I don't know very much about computers. Now when I say that an awful lot of people who also don't know very much about computers will scoff at me, and a small number of people who do, in fact, know about computers will also scoff at me. I feel okay about this though because an even smaller number of people who know more about computers than them will scoff at them too, and so as I'm scoffing at the noobs, the noobs are scoffing at themselves, and the hacker-gods are scoffing at everyone. We all form a pleasant chain of derision and appreciation, as the very top of this hierarchy start blockchain companies left, right, and centre, and generally take lots of other people's money.
I would love to talk about blockchain but, despite having read a hundred different whitepapers, I still can't really claim to know much about that either, so instead I'm going to talk about metaphysics through analogies, because that's a topic and a mode I feel a lot more secure in myself about, oddly enough.
Most people use Windows, I use Windows, everybody I know uses Windows, and I don't think there's anything wrong with using Windows. I'd like to use Linux, I know I should use Linux, and maybe one day I will use Linux, but for right now I feel comfortable using Windows and will continue to do so.
I recognise there is something missing from Windows, and if/when I move onto Linux I'll realise what that thing was, but at the same time I believe that something is missing from Linux, in fact I believe there is something fundamental missing from computers, computer science, and the basic make up of any binary system.
I have a lot faith in the era of quantum computing, and unlike the vast majority of people I believe there will come a point when quantum computing has practical every day uses. The reason I think this is because at some point or another our thinking is going to stop being binary and start being quantum.
Quantum is a buzz word but I do mean something by this by a very simple explanation, and it's one that will make sense to a large number of people, even if they don't really like it.
Take Hitler – In a classical world you have the Nazis on one side, elevating Hitler to the position of something of an Aryan saviour, and on the other side you have everyone else. But in the real world (that is, the quantum world, wherein matter exists on a scale of simultaneously occurring probabilities that only crystallise into a single state when observed) Hitler was a human being, subject to a variety of influences, and if it hadn't been him, it probably would have been someone else. After all, the allies had treated Germany pretty badly at the treaty of Versailles, the predominantly Jewish banking sector had squeezed the productive German economy for every cent it was worth and left to set up shop in America, the pre-war years were exceedingly liberal and any period of liberalisation is inevitably followed by a conservative backlash, and the vast majority of the German people lived in squalor because it had basically been screwed.
None of this makes Hitler a good guy. Hitler was a bad guy. The holocaust happened. The nazis, if not evil, were really quite disagreeable. I'm glad Germany lost the war.
But that doesn't make the Allies 'the good guy', it doesn't mean the way things went down was the best result, it doesn't even suggest that our world is better now than if Hitler had won. We have no way of knowing, because the quantum wave has collapsed, a single state of matter is manifest, and all we can really do is work with what we've got.
Windows is that binary world, as is Mac, and I'm imagining Linux is too, and the reason is because it's made up of 1s and 0s. It cannot communicate uncertainty, it cannot deal with probability, all it can try to do is replicate these things in binary, which although may be possible for a wide range of tasks, is never going to be sufficient for some, and more importantly, will become less sufficient for a wider range of tasks as time moves on, as not only our needs, but our thinking becomes increasingly quantum.
I don't know what a quantum operating system would look like. I know what an operating system I want would look like. It would be made up of files within files. Right now we have files within folders, and folders within folders, and in order to access any file you have to go to another folder. My preference would be having files intrinsically contained within one another, so that there is a structural relationship between files, so that changing one changes the other, and so that the two can be used in conjunction without having to twat about with resizing and dragging-and-dropping etc. This would be better because if you want to separate these files out, you could with ease, and it would also mean that massively complicated tasks (mine is fictional world building) would be exponentially easier, as any tool I can find can be integrated into the parent file, rather than having a separate application.
This ideal OS, I'm going to call it StructureOrderOS (or SOOS) is probably entirely possible to create, and knowing what I do about computer science (which remember is very little) I can also admit it's probably possible to make it using a classical computer. It would be a pain in the ass because it would require a universal file type with tools built directly into it, thus making all current applications entirely useless, but for me personally, it would make my life a lot easier.
What I'm trying to suggest with all this is that just because the way things are going (increasing efficiency, analytic thinking, increased dependence on automated industry and globalisation) function, and function increasingly well, does not mean that this paradigm (and if it isn't obvious I'm talking about the Western Liberal Empirical paradigm we all seem to take for granted) is the best one. It does not mean that this paradigm is ideal for every task, it does even suggest that this paradigm can be used at all for certain tasks of which we may not currently be aware.
The application of a quantum computer, right now, is very narrow, but then again, quantum computers right now aren't particularly stable, fast, and have very few programs because I'm imagining quantum computational code is ridiculously hard to write. Likewise, when classical computers first came out the same exact thing was true.
But as I said, SOOS wouldn't even need a quantum computer. So as we move upwards farther and faster, we begin to have this increasing dependence on more. That if only we had more we'd be able to do what is we want to do.
I don't want more, my computer is vast enough and I have enough hardware space, but there's something, something, that just isn't quite right, and it's not something that can be solved with an improvement on the codebase, it can only be solved with a fundamental change. As any coder knows, that usually means starting from scratch.