Quantum information processing: from theory to experiment

The Antikythera mechanism was probably the world’s first ‘analog computer’ — a sophisticated device for calculating the motions of stars and planets. This remarkable assembly of more than 30 gears with a differential mechanism, made on Rhodes or Cos in the first century B.C., revised the view of what the ancient Greeks were capable of creating at that time. A comparable level of engineering didn’t become widespread until the industrial revolution nearly two millennia later. This collection of papers provides a good overview of the current state-of-the-art of quantum information science. We do not know how a quantum Antikythera will look like but all we know is that the best way to predict the future is to create it. From the perspective of the future, it may well be that the real computer age has not yet even begun.