For most people, that’s an oxymoron.
Putting the word “understanding” in the same sentence as “quantum computers” doesn’t make any sense, except to a handful of people above our pay grades.
Quantum computing is based on the physics of quantum mechanics, which is a “theory that physics works differently at the atomic and subatomic scale.” (I lifted that quote from here, but already knew that from reading this book. The physicist who wrote it is dead; he was killed by gravity while climbing a mountain.)
Well, you don’t really need to know how it works. You don’t know how your computer works, do you? You don’t need to, only the people who design computers need to know how they work.
You and I will be more interested in what they can do.
Here’s where you want to pay attention, because quantum computers potentially can solve unbreakable security codes, which means, “One day, a quantum computer could … hack everything from your bank records to your personal files.” But no need to worry just yet, because, “[a]t least for now, serious quantum computers are a ways off.” And because the first ones will be terribly expensive, governments will get them first, and use them hack each other, not small fry like us.
(Eventually, though, they’ll be used to nab tax dodgers and handicapped parking cheaters, and sometime in the future nobody will be able to get away with anything.)
Keep in mind, though, that nowadays “a ways off” isn’t that far off. Within the memories of people still living, it took a roomful of vacuum tubes, wires, and capacitors arrayed in tiers of metal racks to get a machine to do simple arithmetic as quickly as a fourth-grader can do it.
Look where computing technology is now! Who, 50 years ago, could have imagined watching TikTok, instead of the road, while driving? And it’s still making, in a manner of speaking, quantum leaps (not to be confused with quantum physics). You’ve gotta be impressed by how smart the people who made this possible are, even if what the rest of humanity did with it isn’t so impressive. (A similar argument applies to nuclear weapons.)
For further mind-warping details about how quantum computing works, read the story here.
For quantum computers to be useful human beings need to be able to understand how they work. [Edited comment.]
Not really. I don’t know how my computer works. I just turn it on and off. You don’t need to know how a car works to drive one, or how an airplane works to fly on one. If somebody can build quantum computers, the rest of us can use them.