Quantum computing is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get. Quantum phenomena – the behavior of matter and energy at the atomic and subatomic levels – are not definite, one thing or another. They are opaque clouds of possibility or, more precisely, probabilities. When someone observes a quantum system, it loses its quantum-ness and “collapses” into a definite state.
Quantum phenomena are mysterious and often counterintuitive. This makes quantum computing difficult to understand. People naturally reach for the familiar to attempt to explain the unfamiliar, and for quantum computing this usually means using traditional binary computing as a metaphor. But explaining quantum computing this way leads to major conceptual confusion, because at a base level the two are entirely different animals.
This problem highlights the often mistaken belief that common metaphors are more useful than exotic ones when explaining new technologies. Sometimes the opposite approach is more useful. The freshness of the metaphor should match the novelty of the discovery.
The uniqueness of quantum computers calls for an unusual metaphor. As a communications researcher who studies technology, I believe that quantum computers can be better understood as kaleidoscopes.
