Camen Design Forum

Thought Experiment: Quantum Data

append delete Kroc

Here's something that popped into my mind:

In the future, there might not be any filetypes for data. Quantum computers will simply 'guess' what the information is (since all permutations can be tested simultaneously, and the result immediately achieved).

Photos will be taken as a quantum possibility (since all images are just one specific possibility out of an infinite number of possible arrangements of colour dots.

That is, that in the future, a photograph you take will have no specific resolution / detail or height or width. The amount of detail you receive will be down to the power of the quantum computer you are using; meaning that a photo taken with an early quantum camera will only increase in resolution / detail as the power of quantum processing increases.

What’s more, the photo could be 'uncropped' with the necessary quantum processing to 'find' the unseen parts of the image.

Just some food for thought :)

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append delete #1. t0nytiger

Everything is quantum, we just cannot observe it.

I am pretty sure that the brain itself utilises quantum methods to function in addition to the chemical, physical, magnetic and eletrical methods we have some idea about.

We look at a picture and already see far more detail than what the (pixel like) nerve cells in our eyes can detect. Our imaginations can see infinite possiblities beyond that.

In order to uncrop an image and see what truly was outside the orginal source of the image, there would need to be some kind of a link through time and space between the now and the then when the image was taken. Quantum science is turning up facts that are so strange that even this seeming impossible kind of link may actually be possible.

append delete #2. Reid

Halfway there:

http://www.lytro.com/

My guess is that by the time we are 70, the future will be unrecognizable.

But honestly, will you even need a camera then? Couldn't you just ask you QC to generate an image you and your beloved, standing on the volcanic shores of iceland? Oh, and do take 30 years off, and put us in Superman suits.

append delete #3. Neolander

I would say that quantum physics is "only" about stating that physics is governed by statistics and Hilbert spaces at the most fundamental scale which we could observe so far.

So it is likely that your ideas could as well be implemented using modern fuzzy logic algorithms : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic

If computation power is the problem, it is true that quantum computation could provide a way to compute fuzzy logic operations faster, though.

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