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

这个跨学科的项目调查了当前建立第一个量子互联网的努力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，它提供了对量子通信网络当前发展水平的深入了解，并确定了参与全球步伐以完成此类网络的主要研究，资助和政府机构。在此过程中，该项目追求两个相互关联的主题：首先，它将量子网络作为社会技术系统进行研究，这些系统将产生远远超出技术层面的多种影响。第二，本项目研究了这样一个已经完全量子化的世界的想象的未来是如何设定和决定今天，在此时此地，量子互联网可以是什么：未来的物质显然塑造了今天的社会技术发展。特别是，本论文提出了以下研究问题：1 -量子通信在公众想象中的特征是什么？量子信息理论在流行的新闻媒体和科学杂志中是如何被描述的？2.未来的量子网络如何塑造当今社会？量子通信网络的预期主要应用是什么？谁是参与构建量子网络的代理人和机构？他们的工作如何得到资助，资助机构的期望是什么？4.量子通信对于技术哲学、科学技术研究和社会学中的理论制定有什么重要意义？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。它的目的是确定、分析和整合各种研究途径、项目和里程碑，以提供该领域全球活动的概览。该项目提出了从话语分析的方式，在量子通信的进步正在描绘在报纸和科普杂志，以突出从科学报道发生的特定定位的结果。访谈和科学民族志构成了该项目的第二个经验层面，涵盖了该领域不同区域和文化的研究人员，以便在六周内观察日常生活，程序，流程和动态。这是调查的实验室作为一个网站的多个话语交叉点的知识产生受到各种使能和约束因素。社会和政治相关性的研究项目关于全球安全架构，量子互联网的潜力被用于军事目的肯定是最明显的一个。量子计算机通过网络连接在一起，将为国家行为者和情报机构提供前所未有的计算能力，以建立庞大的新监视系统。另一方面，科学研究可能会成为量子通信可能产生更良性影响的竞技场，例如在需要大量运算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开发新形式的安全数据交换应用程序上，因为目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，即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技术前所未有的复杂性抛在后面。

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.