thanks John
and thanks to the iqc for inviting me
here so I'm going to start with an email
now I've analyzed the name and I just
took a stock photo of a young science-y
looking person on the internet but the
actual content of the email is one that
I've received and it goes dear dr. fairy
I am also a scientist and an aspiring
author you've written dozens of
children's books have four kids and an
active academic career so what is your
secret now report before preparing for
this talk I had never really thought
about it
but I guess it does look like I do a lot
of work but a secret is not something
that I've ever thought I had and I
thought by answering this question I
would only sound like an infomercial so
I just said that I didn't have a secret
now since publishing the books I've been
really lucky to be able to travel all
around the world talking about quantum
physics including giving lectures to
students talking to business leaders and
entrepreneurs talking to science
enthusiasts students teachers
journalists and even parents and their
toddlers and I've received more
questions about quantum physics my
personal life and my teaching philosophy
for infants then I thought were even
possible but in trying to answer
honestly to all of these questions
something started to coalesce now
there's this old saying I tried to look
up who is it attributing to but I
couldn't find it but it goes if you
don't know where you came from
you can't know where you're going and I
thought well maybe there's some some
truth to that perhaps I have been too
busy building an academic career
a marriage and a family that I never
really took the time to reflect and I
need to stop just looking forward all
the time but what the next step is in
terms of publishing journal articles or
what the kids are going to be doing next
year in school that I needed to really
look back and think about critically how
it was that I worked and and lived so I
strange my terrible memory and I
bothered my mom but probably not because
I don't call her enough anyway sorry mom
and I got some old home videos from my
dad and I set to it and what I found was
a common thread that I wanted to tell
you guys about but I'll start the story
a little bit earlier with my grandfather
so my grandfather he served briefly as a
radio operator in World War two
and after that he remained in radio his
entire life dabbling in all areas
including advertising and hosting and
then he lived out his retirement
perfecting his personal experience with
any device that would produce sound this
fascination led to my father being a
tinkerer of electronics as well
I remember our living room just being
filled with ever-evolving handcrafted
sound systems the house was full of
electronics but not modern electronics
like our house is full of connected
devices these were full of exposed wires
and DIY gadgets and these were my
father's toys but my father wasn't a
licensed electrician and I don't think
he was formally trained in anything but
that didn't stop him from being what
they used to call a jack-of-all-trades
now for the young people in the audience
if he had a big beard and tattooed arm
you'd call him a maker but the point is
that he built stuff using anything that
was available and you could see from the
clip that safety wasn't necessarily
always a top priority so I saw firsthand
what it was to play with things that
weren't packaged and marketed as toys to
play with things in new ways that others
had not thought of my brother and I we
joined my dad in the shop which was the
garage wiring cutting hammering painting
and I even earned a few permanent scars
from I think that reciprocals all right
there you can I can still see it it's
almost faded away right but then there
was a shift consumer electronics started
to get cheaper DIY gadgets were replaced
with electronic chips covered in plastic
in the late 80s personal computers
became affordable for middle class
income families I had access to Ataris
Commodores Nintendo's Sega's and
eventually personal computers and the
Internet what this shift entailed was
something entirely new no longer did I
play with the physical things the
hardware I played with software and with
a twin brother I think we both had to
become rather robust users as you could
see so I was an early adopter of many
new gadgets and that included gadgets
with software I wouldn't say I came of
age with the personal computer that's a
bit too early
that's a generation before me Gen X so
those were my friends older siblings
they needed to learn to code to use
computing devices I came of age with
graphical user interfaces not lines of
code I'm talking about the kinds of
software that we all know and love right
windows photoshop office quickbooks web
browsers in all of the apps on your
smart phones
and over the years I've played with
software the same way that I watched my
dad play with his toys and tools this is
the first home video on those recordings
that he gave me and you can see that
rather for its intended use
probably like videotaping your kids he
just plays with it and within 60 seconds
he's using it in a way that the
designers probably never thought about I
haven't inherited I have inherited this
behavior I open a toy or gadget or
software program and immediately and
uncontrollably start testing it and
trying to figure out how it works
without the instructions and more often
than not I can get it working within a
few seconds and occasionally I find some
new and interesting use for it the
entirety of my life has been a user
tester tinkerer and eventually builder
of software there's an apt name for this
type of behavior as well a hacker a 21st
century version of the
jack-of-all-trades now of course we're
all users of software today but this
hacker mentality can be difficult to
understand and achieve because software
today is designed to be robust against
this exact behavior software developers
and the companies they work for don't
want people using their software in ways
that they didn't intend perhaps maybe
you've seen people on the bus just
performing this motion over and over and
over and over again right so we all play
with software I mean the average gamer
is actually a middle-aged person and
they're on their phone and they're doing
this right this isn't the kind of play
that I'm thinking about I'm talking
about play where you have unlimited
freedom to explore your curiosity with
the software I think probably the single
waking activity I've done most in my
life is play with software and this
is my secret my dad is a
jack-of-all-trades and I am a jack of
all software a hacker to make this a
little more concrete I want to give you
a few snapshots over the many years of
how I've used software to achieve some
curious unique or maybe interesting
things so the Home Videos stopped before
high school so that's where I'm going to
pick up the internet was not really a
big thing in suburban areas of Canada
until around the late 90s of course when
the first affordable option presented
itself
my dad was an early adopter this sound
here is burned into my mind okay that's
it for that so my high school of course
had internet access in the library but
not many people used in how the internet
was used back then was like this you
knew a web page and you wanted someone
else to know that web page so you would
write down the web address and then they
would go to their web browser and type
in the web address and then they would
visit the web page right there was no
search engines if you didn't know the
web address then you would never find it
but then one thing came along I don't
know if anyone remembers web crawler
this was a pretty goo --gel search
engine and this is an archive screenshot
from 1996 and by the way if you thought
that fake news and conspiracy theories
were only a recent problem just look at
the example of what you should search
for the first time on the Internet alien
abduction UFO Roswell anyway web caller
so it gave terrible search results I
mean it was one of the first search
engines after all we take for granted
today the amount of technology that goes
into the seemingly simple task of just
finding a web page
I mean if you think about it there's 30
million no 30 trillion webpages and you
get a result within a fraction of a
second but back then you had to be a
master of the web search you had to be a
search engine hacker just look at the
example right why why would you have to
put quotes on alien-abduction but not on
UFO roswell right so getting good search
results required what a little bit later
but quickly went away was known as
Google foo but now you don't need that
right you just start typing the first
letter of a word and Google knows what
you wanted before you even really
finished your thought so back then I was
one of the few people that actually use
web search in my high school subjects as
a teenager of course I used my unique
web search skills for other things that
made me kind of popular but I don't have
a slide for that I used a map once to
drive to one of the Carolinas it was
awful
the map no not the Carolinas so most of
my driving has been local and for local
driving I don't think I ever used the
map like a real paper map I got my
driver's license when the.com boom was
happening and I used this old website
maybe you're familiar with it
MapQuest and it looks just like any
mapping software today except it gave
you really terrible directions you could
ask it for directions and it would get
you from A to B but that's not what you
want you want the shortest route or a
route that avoids traffic or one that
takes a new Street or an old alleyway
that was never on the map of course you
could manually put your own route in and
this is how you have to use Google today
for walking directions because it
doesn't know say for example on campus
all of those footpaths that have been
carved out for the last
sixty years by students which is the
route you want to take so what I do is I
pan around the map you zoom in and you
zoom out and you visualize your
directions and you plot your own groups
so I don't think that I necessarily ever
had or do have an innate sense of
direction but through practice I think
I've developed a fairly good sense of
direction and it's by doing this using
this software that I developed it
without use of software I would not have
the sense of direction that I have today
so for example we're sitting here in it
at the IQ C right and I have looked at
enough times on Google or other mapping
software I don't mean for this to be an
advert I keep mentioning if I don't mean
for it to be an advertisement for Google
I just have an Android phone so that is
just this picture of Waterloo is in my
mind and it's not just Waterloo it's all
of the details and the big picture so
I'm facing West East you're facing West
we're surrounded by Ring Road and if you
pinch and zoom out you see Waterloo and
then you find out that what a lose not
really laid out north-south east-west
it's more kind of northeast to southwest
right and if you pinch more you start to
see all of southwestern Ontario which is
really northeast to southwest and I
found it really interesting that John
said that Chatham was south of here
because most people would say it's west
of here but if you look at that map it's
really almost do south west and and that
sort of experience and ability that I
have I only gained by access to the
ability to really play unconstrained
with software of course you know we're
losing this practice now you know if I
wanted to go back to
and I just say okay Google navigate to
Chatham right so that's okay
Colin Turner does anyone know Colin
Turner he's not in Chatham today I'm
using software in different ways that
are giving me more experiences to the
point where I'm actually creating my own
software in my job as a university
professor I create software to answer
scientific questions so the software
that I've created above answers a
scientific question whose answer is
depicted below and then I use other
software to program and create an
academic journal so that computer code
creates an academic journal article that
looks like that and then I yet use more
software to create presentations to
communicate those results to other
scientists so all of that which was one
research project contains many different
pieces of software some of which I had
to create when I'm not in the office I
have a little hobby unsurprisingly it
makes use of software I write and
illustrate children's books and I've
used different software to write
illustrate and format the books and
being able to do all of this allowed me
to self publish the books using
completely automated online tools the
software you see being used here is
called Inkscape it's free and
open-source but I doubt that the
designers had this use in mind when they
created it so this software allows me to
appear like an artist but I'm really
just manipulating shapes and vectors
that picture right there is the grumpy
old professor and he appears in
goodnight lab which was not a
self-published book but my first
published picture book and the publisher
is source books in Chicago and I'm quite
proud to say that I actually got a
publishing house to change at least when
interacting with me the design software
that they use and they now use Inkscape
as well at least when they have to
answer my emails and speaking of
publishing I actually use translation
software to negotiate my first
international book contract and I use
translation software in writing new
books directly for the Chinese market so
my reply is dear anonymous fellow
aspiring author I do have an answer of
course I don't manage alone I have an
amazing partner but I also have software
and without the efficient use of
software and the ability to play with it
quantum physics for babies my first book
would not exist in fact all of the other
books including the one I showed you
making would not exist and my entire
academic career probably wouldn't exist
either
so my upbringing was ideal for someone
to make efficient use of evolving
technology but these successes are a
product of the unique environment
culture and opportunities that I was
exposed to of course I have my parents
to thank for that
and maybe you see me looking at them
they're right there so thank you you can
applaud yeah more more they're getting
embarrassed
yeah where was I
but because of the uniqueness of
opportunities success stories are I
think pretty useless for generating
advice they cannot be repeated so bummer
but it is a big bummer because now I am
a parent as you can see from this photo
and I cannot repeat what my parents did
in detail but I can in spirit so I can
give my children experiences and
opportunities to play with new tools and
technology but that is not enough I
think the real lesson from my childhood
story is that children will be attracted
to the ideas mannerisms and activities
that their parents or teachers or peers
show with genuine interest and I'm not
really worried about a lack of interest
in science and technology from my
children since they see my constant
enthusiasm for you but I want to give
you a kind of cute example of the theme
that I'm trying to convey here so lately
the thing that my children see me doing
the most and most interested in is not
necessarily science but writing in
illustrating books which happened to be
about science so I was quite amused but
I guess in hindsight not all that
surprised that they started showing
interest in making their own books they
see my enthusiasm for it and the tools
are of course readily available and so
very often they show up in the morning
at breakfast with a new book they made
now I'm a little bit worried that I'm
not demonstrating the practice of
science enough because after my
four-year-old watched me give a
presentation at the World Science
Festival in Brisbane in February he said
to me daddy when you grow up maybe you
can stop talking about science and
actually do science
if if you know me for long you maybe you
won't think the apples fallen too far
off the tree right so what about you
have you do you think you've had
inherited the interesting curiosities of
your parents if you have children are
they inheriting yours what opportunities
and experiences are you affording them
and what do you show them with genuine
interest and enthusiasm so I want to
tell you something else that I'm
enthusiastic about and that my children
just might be uniquely placed to take
advantage of if they so wish now this
probably isn't the first time you've
heard this being in Waterloo but welcome
to the quantum realm so I won't really
tell you too much about quantum physics
because I'm hoping that you've heard it
many times and I've already spent too
much time talking about myself but I'll
just briefly mention that quantum
technology is in fact the most
successful and accurate scientific
theory we've ever had which leads for it
to be the basis of basically all modern
technology and so you can see some
examples here you have how you got here
today
the GPS right in order for GPS to work
requires precise timing that's only
given to us by atomic clocks and it has
the word atom right in it so obviously
requires some knowledge of quantum
physics on the bottom right we have an
image of a brain that's not looking at
the brain that you normally think of
that's looking at nuclear spins so
that's a MRI and in order to get any
sort of medical scans at a hospital
required understanding of quantum
physics we have compact discs or DVDs
which use lasers to make and read the
information from and of course on the
bottom left we have fiber optic cable
which sends pulses of light that use
states of light that are only understood
through quantum physics and that's of
course necessary because those cables
are laying spread out all through the
world and under the ocean connecting us
all together and what are they
connecting well they're connecting the
billions upon billions of transistors in
all of our computers and in order to
make all of those transistors and put
them in computers require knowledge of
semiconductor physics which is only
understood through an understanding of
quantum physics but all of this is what
we call quantum technology 1.0 okay it's
based on our understanding of quantum
physics when we have these billions of
atoms
you know macroscopic things that you can
see kind of all acting together today we
can control individual atoms on the left
you see an ion trap from NIST that's
holding one or more individual atoms on
the right is a manufactured atom in fact
four well in each of the panels for
artificial atoms so this future quantum
technology and future what it's going to
enable is future quantum computers these
will solve existing unsolvable problems
and probably solve other problems that
we haven't even thought about and of
course quantum is just one of many
emerging technologies but I want to be
quick to say that you know I'm not
suggesting that everyone should become a
quantum technologist or technologist at
all but the opportunity should be
available and with that opportunity
might come come something very
interesting and important so I want to
you to think about a person in
technology now depending on how old you
are and what social media platforms you
you
you could have a different answer but I
see many people in the audience that I
believe would probably answer this guy
Bill Gates so Bill Gates also has a
success story and it has similar roots
to the one that I just told you the
endings are quite different
especially the endings of the zeros on
our bank account statements but the
point is that Gates had a very unique
opportunity to access and play with
early computers and probably the path
that led to his first success was mostly
unintentional much like my own so he has
those moments of play with computers to
thank for his zeroes which are good
because there's a number in front of
them so my claim is that 20 years from
now there will be a quantum technology
equivalent of Bill Gates a future leader
who's probably only eight years old
today
and that child will have access an
opportunity to understand and play with
new quantum technology and will come of
age with the next quantum technology
revolution perhaps that person will be
her her perhaps not but it definitely
will not if she's not given authentic
exposure in space to play with it so
that's it that's my secret I'm slightly
confident that I dodged my fear of
becoming an infomercial because I really
didn't give you a secret recipe and I
didn't have one weird trick that makes
life coaches angry or anything like that
so these weren't steps to become a
leader in quantum technology or physics
or science more generally the road to
success is not paved with neat stones
laid out in front of you in fact I think
Road is probably a terrible analogy for
achieving success the success is not
really a destination which you should be
aiming for it's something that you
continue
build up underneath you and what I'm
trying to say is that it's built up by
spreading just opportunities kind of
randomly around you that you can play
with now there's many adults in the
audience so we're free of course to
create that variety for ourselves and
you should because people are watching
and learning from you and they need
examples of what it looks like to play
tinker and most importantly struggle
with big ideas thank you I guess we'll
take questions yeah so if you if you
look at Bill Gates story or at least the
way it's told and you know it's like
most stories it's probably changed from
the reality but he had a very unique
opportunity to play with computers that
you know existed in in labs where you
had to you know be there with punch
cards right now that opportunity is was
afforded to him because of you know his
social status that his parents had today
it's much different right that picture
that you saw of the little girl playing
with an actual quantum computer is free
for anyone to use on the Internet
all right so today I think the
opportunities open to anyone with
internet access because the community is
really driven by this open science
movement which i think is great so I
think the opportunity today is is open
to far more people than in the past with
the computer technology revolution can
you just say what the software is is
that oh yeah so this is the the IBM
quantum experience
so they yeah
the a lot of the the people that
developed that are I QC alumni and they
often come back and and teach students
and and sometimes the public I think
yeah so yeah if you if you google or
your favorite search engine
IBM quantum experience then you can go
and it's there's a graphical way to to
actually play with a real quantum
computer yeah and there's many there's
there's many other tools as well are you
aware of what is the current status of
entrepreneurial spirit in the the
quantum technologies I mean how big is
the fight there because I remembered
reading Bill Gates biography during his
time it was a very strong fight between
different ideas how the personal
computer should look and what operating
system will weigh nothing like that so
are we now in that state or we still are
rather the beginning who are not yet at
that boiling point where there are lots
of ideas and a lot of fight to to find a
winning solution well I won't say that
there isn't a lot of fights but happily
those fights tend to be academic because
even the there is now a growing
entrepreneurial attitude towards quantum
computing
there are many startups but most of them
are started by academics who have sort
of a different mentality about how they
share and use the the research that
exists so I think in the days of the
early computers we had people that were
hobbyists and really kind of building
things and they're it's it it makes a
lot more sense to
feel like you might have ownership of
something and want to sell something
because it's a real thing that you
transfer to someone else whereas because
it's coming from academia and a lot of
these startups are about software right
from the get-go
you know these ideas are just floating
around for everyone to use so I think
the the competition is there but it's a
lot different than what we saw with
early computers do you think quantum
computing is developing slower than how
fast classical computing I've been
developing or yeah I guess it really
depends on your definition of develop
it's I think it's really hard to to see
the a lot of the development that
happens in computers you know we just
expect that the next iteration of the
iPhone is going to be faster than the
last without really understanding that a
lot of technology goes into each
iteration you know screen sizes and
clock speeds and memories of computers
they seem to go at this steady pace
right but that's just what we see as
consumers you know the technology behind
it is changing rapidly with quantum
computers I think it's really hard to
say I mean it's really too soon and if
there's of course the famous quote from
the late 40s I think from the president
at the time or CEO of IBM who said I
don't think there will be a market in
the world for more than five computers
so I think it would be very unwise this
early to make a prediction about the
future of quantum computers because you
might end up looking like him yeah
you spoke about the advantages of
playing with software from very early
age in the media and in education system
where I work there is a lot of talk and
there is a lot of pushback against
screen time right and there is a lot of
talk about educating parents on how to
protect kids essentially from screen
time right what's you're taking that
yeah it's it's a it's a hard problem I
think not all screen time is equivalent
when when I started playing video games
which I've played far too many hours of
in my life
it was you know SuperMario used to mean
you saw the video where I you know I
made it about 10 steps and died and I
just kept trying over and over finding
new ways that I think that game probably
was just designed by someone having fun
games that kids play today are designed
by psychologists where what they're
trying to optimize is dopamine hits
right so the kinds of screen time that I
experienced are a lot different than the
screen time that children experience
today I think as a parent myself we
don't spend a lot of time in front of
the screens and that time is spent I
think trying to to do things
constructive so I think that really the
last thing you want to do is put a
YouTube video on for your kid and let
them decide what's next
because what's next eventually ends up
being watching kids open surprise eggs
for 24 hours a day so I think if you're
not if you think of a screen as just
something for the for the child to do
because you want some of your own free
time or maybe you need that free time to
do something so it's just a distraction
then it can get quite dangerous but
there I think there are really valuable
tools
that kids can use when they're in front
of a screen including including this one
but you know I'm there you know when
they're when they're in front of a
screen I'm there I have one more
question you have a slide with the
quantum leap and you have an image what
that image is quantum related or this
one oh this oh this is what happens when
you go to a website that offers free
images and you type quantum that has
probably nothing to do with quantum
physics but of course we can't we can't
see atoms with our eyes actually that's
not true i I have seen I have seen an
atom in Innsbruck an individual atom but
it was just a kind of a fuzzy little
blue glowing thing so anything any
picture of quantum is an artist's
interpretation and I think this one took
a really lot of artistic licensing too
hi my name is Adrian and I'm investing
in the quantum technology right now and
so currently most of the qubits or of
the qubits is noisy or qubit but like do
you see a bottleneck in that for that
approach and what do you think about the
topological quantum computing okay so
your your first question was about
current qubits and the fact that they're
noisy yeah so in in an eventual future
quantum computer there will always be
noise but the idea is that you would
have enough qubits so that you could you
could you
many qubits to create a logical qubit
and and at each time you kind of iterate
this process of taking many-to-one you
can effectively reduce the noise so the
only reason that we're not doing that
now is just because we don't have enough
qubits and the amount of noise isn't low
enough in principle there's no
bottleneck it's just a limitation of
current technology there's nothing in
the theory which has been tested better
than any other theory that we have that
suggests at some point we can't build a
bigger thing with more qubits
topological qubits is a proposal to my
knowledge one hasn't been demonstrated
but the the physics behind it is well
understood and those experiments are
constantly producing more and more
impressive results so again there's no
principle by which that technology won't
work and again I don't think I don't
think anyone's qualified to say which
technology is will be the most
successful it's too early to tell so
very basic question how do you define
quantum and what's a qubit
yeah some people were cheating with
their questions so quantum in my view is
a mathematical framework that works well
at describing systems which are very
well isolated from any environment so if
you think of an atom it's really it's
really small and it's mostly space in
fact we are mostly space so an atom is
pretty well isolated because the nearest
thing is another atom that's really far
away a quantum computer will be a big
thing that we need to isolate from its
environment and both of these things are
just really well described by this
mathematical framework that's called
quantum theory and a qubit is the
simplest quantum system and we can think
of it as a building block for larger
quantum things including a piece of
technology like a quantum computer
