Open up your mind and say, ahh...

101010: That’s the number 42 represented in binary, which is the mathematical way today’s binary computers see every single piece of information flowing through them, whether it’s a stock price, the latest Adele track, or a calculation to generate an MRI of a tumor. But now IBM believes it’s made progress in developing quantum computers, which don’t use binary coding. It is not overstating the matter to say this really may be the ultimate answer in computing machines. Quick, mop your brow and don’t worry: The science isn’t too hard to grasp and the revolution, when it comes, could rock the world. In a very good way.

First, a little background: Computers today, everything from the chip controlling your washing machine cycle to the screen you’re reading this on, rely on binary math to work. This reduces the information in problems you ask a computer to a counting system based on just “1″s and “0″s. That translates beautifully into the electronics of a computer circuit: A “1″ matches up with a little burst of electricity, a “0″ means none. By shuttling trillions upon trillions of these pulses, called bits, through tiny silicon circuits and transistor gates that flip their direction or trigger an ongoing signal, the chip does math with these ones and zeros. It’s a mind-bogglingly complex and very swift dance that ultimately results in Angry Birds playing on the screen of your iPad. Or, after kajillions of calculations more in a supercomputer, it results in a model predicting climate change.

Now, what if instead of simply being able to do math with ones and zeros, a computer chip could work with bits that included other numbers? You’d have to design more complex circuitry, for sure, but it means every single one of those tiny electronic calculations that’s happening every millisecond could tackle more information at once, and would ultimately mean a more powerful computer that may calculate faster. Got that? Good. Now how about if instead of a one or a zero, your computer’s “bits” could have any one of an infinite number of values?

That’s quantum computing. Essentially this moves way beyond the well-known physics of electronics, and on into the weird and wonderful world of quantum physics–where bizarre twists of the laws of the universe mean a “bit” in a quantum computer could hold both a “1″ and a “0″ and any other value at the same time. That means the circuits of a quantum computer could carry out an incredibly huge number of calculations at the same time, handling more information at once than you can possibly imagine.

By using some other very strange physics (superconducting materials cooled to hundreds of degrees below freezing) IBM’s research team is trying to build some of the core components of a quantum computer, and has made big progress. They’re now saying they’ve made the quantum “bits” of information, also called qubits, live a lot longer before they essentially get scrambled. They’ve also worked out how to speed up the actual quantum computing circuit. IBM’s progress is so impressive that they’re now confident a quantum computer could be made sooner rather than later, perhaps as close as 15 years away.

Whenever it arrives, the world will change.

On a very simple level, this is because instead of asking a supercomputer to work with endless strings of “1″s and “0″s to calculate all the variables in, say, a global warming simulation (performing trillions of small math calculations one after the other to work out the dynamics of the climate over a period of hours or days) a quantum computer would be able to process much of the math at the same instant instead of sequentially. Which could reduce the compute time to a second or less. Which ultimately means better and more accurate models of the climate. Similar processing tricks could improve medical imaging, or maybe even simulations of your own particular disease’s spread, which may improve treatment.

And there are many ways this tech would touch your life on an everyday basis, as well. Tasks like image recognition in Google Goggles or voice recognition in Apple’s Siri rely on whisking your data off to a powerful computer, running it through a process, and sending you the results back (identifying that photo of a building as the Eiffel tower, or answering your question about the rain in Spain). These recognition problems are partly based on how good the recognition algorithm is, but also on how much time the computer can afford to spend on your problem. A quantum computer would work so swiftly that there would be no issues with spending more time trying to accurately understand your query, meaning we could reach near-perfect image and voice recognition. Perhaps even in real time, from a video feed. Imagine the sort of augmented reality tech that that would enable, with a head-up display on your view of the world constantly delivering relevant info about everything you see.

Then think about security–most encryption systems nowadays rely on clever math that means they couldn’t be cracked even by a supercomputer running for years. A quantum computer could try every single combination of passwords to crack the security in a single second, which is pretty terrible news. That’s going to force all sorts of changes with how we protect information, and yet it could also lead to more secure encryption, made by a quantum computer. There’s also the matter of surveillance: Recognizing every word of every phone conversation on the planet and identifying every single face on every CCTV image would defeat all of today’s supercomputer power…but maybe a quantum computer could do it. George Orwell would’ve loved that. Also on the dark side, ponder how insurance firms would use or abuse this phenomenal power (“our simulation says it’s 75% more plausible the accident was your fault”), or how worried nations could simulate social dynamics to try to predict crime.

Next, on the lighter side, consider art. Or at least the movies. Look at computer graphics in films: The computers in render farms that companies like Pixar use to make Brave take hours to put together a single frame, and that limits how truly amazing the image can be made. A quantum computer could tackle a render of today’s Pixar movies in a blink of an eye. And that has all sorts of implications, maybe meaning CGI actors could be even more realistic.

Which leads on to artificial intelligence–a sci-fi promise that’s so far been very difficult to make real, although IBM’s Watson has recently wowed everyone. What if quantum computing suddenly enabled such swift, complex calculations that a system like Watson or Siri could talk back to you convincingly, reading the nuances in your voice enough to ask, as a friend might, if you’re a little stressed today and wondering if they could help?

Quantum computers won’t necessarily be able to speed up solving every class of problem you throw at them, but it’s undeniable that they’ll change modern life in many ways, at times small, at others great. As for questions on life, the universe, and everything? Those still require the human element to try to answer.

Image: Flickr user Ruth Flickr and Janne Moren

At a Congressional hearing this morning that veered into contentious arguments and cringe-worthy moments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spilled the beans on their social media monitoring project.

DHS Chief Privacy Office Mary Ellen Callahan and Director of Operations Coordination and Planning Richard Chavez appeared to be deliberately stonewalling Congress on the depth, ubiquity, goals, and technical capabilities of the agency’s social media surveillance. At other times, they appeared to be themselves unsure about their own project’s ultimate goals and uses. But one thing is for sure: If you’re the first person to tweet about a news story, or if you’re a community activist who makes public Facebook posts–DHS will have your personal information.

The hearing, which was held by the Subcommittee on Counterintelligence and Intelligence headed by Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA), was highly unusual. Hacktivist collective Anonymous (or at least the @AnonyOps Twitter feed) sent a sympathizer to the visitor gallery to liveblog the proceedings under the #spyback hashtag.

Interactions between the DHS officials and representatives were often strained–both Chavez and Callahan were scolded and chastised by Representatives from both parties. Reps. Billy Long (R-MO), Meehan, Jackie Speier (D-CA), and Bennie Thompson (D-MS) all pointed out issues relating to what they variously saw as potential First Amendment violations, surveillance of citizens engaged in protected political speech, the fact that an outside contractor handles DHS’ social media monitoring, DHS’ seeming inability to separate news monitoring from disaster preparedness, and a massively unclear social media monitoring mandate on the DHS’ part.

Video footage of the hearing has already been made available on YouTube, and the written testimony of both DHS experts has been made publicly available. Privacy watchdog group EPIC also filed a formal disclosure to Congress on the results of a FOIA lawsuit. DHS appears to have also stonewalled EPIC regarding their social media monitoring project. The results are staggering.

According to testimony, the Homeland Security Department has outsourced their own social media monitoring program to an outside contractor, defense giant General Dynamics. General Dynamics was the sole party to the original DHS contract, which was not offered to any outside parties–and Chavez was caught misleading the Committee about General Dyamics’ sole status.

General Dynamics employees responsible for the DHS social media monitoring contract are required to attend a training course in DHS privacy practices several times a year. If General Dynamics employees misuse the personal information of journalists, public figures or the general public (to include Twitter or Facebook users) in any way, their punishment is restricted to additional training classes or dismissal from the project.

General Dynamics and the Department of Homeland Security are primarily engaging in keyword monitoring of social media. Callahan admitted in sworn testimony that the bulk of the keywords used by DHS were chosen as the result of being included in commercially available, off-the-shelf bulk packages. These bulk keyword packages were later customized according to DHS specifications.

The DHS, meanwhile, is truly interested in breaking news tweets. The Twitter handles, Facebook names and blog urls of first witnesses to news events (the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords and a January 2012 bomb threat at an Austin, Texas, school were specifically cited) are being recorded. Homeland Security claims this information is only used to verify reports, and that dossiers are not being assembled on private citizens and that personally identifying information is regularly scrubbed from their servers.

Another worrying tendency is the fact that DHS appears to be keeping tabs on individual American citizens engaged in community activism and hot-button political issues. EPIC’s evidence package to congress included FOIA-obtained data on community reaction to the housing of Guantanamo detainees in a Standish, MI prison. Against the DHS’ own guidelines, the agency compiled a report titled Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI. This report contained sentiment gathered from newspaper comment talkbacks, local blogs, Twitter posts, and publicly available Facebook posts–something expressly forbidden by the DHS’ own policies. Chavez and Callahan claimed that the report was not disseminated and that privacy policies forbid similar things from occuring; nonetheless the report was made and not obtained by EPIC until they sued the DHS.

In testimony, the DHS representatives appeared unclear on what the collected data would actually be used for and which agencies would be using it. Hurricane Katrina was constantly bought up as a talking point, but Committee members were constantly blocked when they asked how Homeland Security would be using their social media findings. In addition, barriers preventing other government agencies from obtaining sentiment information from DHS on individual journalists or private citizens is extremely flimsy; when Rep. Chip Cravvack (R-MN) asked Chavez what he would do if, say, the Attorney General was asking for information, Chavez simply answered that his agency’s mandate forbid him from doing that. While that answer is fine and good, it also infers that the DHS has not put proper inter-agency data security safeguards in place.

The hearing was less Big Brother then sloppy-kid-down-the-block… only with a big fat government contract. When numerous Committee members, including Long, questioned Chavez about the existence of similar social media monitoring projects at other government agencies, Chavez said he didn’t know of any. Meanwhile, the Associated Press–in a major story–reported on Monday about the FBI putting out a contract for an almost identical project. As a mid-ranking official responsible for analysis operations, it is assumed that Chavez would have a vested interest in knowing what other government agencies were up to in the same field.

At other times, neither Chavez nor Callahan could answer to the Committee’s satisfaction why a contractor was hired for the job nor why the federal government was misled on the duration of General Dynamics’ social media monitoring contract.

According to testimony, a second, classified, Committee meeting on the subject of DHS social media monitoring was held on February 15 as well.

For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twitter. Email Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article, here or find him on Twitter and Google+.

Jacq and I just watched Adele Live At The Royal Albert Hall (amazon affiliate link), and though every song was just wonderfully done, I found myself fascinated by what Adele was doing in between each song. Because even though most people would be interested in hearing her belt out her amazing repertoire of hits, what I took away from the performance was Adele’s real magical ability: the ability to resonate with her audience.

One of the tropes of broadcast sports is the partnership of the guy describing what’s happening on the field (an artifact from radio) and the guy doing color commentary, riffing on the why of what happened and predicting what might happen next (heavy on the cliches).

Most of us have both of those voices in our head.

If your play by play announcer is doing a poor job of accurately describing the world as it is, it’s worth taking a hard look at how often that’s happening and whether it’s pushing you to make poor decisions.

The color commentary is a bigger issue: Is the constant whining/bragging/doom and gloom or blaming the voice does helping you do better work? It’s suprising to me that you can watch a successful person at work and not realize that her inner voice is congratulating her all day (or cutting her down). That voice likes to take credit for being accurate and important, but it rarely is.

If the voice isn’t affecting your work, then it’s a waste of time, a distraction, and worthy of extinguishing. On the other hand, if it’s helping you do better, bring it on.

Justin Timberlake just took the next step in his campaign to bring MySpace back. The pop super star and MySpace co-owner joined Panasonic on stage at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show to announce a new service that will make TV a whole lot more social.

Available on the next generation of Panasonic VIERA ConnectT-enabled HDTVs, an app called MySpace TV will allow viewers to see what their MySpace friends are watching, and enable them to make comments through the TV set and via smartphone and tablet devices.

The app will be available on Panasonic’s new HDTV line, as well as some devices created in 2010, via a software update.

Early channels on MySpace TV will focus on music, and then expand to movies, news, sports and reality channels.

When journalism was local, the math of reporting was pretty simple: you found a trend, an event or an issue that was important and you wrote about it. After all, you were the voice to your readers. Being in sync with a hundred or a thousand print journalists around the world was important, otherwise your readers woul’d be left out of a story everyone else knew about. And being in sync let a reporter know she was working on the right stories.

It wasn’t lazy. It was smart. Your job was to report to the people in your town first, and to report what would be important tomorrow, which was the same thing everyone in every other town was doing.

But it led to events like this one:

Of course, now there is pretty much no such thing as local when it comes to news. Anyone in the world can read about anything in the world. As a result, this habit of being in sync completely undermines what we need from professional journalists.

How many times have I read the story about Louis CK in the last week? Did I need a newspaper to write precisely the same story days after I read it for the first time? How much do we care about the race for ‘first’ when first is now measured in seconds or perhaps minutes?

We don’t need paid professionals to do retweeting for us. They’re slicing up the attention pie thinner and thinner, giving us retreaded rehashes of warmed over news, all hoping for a bit of attention because the issue is trending. We can leave that to the unpaid, I think.

The hard part of professional journalism going forward is writing about what hasn’t been written about, directing attention where it hasn’t been, and saying something new.