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Amazon.co.uk Review
Computers powered by quantum weirdness, Brown tells us, could outperform existing machines to astronomical degrees, solving in minutes problems classical computers might take millennia to work through. But more to the point, the theoretical research that is making quantum computers plausible--led by gifted physicists like Rolf Landauer, David Deutsch and the late Richard Feynman--has already opened up intriguing new ways of thinking about the world and about computation's place in it.
But Brown shows equal commitment to explaining not only what makes quantum computers fascinating but what makes them work. This is not, in other words, a book for those who blanch at the sight of complex equations and circuit diagrams. Still, Brown's explanations, while dense with information, are unerringly lucid, and anyone who sticks with them to the end will come away with exactly what this book promises: a penetrating understanding of a mind-bending technology. --Julian Dibbell, amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Gaunt, hair unkempt, and skin a ghostly shade, David Deutsch cuts a strange figure even by the standards of the eccentrics and oddballs that so often inhabit the upper reaches of science. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
While the first and last chapters are quite fascinating, the meat of the book reads like an endless serious of abstracts of articles excerpted from mathematical, physics, and computing journals, separated by droll subheads ("Beam Me Up, Atom by Atom"). The major problem is that Brown doesn't seem to have any particular audience in mind. On the one hand, it's hard to imagine most lay readers sitting through his detailed expositions on various mathematics and physics concepts; on the other, math-savvy readers don't need to be told (to cite just one example) what ASCII is.
It's not just that Brown's book is knee-deep in mathematics, however. In fact, the math presented is really not that difficult--it's just boringly presented. The endless series of Alice, Bob, Carol, and Eve stories has all the verve of the litany of questions on the SAT. (Several times I found myself asking, "Which Bob is this?"). Likewise, the descriptions of logic gates are about as exciting as my college textbooks on linear algebra and number theory. Brown's presentation is hampered further by the lack of a glossary; he repeatedly expects the reader to remember terms he discussed over 100 pages earlier.
In sum, computer programmers and armchair mathematicians looking for a primer on the theoretical underpinnings of quantum computation might find this book a helpful introduction. The general reader, however, will have to wait for a well-written overview of the subject. In the meantime, I recommend "The Fabric of Reality" as a starting point.
If you're hoping to get a basic grasp of quantum computing, read John Gribben's "In Search of Schrödinger's Cat" for a non-technical crash course in quantum mechanics and then head for the scientific papers.
This book fails to gauge what a reader will be able to understand. This is a difficult task at times, but when writing "popular science" the author must choose a level to present the material at. Unfortunately in parts that aren't particularly interesting the author pushes this only to retreat at a point where things are getting interesting. You're left feeling, "No, really. I can take it!"
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