news,” Danna says, “what’re you testing next week?”
“Oh, is beauty,” Ax says. “A 64,000-qubit processor!” A qubit being the smallest denomination of data in quantum computing—the corollary to the bit in traditional computing.
“Ax has been developing for three years a novel process that enables very high qubit counts,” Kuba says. “It was the premise of his startup.”
“And now, is done,” Ax adds, between gulps of Half & Half.
“And how much faster will your system be than traditional computers if it really maxes out?” Danna asks.
“Millions of times, mee-nimum,” Ax says quietly. “Perhaps more.” Then, quieter still, “Even, much more.”
Though he normally dismisses such statements as bombast, Mitchell knows enough about this stuff to appreciate how exotically transformative it could be. “It’s because of…simultaneity, right?” He remembers the concept, not the terminology, and hopes he picked a right-enough word.
Ax nods slowly, like a sommelier swishing a Burgundy across his palate to see if it’ll do. Then, “Is good way of putting it. You mean superposition of the qubits, yes?”
Danna T’s her hands like a coach signaling a time-out. “Whoa, slow it down for the novice, here! The super-what of the cue-who’s?” And Mitchell kind of loves her for this. Tech omnivore that she is, Danna surely knows more about quantum computing than he does. But she can also tell when he’s bluffing and is graciously playing dumb, so Mitchell won’t have to ask the remedial questions for once.
“OK,” Ax says affably. “Say normal computer holds one bit of information. How many different states can information be in?” He turns to Mitchell, the team’s evident whiz kid.
“Two.” This much he does know. “The bit can either be zero, or one. A total of two possible states.”
“Brilliant!” Ax explodes. Mitchell’s pretty sure this is playful and not sarcastic because the guy doesn’t seem to harbor a mean cell in his body. “And if computer hold two bits. How many possible states?”
“Four,” Mitchell says, still on firm ground. “The bits can read 0-0, 0-1, 1-0, or 1-1.”
“Brilliant again!” is the delighted detonation. “And this number. Four! Is two to second power, yes? Very important. And how many possible states for computer with three bits of information?” He points at Kuba, who rattles off the eight possible binary states as instinctively as a kid reciting the alphabet. “And eight states is two to third power! So! We now have general rule: Number of possible states is two to the nth power. With n being number of bits. Yes?” All nod. “So! Now say computer ha
ve eight bits. How many possible states?” He points at Danna.
“Two fifty-six.”
“Brilliant! And! Sixteen bits? Anybody!”
“Sixty-five thousand, five hundred and thirty-six,” Danna and Kuba say in unison (Fucking geeks, Mitchell thinks).
“Yes! And now…” Ax says, like a magician preparing a surprise. “A sixteen-bit string. In normal computer. Tell me, how many states can it occupy—” And now he slows down and enunciates very carefully, sounding almost American for a moment. “—At. Any. One. Time.” He turns to Mitchell. “You.”
“Just one.”
“YES! And, of course! How can one thing occupy more than one state at one time? Is not possible, yes? Except!” He pauses again, raising an index finger theatrically. “The 16-qubit quantum computer. He can occupy all 65,536 states. At one time. Simultaneous.” Quantum computers can do this, Ax explains, by leveraging the bizarre rules prevailing at subatomic scales. One is that quantum-scale particles and systems de facto inhabit multiple positions or states at once. In theory, this can allow quantum computers to occupy all possible states at once, rather than one at a time, letting them work on millions of computations simultaneously.
As recent as 1998, 2-qubit quantum computers were a very big deal. The first 5-qubit system appeared in 2000. By 2006, the upper limit was 12. Things proceeded at a relatively stately pace until Ax’s nemesis, D-Wave, shocked everyone by announcing a 128-qubit machine in 2010. They followed this up with 512 qubits in 2013, then 1,000 in 2015. And the 21000 states that this third machine notionally inhabits at once far exceed the total number of subatomic particles in the entire fucking universe.*3
This begs the question of where all those states could possibly lie, as it’s a bit much to cram into a subcloset in the PhastPhorwardr. One provocative answer points to the vast set of parallel universes that some interpretations of quantum physics posit exist. Out there, this notion holds, each alternate state can be found in one of a vast set of parallel computers, each situated in a different universe. Collectively, those 21000 computers hold all the states. And those 10,715,086,071,862,673,209,484,250,490,600,018,105,614,048,117,055,336,074,437,503,883,703,510,511,249,361,224,931,983,788,156,958,581,275,946,729,175,531,468,251,871,452,856,923,140,435,984,577,574,698,574,803,934,567,774,824,230,985,421,;074,605,062,;371,141,877,;954,182,153,;046,474,983,;581,941,267,;398,767,559,;165,543,946,;077,062,914,;571,196,477,;686,542,167,;660,429,831,;652,624,386,;837,205,668,;069,376 computers collaborate like so many Siamese twins to arrive at, then jointly share, the right answer when it surfaces. Many brilliant people dismiss this theory as being little more than a poetic guess. But it’s hard to dismiss its underlying physics. And if those parallel universes don’t exist, someone needs to explain why and how our lone universe often behaves as if they do.
A provocative side issue to Mitchell is that those computers would logically be accompanied by 21000 Mitchells—who themselves would be a minuscule fraction of the multiverse’s full inventory of Mitchells, at least one of whom would inhabit every possible cognitive state, nexus of relationships, and personal history! Both jealous of and happy for the Mitchells who aren’t sick with Falkenberg’s disease, he imagines teaming up with his meta-posse to invent shit, swap recipes, and fight crime. Because if quantum computers can make spooky connections with their parallel counterparts, why couldn’t we?
After Ax leaves, Kuba raises the awkward question of whether there’s actually anything to quantum computing. Intriguing as its achievements seem to be, we have yet to see anything “productively quantum,” as Kuba puts it. “Which is to say, doing meaningful, useful things at speeds that are just unheard of. There’s good evidence that D-Wave and others have truly quantum systems. But it remains possible that they’re not truly quantum. That they’re actually classical computers that act quantum. Unbeknownst to their makers, I mean. No one’s asserting fraud.”
“So when do you think that will change?” Mitchell asks.
Kuba falls silent for a good long think. Then, “It could truly happen at any time between when Ax flips the switch next week and never. Nobody knows. But I’ll tell you this: if it happens, it could be the biggest and most sudden change ever. Bigger than flight, and more sudden than the Internet. Because to anyone who doesn’t work in the field, it will come out of nowhere. And Ax has a good shot at pulling it off. Probably a better shot than most. But he’s definitely not the only one trying. Google. D-Wave. The NSA. China. Lots of people are working very hard on this.”
WSUPAPALOOZA
So where was I? Ah yes: on the edge of the narrative cliff to which I’d dragged you, gentle reader; ready to reveal the methods and practices of today’s gallants, who—like their forefathers and foregrandfathers—take it upon their own weary shoulders to make those first stressful moves in matters of the heart. And big news, ladies! The data could hardly be worse!
Specifically, I can attest that a full 63% of “romantic” interchanges initiated by gentlemen in the RedTrove archives began with one of the following come-ons, or very near derivatives thereof:
1. Wsup
2. Hey
3. Whatcha doing
4. What’s going on
5. Heya
6. Yo
And, the eternal favorite of incurable romantics everywhere:
7. I’m bored
By “very near derivative” I mean either simple spelling variations (there are no fewer than five versions of “Hey” based on y-count, ranging clear up to Heyyyyy, with Heyy, weirdly, being the most popular), or combination punches (e.g., “Heyy yo I’m bored” was used over 50,000 times last week. Like, holy shit, right?).
So! That fleeting bit of triumphalism? In my last post? About holding the boys’ feet to the fire? When it comes to making first moves? Well…call me a rhetoric-spitting feminazi (I mean, please; as it would seriously make my day. Especially if it comes from you again, Mr. Limbaugh!). But I’d say that in the age of wsup, the guys are trying to get off that particular hook just a lit-tle bit too easily. And guess what, ladies? We’re letting them! Not happily, no. And not particularly willingly. But like some kind of gender-wide price-fixing cabal, the fuckers’re holding the line, and we’re just caving!
I found this by running this forty-month time series in RedTrove, focusing on “wsup” and its six ugly monosyllabic, disyllabic, and quadrosyllabic cousins. As you’ll see, the incoming sloth from the lads hit pandemic levels about three years ago. And for a while there, the girls resisted, with response rates to wsup-like solicitations hovering in the low single digits. But around Month Eight, resistance started fraying. Then suddenly, boom— It was like the NASDAQ crash of my girlhood! Nowadays these dismal half liners get giddy responses over 30% of the time.
Worse, I can confidently state that once wsup’d, always wsup’d, in that if your banter starts with so little effort, follow-on interactions are statistically unlikely to blossom beyond that. Indeed, a significant proportion of wsup-based romances degrade until the correspondence consists solely of guys texting “?” then getting back either an obedient low-case “k,” or nada.
So did our standards drop so much under the mono, di, and quadrosyllabic barrage that we can no longer discern between four-letter texts and Cristal-bearing knights strumming lutes ’neath our boudoirs (and for the record, that sort of shit still happens to me all the time)? I dove deeper into RedTrove’s trove, and learned that no—we cherish (oooh, and reward! see below!) handcrafted artisanal correspondence as much as you’d expect from any empowered, self-actualized, globe-trottin’, mojito-sippin’ band of sisters. I found this by isolating the variables of verbosity (i.e., is he debonairely generating full sentences?) and unique vocabulary (i.e., is he cutting and pasting, or going all Galahad and—holy shit!—writing individual notes to individual lasses?).
My data plainly show that he who romances us with epistolary flair—e.g., penning us-specific flattery and sweet somethings—is far more likely to get responses. And thereaft
er, at some point (though certainly not in anything approaching all cases), get head (that last chart’s based on an icky dive through DidSheDo.yu’s revolting data set, so take it with a mountain of salt. And some Pepto). This may not be quite the finish line Betty Friedan had in mind when she gave womankind that wake-up call. But it’s a wee bit better than nothing.
Let me close by saying something I hope is obvious to anyone who’s read much more than my byline: NetGrrrl is no Victorian. I never read The Rules (remember that shit?), and think any woman who engages in slut-shaming has a Cymbalta-grade case of self-hatred.
But that doesn’t mean I see anything good in our collective skitter toward an abyss beyond which not only urgent sex (which, yes, has its place) but romance, too (which ALSO HAS A PLACE! can we seriously please insist on this?), is ground to atoms by optimizing algorithms. We’re already entering a world in which a bachelor AI could crush the Turing Test by merely texting “wsup” to a handful of women. Indeed, AIs might soon fail that test merely by texting anything else!
Until we reach that point, some advice for the fellas: there is major competitive edge to be had in bucking these trends. So, if you’re interested in someone? Actually read her profile! Then, write something for her eyes only! And show just a scintilla of sparkle and wit. Hellishly effortful as that sounds (and indeed, perhaps is for you), the bar is so very low. So, please. Follow my simple instructions? I cannot guarantee that she’ll do.yu. But I can guarantee you’ll stand out in a comically laconical crowd.
With some minutes to kill before touring the robot facility, everyone’s sitting on and around Tarek’s desk, discussing Danna’s Cyrano concept. “So you really think Pall’s old prank can save my job?” Mitchell asks.