Quantum Computing Since Democritus

I know, a lot of us wring our hands at spending 30 plus bucks US on a popularization of science book, 400 pages or not. So, the decision often comes down to Kindle-- significant savings BUT, are the diagrams and LaTex slaughtered so bad you can't read it? Not in this case! First, the author doesn't HAVE that many formulas and diagrams, and equations are generally limited to P=NP (or not) type formats, which are given in the text and bold, so you don't end up with busted page breaks in the middle of illustrations or formulae. Formula display is not a problem unique to Kindle-- most ereaders and tablets have an issue with them. The topics in this book are more conceptual, historic and descriptive (frankly, almost philosophical), so the eread format is just fine. If you like to make notes in "heavy" reading books like this, you'll obviously need a pencil and paper nearby, but need to judge whether getting it quickly and for 12 bucks less is worth that. The links / added resources are up to date, live and not broken, another advantage of the Kindle format. If you read and enjoyed The Golden Ticket ( The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible ), you'll also like this book-- very intellectually stimulating, and brings us up to date on a lot of recent thinking in the intersection between computing and physics. Highly recommended. Kindle Tip: This is one of those titles that has a very GENEROUS (thank you publisher/author!) "look inside" feature on Amazon-- be sure to check it out! You'll see that even "proof" type formulas are given as bullets, so read fine on kindle. Best, the preview itself IS in kindle format, so you get the double advantage of WYSIWYG if you subsequently order via Kindle/ cloud/ tablet, etc.

This book is not only a wonderful introduction to quantum computing, and computational complexity more generally. It puts these fields where they belong, at the heart of the larger enterprise to understand the world around us --- to understand both the fundamental nature of the universe we live in, and the fundamental nature of problem-solving. Scott argues, very convincingly, that these two questions are related: that one of the best questions we can ask about our universe is what problems can, or can't, be solved using the physics available to us. Scott approaches the reader as s/he should be approached: as an intelligent layperson. He avoids jargon, and cuts to the heart of the important ideas, letting the reader look at them from multiple angles until they become clear. His passion is infectious. Even though I "knew" and "understood" this material before, seeing it through Scott's eyes has given me a wonderful new perspective. And if you've never thought about these things before, or if you've heard about them and wanted to know what they're really about, you're in for a wonderful ride.

I agree with other reviewers that Quantum Computing Since Democritus is written in the spirit of the likes of Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, and Douglas Hofstadter. It's funny, engaging, easy to get into, but also quite deep: Not so easy any longer if you intend to follow everything in detail. Why there is a painting of Che Guevara in a toga on the cover of the book however remains a mystery. ;) This ambitious book weaves together many strands of inquiry: computation, science, mathematics, and philosophy. The conventional view of quantum mechanics, one that dates back to the first half of the 20th century yet is still often repeated in the media, is the notion that quantum theory is a mysterious "brute fact"; one that we have to accept without deeper understanding just because it works. Scott takes a refreshing and radical view. In his own words from the book: "Quantum mechanics is a beautiful generalization of the laws of probability: A generalization based on the 2-norm rather than on the 1-norm, and on complex numbers rather than on nonnegative real numbers. It can be studied completely separately from its application to physics (and indeed doing so provides a good starting point for learning the physical application later). This generalized probability theory leads naturally to a new model of computation - the quantum computing model - that challenges notions of computation once considered a priori, and that theoretical scientists might have been driven to invent for their own purposes even if there were no relation to physics. In short, while quantum mechanics was invented a century ago to solve technical problems in physics, today it can be fruitfully explained from an extremely different perspective: as part of the history of ideas, math, logic, computation, and philosophy, about the limits of the knowable." The wonderful thing about this book is that one can read it on a number of different levels. You can choose get a bird's eye view of many important ideas, or you can delve more deeply into the math. I consider this book's greatest achievement to be the way in which it makes the material approachable, builds the reader's intuition, and connects thing together in ways that may not be obvious. First of all it makes the reader *curious* about the technical details, which otherwise might seem pointless or boring to non-specialists; next it makes it a lot easier to know how to begin drilling into the more formal, mathematical aspects of the book. I think Scott brings to this material a remarkable unifying vision. I feel like there's almost a complete education in math, physics, and comp sci concealed within this book. Scott takes us on a thrilling journey through many fields and ideas, often to unexpected places, like the information content of a black hole and the fundamental limits of computing based on things such as the schwarzschild radius.

Scott Aaronson's style is lucid and humorous--this is a great book if you're interested in computing and intrigued by quantum mechanics. The book is in an informal style, not too bogged down with mathematical details, but to fully appeciate it, I'd recommend having some background in theroetical CS (eg. knowing what a Turing machine is and what polynomial-time means) and comfort with linear algebra (as it's essential to quantum mechanics). Most of the material in the book can be found on the author's website and blog. However, having it all in one place in a book makes for much better reading. This book will be considered a classic, I have no doubt. Highly recommended.

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I am usually too lazy to write reviews, even when I really enjoy reading a book, but I am happy to make an exception for this one. From the very first page, Scott Aaronson takes you through an amazing tour through many fields of human thought: from the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms to quantum mechanics, from Turing machines to cryptography, from the anthropic principle to quantum computers, from discussions on the existence of free will to how time travel and black holes are related to computational problems. Only two caveats: some of the maths might look a bit intimidating for a layman, and most of the material is presented from the viewpoint of a person whose main interest is computational complexity theory: to quote from Scott himself: "In the field I come from, it's never our place to ask if some physical object exists or not, it's to assume it exists and see what computations we can do with it". If these two caveats did not discourage you (personally, I think they should have the opposite effect), get this book and prepare to enjoy every page of it!

The theoretical underpinnings of quantum computing are vitally important for even an introductory level understanding of the topic. Aaronson has an intuitive writing style, and introduces all the relevant background topics to the depth they are required to study this topic. Skipping classical physics and going straight to quantum was easier than expected. This book lays the ground work to understand practical applications in the field, while keeping it's focus on the operative question: What could we actually do with a quantum computer, why should we think it is possible, and how do we know they'll be fundamentally different from classical computers?

Good

This book contains the quintessence of theoretical computer science, in Aaronson's unique writing style: fun, provocative, insightful, and deep.