100 million times faster than your PC! - Quantum Communication and the Construction of a Future Present

这个跨学科项目调查了目前建立第一个量子互联网的技术和社会政治层面。它位于物理学、计算机科学、科学技术研究和社会学的交叉点，提供了对量子通信网络当前发展水平的洞察，并确定了参与全球步伐以完成第一个此类网络的主要研究、资金和政府机构。在这样做的过程中，该项目追求两个主要的相互关联的主题：首先，它将量子网络作为社会技术系统进行研究，该系统将产生远远超出技术维度的各种影响。其次，这个项目研究了这样一个想象中的世界的未来是如何完全量子化的，并决定了今天，此时此刻，量子互联网可以是什么：未来的想象明显地塑造了今天的社会技术发展。特别地，本文发展了以下研究问题：1 -量子通信在公众想象中的特征是什么？大众新闻媒体和科学杂志是如何描述量子信息理论的？未来的量子网络将如何塑造当今社会？量子通信网络可能的主要应用是什么？3 -谁是参与构建量子网络的代理人和机构？他们的工作如何获得资助？资助机构的期望是什么？4 -量子通信对技术哲学、科学技术研究和社会学的理论建构有什么重要意义？该项目调查了最近在相关场所发表的量子通信的实验和理论工作。它旨在确定、分析和整合绘图研究中的各种研究途径、项目和里程碑，提供该领域全球活动的无障碍概述。该项目展示了对报纸和大众科学杂志描述量子通信进展的方式的话语分析的结果，以突出科学报道发生的特定定位。访谈和科学人种志构成了这个项目的第二个经验维度，跨越了区域和文化多样性的研究人员，以便在六周的时间内观察日常生活、程序、流程和动态。这是为了调查实验室作为多个话语交叉点的场所，在这里，知识的产生受到各种促成和制约因素的影响。就全球安全架构而言，量子互联网用于军事目的的潜力无疑是最明显的。通过网络连接在一起的量子计算机将赋予国家行为体和情报机构前所未有的计算能力，以建立庞大的新监控系统。另一方面，科学研究可能会成为量子通信产生更良性影响的舞台，例如，在需要大量数字处理能力的实验工作方面。对普通公民的社会和集体行为的影响可能会体现在用于安全交换数据的新形式应用程序的开发上，因为当前的加密服务可能会受到损害。计算机科学领域目前的技术发展水平已经达到了许多人难以理解的复杂程度。量子技术只会进一步加剧这一问题，这引发了一个紧迫的问题：政府应该如何投资于培训和教育，以确保大部分人口不会被这项前所未有的复杂技术抛在后面。

This interdisciplinary project investigates the technological and socio-political dimensions of current efforts to build the first quantum internet. Situated at the intersections of physics, computer science, science and technology studies and sociology, it provides insight into current levels of development of quantum communication networks and identifies the major research, funding and government bodies that are involved in the global pace to complete the first network of this kind. In so doing, this project pursues two major interrelated themes: first, it investigates quantum networks as sociotechnical systems that will have multifarious impacts considerably beyond the dimension of technology alone. Second, this project investigates how such imagined futures of a world that has gone fully quantum set and determine today, in the here-and-now, what the quantum internet can be: imaginaries of the future manifestly shape sociotechnical developments today.In particular, this thesis develops the following research questions:1 - How does quantum communication feature in the public imagination? How is quantum information theory being portrayed in popular news media and science magazines? 2 - How are future quantum networks shaping society today? What are the expected likely major applications of quantum communication networks? 3 - Who are the agents and institutions involved in building quantum networks? How is their work funded and what are the expectations of funding bodies? 4 - What is the import of quantum communication for theory-making in the philosophy of technology, science and technology studies and sociology? MethodologyThe project surveys recent experimental and theoretical work in quantum communication as published in relevant venues. It aims to identify, analyse and integrate various research pathways, projects and milestones in a mapping study that provides an accessible overview of global activities in the field. The project presents findings from a discourse analysis of the ways in which advances in quantum communication are being portrayed in newspapers and popular science mags in order to highlight the particular positioning from which science reporting takes place. Interviews and science ethnographies constitute the second empirical dimension of this project across a regionally and culturally diverse range of researchers in the fields in order to observe daily routines, procedures, flows and dynamics over a six-week period. This is to investigate the lab as a site of multiple discursive intersections where knowledge is produced subject to various enabling and constraining factors.Social and political relevance of the research projectWith regard to the global security architecture, the potential of the quantum internet to be employed for military purposes is surely the most obvious one. Quantum computers, chained together over networks, would give state actors and intelligence services unprecedented computing powers to build vast new surveillance systems. Scientific research, on the other hand, may turn out to be an arena where quantum communication could have more benign effects, e.g. in terms of experimental work that requires large number-crunching capacities. The effects on social and collective behaviour of ordinary citizens are likely to manifest over the development of new forms of apps for the secure exchange of data, as current encryption services are likely to be compromised. Already, the current level of technological development in the fields of computer science have reached a level of complexity that many find difficult to follow. Quantum technologies will only further exacerbate this problem, which prompts urgent questions about how governments should invest in training and education to ensure that large parts of the population are not left behind by the unprecedented complexity of this technology.