Quantum computing: technological bulimia and the uncertainty of the new frontier

We live in a time marked by technological bulimia: every new discovery, every innovation, every horizon opened up by applied science is immediately absorbed by the market, politics and the collective narrative as a saving promise, as a new frontier of meaning. Quantum computing is no exception. It has become the new totem of computation, the new 'hype' around which an enthusiastic, often uncritical imagination is built, oscillating between the promise of solving problems that are today unsolvable and the risk of losing its measure.

The quantum computer is not a simple evolution of the classical computer, but a true questioning of it. The qubits, which replace the binary bits, are not merely 0 or 1, but 0 and 1: they are in a superposition state, i.e. simultaneously in several states, according to the counterintuitive laws of quantum mechanics. The result is a computation that does not proceed linearly, but relies on a probabilistic regime, on a calculation of states that is no longer deterministic.

In this sense, quantum computing introduces a form of radical uncertainty into our very idea of computation. Where the classical computer was a symbol of logical-mathematical precision, replicability and algorithmic clarity, the quantum computer becomes a symbol of ambiguity, probability, collapse. It is a machine that processes uncertainty instead of removing it. How can we want a system that makes a mistake every thousand operations, while retiring another that makes a mistake every 15 billion operations? How can we trust a technology that incorporates the uncertainty principle into its very operation?

The technological market, hungry for new symbols, has turned quantum computing into a new utopian narrative: it promises the end of current computational limitations, the immediate deciphering of complex problems, the definitive breaking of the cryptographic algorithms in use today, and with it, the redefinition of part of global computer security. But, as is the case with every technology that is inscribed in the time of promise, one risks forgetting that every innovation carries with it an ambivalent charge.

Every new technical frontier becomes a new territory of vulnerability: quantum computing does not escape this logic. While it can strengthen the computing capacity of digital infrastructures, it also renders current protection architectures obsolete. Thus, the promise of power turns into a threat.