Thirty years ago the height of posh was owning a portable landline phone.
Now our smartphones are personal computers that can process natural language commands and run AI models on-rig.
Maybe, maybe not.
The next 30 years of computer advances dont seem quite as certain as the last were.
Werepushing up against Moores lawand beginning to get diminishing returns when it comes to creating more powerful classical systems.
On the other hand, were also on the cusp of several new computing paradigms.
And its clear that, at some point, well move beyond traditional supercomputing.
Well be optimistic and say this happens in the year2051.
Binary computers are to quantum computers what a pen and paper is to the hadron collider.
That being said, think about your iPhone.
Youll still have something similar in 30 years.
Maybe itll be glasses or a neural implant (unlikely, but possible).
Either way, itll need enough onboard processing power to run discrete algorithms and applications.
And thats something an iPhone can do today.
Binary computers, in the future, will do most of the same things they do now.
Photonic computers
This is an exciting one.
Photonic computer systems dont quite exist yet, butthe big ideais using photons to perform computations instead of electricity.
Yes, level-5, thats the big one.
At the maximum level of autonomy a vehicle could operate itself entirely off the grid and without human oversight.
This would be made possible by, essentially, squeezing a gigantic supercomputer into a tiny automobile.
Hybrid systems
Here, were specifically referring to hybrid classical-quantum systems.
Whats interesting here is that these systems are likely to be the first quantum computers purchased off the shelf.
But, thats not to say there wont be a middle-ground.
Quantum systems are targeted solutions to very specific problems.
Quantum computers
Heres the fun part!
Its simply impossible to guess when a functional, useful quantum computing system will arrive.
But its quite possible that could change in the next 30 years.
And, if it does, so will the rest of the science and technology world.
Truly useful quantum computers could help us solve cold fusion, warp drives, and general artificial intelligence.
Its hard to overstate the potential of quantum computers.
The implications for the fields of chemistry, drug discovery, and pathology alone are incalculable.
Billions of lives could be saved as thousands of diseases are eradicated by science.
It could take 10, 30, or even a 100 years for any of these technologies to mature.
