800-Gambler – Gambling Problem Hotline

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If you or a loved one struggle with a gambling problem, there is hope. Whether you cannot seem to stop casino gambling in Atlantic City or betting on fantasy sports from the comfort of your home, treatment and support are readily available. The Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey (CCGNJ) has helped countless people recover from disordered gambling since its inception. By facilitating access to various programs, services, and other resources, we work to educate the public about this disorder and provide aid to anyone who needs it.

Our free hotline 800-GAMBLER gives disordered gamblers and their loved ones confidential assistance 24/7. If you call or text this number, know that you will be treated with compassion and understanding. Reaching out for help signifies bravery and strength not weakness. If you or a loved one struggle with problem gambling, we offer support, treatment, and hope.

When someone contacts our hotline, we present them with several treatment and rehabilitation options that NJ residents can easily access.

Gamblers Anonymous

Our hotline can help people find local Gamblers Anonymous meetings near Freehold, Monmouth, Marlboro Township, or anywhere else in the state. Gamblers Anonymous meetings in New Jersey allow people to develop a supportive network of peers that have all committed to recovery from disordered gambling. Through this 12-step program, problem gamblers share strategies on how to resist their urges while celebrating each others success. Participating in Gamblers Anonymous greatly improves the chance of recovery.

In most cases, a disordered gamblers closest family members experience some emotional turmoil or trauma, as well. These people are also welcome to attend Gam-Anon meetings. By doing so, they often gain an enhanced understanding of disordered gambling and, in the process, become a better ally in their loved ones recovery.

Treatment Providers and In-Patient Facilities

Through our hotline, disordered gamblers can also find professional counselors that can help them stop their problematic behavior. Through therapy, people with this disorder can better understand the underlying factors or motivations that may have led them to behavior like excessive sports gambling in Atlantic City in the first place. Cognitive behavioral therapy techniques also help these individuals become more mindful of their thought patterns, giving them more control over their own behavior.

Sometimes, disordered gamblers may feel that they need a serious intervention. In those cases, in-patient facilities can give them the intensive treatment that they require. The patient would live at the facility as they receive structured care and therapy.

Text or Chat Options

Anyone who wants to learn how to stop gambling but would rather not call the hotline can text 800-GAMBLER or chat with a representative online, as well. Whatever your unique needs might be, we seek to accommodate you we only wish to provide help for gambling disorders (sometimes referred to as gambling addiction) in New Jersey to anyone who needs it.

As a private, non-profit organization 501(c)(3), we have dedicated ourselves to helping problem gamblers all throughout NJ. We focus on educating the general public, training professionals throughout the state, referring disordered gamblers and their families to appropriate treatment options, and advocating for increased services to help combat the rate of disordered gambling in the state.

The Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey also advises the New Jersey Department of Human Services and the Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services, provides the executive and legislative branches of the state government with relevant data concerning disordered gambling, and offers assistance to private or public agencies in the state per request. The CCGNJ neither opposes nor endorses legalized gambling; however, we may take positions on various issues when they have an impact on the people we are trying to help.

Whether you live in Atlantic City, Freehold, Marlboro Township, Monmouth, or anywhere else in the state, we can help you recover from disordered gambling. Call or text our hotline, 800-GAMBLER, today.

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800-Gambler - Gambling Problem Hotline

About – Principality of Sealand

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In the early 60's, Roy Bates, a Major in the British army, established a radio station, situated offshore on an abandoned ex naval fort named "Knock John". The theory behind this location was an attempt to bypass the draconian broadcasting restrictions of the time, which permitted little more than formal broadcasting by the BBC. Roy's station, "Radio Essex", and others like it, were known affectionately by the media as Pirate radio stations, and were much loved by the British public, as they supplied everything that the BBC did not at the time, Pop music and amusing presenters.

In the years than ensued, Roy fought an unsuccessful legal battle with the UK government, which questioned the legality of his occupation of said fort. It was ruled that "Knock John" fell under UK jurisdiction. Smarting from his setback, Roy weighed his options. Another abandoned fortress, Roughs Tower, identical in construction to the Knock John existed further offshore, and crucially, outside of the three mile limit to which the UK jurisdiction extended. Roy proceeded to occupy Roughs Tower, on Christmas eve 1966, with the intention of revitalising his dormant radio station. This was until he conjured a different plan entirely. After consulting his lawyers, Roy decided to declare this fortress island the independent state of Sealand, Claiming Jus Gentium (Law of Nations") over a part of the globe that was "Terra Nullius (Nobody's Land).

On the 2nd of September 1967, accompanied by his wife Joan on her birthday, his son Michael (14), daughter Penelope (16) and several friends and followers, Roy declared the Principality of Sealand. The founding of this country was marked by the raising a newly designed flag, and in an extremely romantic birthday gesture, the bestowing of a new title on his beloved wife, to be know from that moment on as Princess Joan.

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About - Principality of Sealand

The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries …

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[Content Warning: Trying to understand the contents of this essaymay be mind-warping. Proceed with caution.]

Friends, right here and now, one quantum away, there is raging a universeof activeintelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien.

Terence McKenna

This is an essay on the phenomenology of DMT. The analysis here presented predominantly uses algorithmic, geometric and information-theoretic frameworks, which distinguishes it from purely phenomenological, symbolic, neuroscientific or spiritualaccounts. We do not claim to know what ultimately implements the effects heredescribed (i.e. in light of the substrate problem of consciousness), but the analysis does not need to go there in order to have explanatory power. We posit that one can account for a wide array of (apparently diverse) phenomena present onDMT-induced states of consciousness by describing the overall changes in the geometry of ones spationtemporal representations (what we will call world-sheets i.e. 3D + time surfaces;3D1T for short). The concrete hypothesis is that the network of subjective measurementsof distances weexperience on DMT (coming from the relationships between the phenomenal objects one experiencesin that state) has an overall geometry that can accurately be described as hyperbolic (or hyperbolic-like). In other words, our inner 3D1T world grows larger than is possible tofit in an experiential field with 3D Euclidean phenomenal space (i.e. an experience of dimension R2.5 representing anR3scene). This results in phenomenal spaces, surfaces, and objects acquiring amean negative curvature. Of note is that even though DMT produces this effect in the most consistent and intense way, theeffect is also present in states of consciousness induced by tryptaminesand to a lesser extentin those induced by all other psychedelics.

We will use the reductionframework originally proposedin the articleAlgorithmic Reductions of Psychedelic States. This means that we will be examining how algorithms and processes (as experienced by a subject of experience) can explain the dynamics of peoples phenomenology in DMT states. We do not claim the substrate of consciousness is becoming hyperbolic in any literal sense (though we do not discard that possibility). Rather, we interpret the hyperbolic curvature that experience acquires while onDMT as an emergent effect of a series of moregeneral mechanism of action that can work together to change the geometry of a mind. These same mechanisms of action govern the dynamicsof other psychedelic experiences; it is the proportion and intensityof the various basic effectsthat lead to the differentoutcomes observed. In other words, the hyperbolization of phenomenal space may notbe a fundamental effectof DMT, but rather, it may be an emergent effect of more simple effects combined (not unlike how our seemingly smooth macroscopic space-time emerges from the jittery yet fundamental interactions that happen in amicroscopic high-dimensionalquantum foam).

In particular, we will discuss three candidate models for a more fundamental algorithmic reduction: (1) the synergistic effect of control interruption and symmetry detection resulting in a change ofthe metric of phenomenal space (analogously to how one can measure the geometry of hyperbolic graph embeddings), (2) the mind as a dynamic system with energy sources, sinks and invariants, in which curvature stores potentialenergy, and (3) a changein the underlying curvature of the micro-structure of consciousness. These models are not mutually-exclusive, and they may turn out to be compatible. More on this later.

Perhaps the clearest way to describe hyperbolic spaceis to show examples of it:

Saddle

Inside a hyperbolic cube

In hyperbolic 3D space dodecahedra can have right corners.

The picture tothe left shows a representation of a saddle surface. In geometry, saddle surfaces are 2-dimensional hyperbolic spaces (also calledhyperbolic planes orH2). For a surface to have constant curvature it must look the same at every point. In other words, for a saddle to be a geometric saddle,every point in itmust be a saddle point (i.e. a point withnegative curvature). As you cansee, saddles havethe property that the angles of a triangle found in themadd up to less than 180 degrees (compare that to surfaceswith positive curvature such asthe 2-sphere, in which the angles of a triangle add up to more than 180 degrees). Generalizing this to higher dimensions, the middle image above shows a cube in H3 (i.e. a hyperbolic space of three dimensions). This cube, since it is in hyperbolic space, has thin edges and pointy corners.More generally, the corners of apolyhedra (and polytopes) will be more pointy in Hn than they are in Rn. This is whyyou can see in the right imagea dodecahedron with right-angled corners, which in this case can tile H3(cf. Not Knot). Such a thing- people of the past might say- is an insult to the imagination. Times are changing, though, and hyperbolic geometryis now an acceptable subject of conversation.

An important property of hyperbolic spaces is the way in which the areaof a circle(or the n-dimensional volumeof a hypersphere) increasesas a function of its radius. In 2D Euclidean space the areagrows quadraticallywith the radius. But on H2, the areagrows exponentially as a function of the radius! As you may imagine, it is easy to get lost in hyperbolic space. A few steps take you to an entirely different scene. More so, your influence over the environment is greatly diminished as a function of distance. For example, the habitable region of solar systems in hyperbolic spaces (i.e.the Goldilocks zone) is extremelly thin. In order to avoidgetting burned orfreezing to death you would have to place your planet within a very narrowdistance range from the centerstar. Most of what you do in hyperbolic space either stays as local news or is quickly dissipated in an ever-expanding environment.

We cannot experience H2 or H3 manifoldsunder normal circumstances, but we can at leastrepresent some aspects of themthrough partialembeddings(i.e. instantiationsas subsets of otherspaces preserving properties) and projections into more familiar geometries.It is important to note that such representations will necessarily be flawed. As it turns out, it is notoriously hard to truly embedH2 in Euclidean 3D space, since doing so will necessarily distort some properties of the original H2 space (such as distance, angle, area, local curvature, etc.). As we will discuss further below, this difficultyturns out to be crucialfor understanding why DMT experiences are so hard to remember. In order to remember the experience you need to create afaithful and memorable 3D Euclidean embedding of it. Thus, ifone happens to experience a hyperbolic object and wants to remember as much of it as possible, one will have to think strategically about how to fold, crunch and deform such object so that itcan be fit in compact Euclideanrepresentations.

Why should we believe that phenomenal space on DMT (and to a lesser extent on other psychedelics) becomes hyperbolic-like? We will argue that the features people use to describetheir trips as well as concrete mathematical observations of such features point directly tohyperbolic geometry. Here is a list of such features (arranged from least to most suggestive you know, for dramatic effect):

This article goes beyond claiming a mere connection between DMT and hyperbolic geometry. We will be more specific by addressing theaspects of the experience that can be interpreted geometrically. To do so, let us now turn to a phenomenological description of the way DMT experiences usuallyunfold:

In order to proceed we will give an account of a typical vaporized DMT experience. You can think of the following six sections as stages or levels of a DMT journey. Let me explain. The highest level you get to depends on the dose consumed, and in high doses one experiences all of the levels, one at a time, and in quick succession (i.e. on high doses these levelsareperceived as the stages of the experience). If one takes just enough DMT to cross over to the highest level one reaches duringthe journey for only a brief moment, then that level will probablybe described as the peak of the experience. If, on the other hand, one takes a dose that squarely falls within the milligram range for producing a given level, it will be felt as more of a plateau. Each level is sufficiently distinct from the others that people will rarely missthe transitions between them.

The six levels of a DMT experience are: Threshold, Chrysanthemum, Magic Eye, Waiting Room, Breakthrough, and Amnesia. Let us dive in!

(Note: The following description assumes that the self-experimenteris in good physical and mental health at the time of consuming the DMT. It is well known that negative states of consciousness can lead to incomprehensible hellscapes when boosted by DMT (please avoid DMT at all costswhile you are drunk, depressed, angry, suicidal, irritable, etc.). The full geometry is best appreciated on a mentally and emotionally balanced set and settings.)

The very first alert of something unusual happening may take between 3 to30seconds after inhaling the DMT, depending on the dose consumed. Rather than a clear sensorial or cognitivechange, the very first hint is a change in the apparentambiance of ones setting. You know how at times when you enter a temple, an art museum, a crowd of people, or even just a well decorated restaurant you can abstract an undefinable yet clearly present vibe of the place?Theres nothing overt or specific about it. The ambianceof a place is more of an overall gestaltthan a localized feeling. An ambiancesomehow encodes information about the social, ideological and aesthetic quality of the place or community you just crashed into, and it tells you at a glance which moods are socially acceptable and which ones are discouraged. The specific DMTvibe you feel on a given session canbe one of a million different flavors. That said, whether you feel like you entered a circus or joineda religious ceremony, the very first hint of a DMT experience is nonetheless always (or almost always) accompanied with an overall feeling of significance. The feeling that something important is about to happen or is happening is made manifest by the vibe of the state.This vibe is usually present for at least thefirst 150 seconds or so of the journey. Interestingly, thechange in ambianceis shorter-lived than the trip itself; it seems to go away before the visuals vanish quickly declining once the the peak is over.

Within secondsafter the change in ambiance, one feels a sudden sharpening of all the senses. Some people describe this as upgradingones experience to an HD versionof it. The level of detail inones experience is increased, yet the overall semantic content is still fairly intact.People say things like: Reality around me seems more crisp and its like Im really grasping my surroundings, you know? fully in tune with the smallesttextures of the things around me. Terence Mckenna describedthis stateas follows: The air appears to suddenly have been sucked out of the room because all the colors brighten visibly,as though some intervening medium has been removed.

On a schedule of repeated small doses (below 4 mg; preferably i.m.) one can stabilize this sharpening of the senses for arbitrarily long periods of time. I am a firm believer that this state (quite apart from the alien experiences on higher doses) can already berecruited for a variety of computational and aesthetic tasks that humans do in this day and age. In particular, the state itself seems to enable grasping complex ideas with many parameters without distorting them, which may be useful for learning mathematics at an accelerated pace. Likewise, the sate increases ones awareness ofones surroundings (possibly at the expense of consuming many calories). I find ithard to imagine thatartists willnot be able to use this state for anything valuable.

If one ups the dose a little bit and lands somewhere in the range between 4 to 8 mg, one is likely to experience what Terrence McKenna calledthe Chrysanthemum. This usually manifests as a surface saturated with a sort oftextured fabric composed ofintricate symmetrical relationships, bright colors, shifting edges and shimmering pulsing superposition patternsof harmonic linear waves of many different frequencies.

Depending on the dose consumed one may experience either one or several semi-parallel channels. Whereas a threshold dose usually presents you with a single strong vibe (or ambiance), the Chrysanthemum level often has several competing vibes each bidding for your attention. Here are some examples of what the visual component of thisstate of consciousness may looklike.

2D Chrysanthemum

2.5D Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum with multuple symmetry channels

The visual component of the Chrysanthemum is often described as the best screen saver ever, and if you happen to experience it in a good mood you will almost certainly agree with that description, as it is usually extremelly harmonious, symmetric and beautiful in uncountable ways. No external input can possibly replicate the information density and intricate symmetry of this state; such statehas to be endogenously generatedas a a sort of harmonicattractor of your brain dynamics.

You can find many replications of Chrysanthemum-level DMT experiences on the internet, and I encourage you to examine their implicit symmetries (this replicationis one of my all-times favorite).

In Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic Stateswe posited that any one of the 17 wallpaper symmetry groups can be instantiated as the symmetries that govern psychedelic visuals. Unfortunately, unlike the generally slow evolution of usual psychedelicvisuals, DMTs vibrational frequency forces such visuals to evolve at a speed that makes it difficult for most people to spotthe implicitsymmetry elementsthat give rise totheoverall mathematicalstructure underneath ones experience. For this reason it has been difficult to verify that all 17 wallpaper groups are possible in DMT states. Fortunatelywe were recently able to confirm that this is infact the case thanks tosomeone who trained himself to do just this. I.e. detecting symmetry elements in patterns at an outstanding speed.

Ananonymous psychonaut (whomwe will call researcherA) sent a series of trip reportto Qualia Computing detailing the mathematical properties of psychedelic visualsunder various substances and dose regimens. A is an experienced psychonaut and a math enthusiast who recently trained himself to recognize (and name) the mathematical properties of symmetrical patterns (such as in works of artor biological organisms). In particular, he has become fluent at naming the symmetries exhibited by psychedelic visuals. In the context of 2D visuals on surfaces,A confirms thatthe symmetrical textures that arise in psychedelic states canexhibit any one of the 17 wallpaper symmetry groups. Likewise, he has been able to confirmthat every possible spherical symmetry groupcan also be instantiated in ones mind on these states.

The images belowshowsome examples of the visuals thatA has experienced on 2C-B, LSD, 4-HO-MET and DMT (sources: top left, top middle, the rest were made withthis service):

The Chrysanthemum level interacts with sensory input in an interesting way: thetexture of anything one looks at quickly becomes saturated with nested 2-dimensional symmetry groups. If you took enough DMT to take you to this level and you keep your eyes open and look at a patterned surface (i.e. statistical texture), it will symmetrifybeyond recognition. A explains that at this level DMT visuals share some qualities withthose of, say, LSD, mescaline, andpsilocin. Like other psychedelics, DMTs Chrysanthemum level can instantiate any 2-dimensional symmetry, yet there are importantdifferences fromother psychedelics at this dose range. These include the consistentchange in ambiance (already present in threshold doses), the complexity and consistency of the symmetrical relationships (much more dense and whole-experience-consistent than is usually possible with other psychedelics), and the speed (with a control-interruption frequency reaching up to 30 hertz, compared to 10-20 hertz for mostpsychedelics). Thus, people tend to point out that DMT visuals (at this level) are faster, smaller, more detailed and more globally consistent than on comparable levels of alteration from similar agents.

Now, if you take a dose that is a little higher (in the ballparkof 8 to 12 mg), the Chrysanthemum will start doing something new and interesting

A great way to understand the Magic Eye level of DMT effects is to think of the Chrysanthemum as the texture of anautostereogram (colloquially described as Magic Eye pictures). Our visual experience can be easily decomposed into two points-of-view (corresponding to the feed coming from each eye) that share information in order to solve the depth-map problem in vision. This is to map each visual qualia to a space with relative distances so (a) the input is explained and (b) you get recognizable every-day objects represented as implicit shapes beneath the depth-map. You can think of this processas a sort of hand-shake between bottom-up perception and top-down modeling.

In everyday conditions one solves the depth-map problem within a second of opening ones eyes (minus minor details that are added as one looks around). But on DMT, the low-level perceptions looks like a breathing Chrysanthemum, which means that the top-down modeling has thatconstantly shifting stuff to play with. What to make of it? Anything you can think of.

There are three major components of variance on the DMT Magic Eye level:

The image on the left is a lobster, the one on the center is a cone and the one tothe right contains furniture (a lamp, a chair and a table). Notice that what you see is a sort of depth-map which encodes shapes. We will call this depth-map together with the appearance of movement and acceleration represented in it, a world-sheet.

The world-sheet encodes the semantic content of the scene and is capable of representing arbitrary situations (including information about what you are seeing, where you are, what the entities there are doing, what is happening, etc.).

It is common to experience scenes from usually mundane-looking places like ice-cream stores, play pens, household situations, furniture rooms, apparel, etc.. Likewise, one frequently sees entities in these places, but they rarely seem to mind you because their world is fairly self-contained. As if seeing through a window. People often report that the worlds they saw on a DMT trip were all made of the same thing. This can be interpreted as the texture becoming the surfaces of the world-sheet, so that the surfaces of the tables, chairs, ice-cream cones, the bodies of the people, and so on are all patterned with the same texture (just as in actualautostereograms). This texture is indeed the Chrysanthemum completely contorted to accommodateall the curvature of the scene.

Magic Eye level scenes often include 3D geometrical shapes like spheres, cones, cylinders, cubes, etc.The complexity of the scene is roughly dose-dependent. As one ups the highness (but still remaining within the Magic Eye level) complex translucid qualia crystals in three dimensions start to become a possibility.

Whatever phenomenal objects you experience on this level that lives formore than a millisecond needs to have effective strategies for surviving in an ecosystem of other objects adapted to that level. Given the extremelly loweredinformation copying threshold,whatever is good at making copies of itself will begin to tesselate, mutate and evolve, stealing as much of your attention as possible in the way. Cyclic transitions occupy ones attention: objects quickly become scenes which quickly become gestalts from which a new texture evolves in which new objects are detected and so on ad infinitum.

A reports that at this dose range one can experience atleast someof the 230 space groupsas objects represented in the world-sheet. For example, A reports having stabilized a structure with aPm-3m symmetry structure, not unlike the structure of ZIF-71-RHO. Visualizing such complex 3D symmetries, however, doesseem to require previous training and high levels of mentalconcentration (i.e. in order to ensure that all the symmetry elements are indeed what they are supposed to be).

There is so much qualia laying around, though, at times not even your normal space can contain it all. Any regular or semi regular symmetrical structure you construct by focusing on itisprone to overflow ifyou focus too much on it. What does thismean? If you focus too much on, for example, the number 6, your mind mightrepresent the various ways in which you can arrange six balls in a perfectly symmetrical way. Worlds made of hexagons andoctahedrons interlocked in complex but symmetrical ways may begin to tesselate your experiential field. With every second you findmore and more ways of representing the number six in interesting, satisfying, metaphorically-sound synesthetic ways (cf. Thinking in Numbers). Now, what happens if you try to represent the number seven in a symmetric way on the plane? Well, the problem is that you will have too many heptagons to fit in Euclidean space(cf. Too Many Triangles). Thus the resulting symmetrical patterns willseem to overflow the plane (which is often felt as a folding and fluid re-arrangement, andwhen there is no space left in a region it either expands space or it is felt as some sort of synesthetictension or stress, like a sense of crackling under a lot of pressure).

Heptagonal tiling of the Poincar disk representing the 2D hyperbolic space.

Triheptagonal tiling

Order-7-3 rhombille tiling

In particular, A claims that inthe lowerranges of the DMT Magic Eye level the texture of the Chrysanthemum tendstoexhibitheptagonal and triheptagonal tilings (as shown in the picture above). A explains that at the critical point between the Chrysanthemum and the Magic Eye levels the intensity of the rate of symmetry detection of the Chrysanthemum cannot be contained to a 2D surface. Thus, the surface begins to fold, often in semi-symmetric ways. Every time one recognizes an object on this folding Chrysanthemum the extra curvature is passed on to this object. As the dose increases, one interprets more and more of this extra curvature and ends up shaping a complex and highly dynamic spatiotemporal depth map with hyperbolic folds. In the upper ranges of the Magic Eye level the world-sheet is so curved that the scenes one visualize are intricate and expansive, feeling at times like one is able to peer through ones horizon in all directions and see oneself and ones world from a distance. At some critical point one may feel like the space around one is folding into a huge dome where the walls are made of whatever texture + world-sheet combination happened to win the Darwinian selection pressures applied to the qualia patterns on the Magic Eyelevel. This concentrated hyperbolic synesthetic texture is what becomes the walls of the Waiting Room

In the range of 12-25mg of DMT a likely final destination is the so-called Waiting Room. This experience is distinguished from the Magic Eye level in several ways: first, the world-sheet at this level breaks into several quasi-independent components, each evolving semi-autonomously. Second, one goes from partial immersion into full immersion. The transition between Magic Eye and Waiting Room often looks like finding a very complex element in the scene and using it as a window into another dimension. The total 2D surface curvaturepresent (by adding up the curvature of all elements in the scene) is substantially higher than that of the Magic Eye level, and one can start to see actual 3D hyperbolic space. Perhaps a way of describingthis transition is as follows: The curvature of the world-sheet gets to be so extremethat in order to accommodateit ones entire multi-modal experiential field becomes involved, and a feeling of total and complete synchronization of all senses into a unified synesthetic experience is inescapable (often described as the mmmMMMMMMM+++++!!! whole-body tone people report). Thus the feeling of entering into an entirely new dimension. This explains what people mean when they say: I experienced such an intense pressure that my soul could not be contained in my tiny body, and the intense pressure launched meinto a bigger world.

DMT Waiting Room

Changes in the connectivity of the micro-structure of the texture

Constant flow of interlocking symmetry elements tile the texture.

The images above, taken together, are meant as animpressionistic replication of what a Waiting Room experience may feellike. On the left you see the textured world-sheet curved in several ways resulting in an enclosed room with shimmering walls andan entity looking ata futuristic-looking contraption. The images on the right are meant to illustrate the ways in which the texture of the world-sheet evolves: you will find that the micro-structure of such texture is constantly unfolding in new symmetrical ways (bottom right), and propagating such changes throughout the entire surface at a striking speed (top right).

DMT Waiting Rooms contain entities that at times do interact directly with you. Their reality is perceived as a much more intense and intimate version of what human interaction normally is, but they do not give the impression ofbeingtelepathic. That said, their power is felt as if they could radiate it. One could say that this level of DMT places you in such an intimate, vulnerable and open state that interpreting the entities in asecond-person social mode is almost inevitable. It is like interacting with someone you really know (or perhaps someone you really really want to know or really really dont want to know), except that the whole world is made of those feelings and some entities inhabit that world.

Serious hard-core psychonauts tend to describe the Wating Roomas a temporary stopgap. Indeed more poetry could ever be written about the Waiting Room states of consciousness than about most human activities, for itsstate-space is larger, more diverse and more hedonicallyloaded. But even so, it is important to realize that there are even weirder states. Serious psychonauts exploring the upper ranges of humanly-accessible high energy consciousness research may see Waiting Rooms asa stepping stonesto the real deal

If one manages to ingest around 20-30mg of DMT there is a decent chance that one will achieve a DMT breakthrough experience (some sources place the dosage as high as40mg). There is no agreed-upon definition for a DMT breakthrough, but most experienced users confirm that there is a qualitative change in the structure and feel of ones experience on such high doses. Based on As observations we postulate that DMT breakthroughs are the result of a world-sheet with a curvatureso extreme that topological bifurcationsstart to happen uncontrollably. In other words, the very topology of ones world-sheet is forced to change in order to accommodate all of the intense curvature.

The geometry of space you experience maysuddenly go from a simply-connected space into something else. What does this mean? Suddenly one may feel like space itself is twisting and reconnecting to itself in complex (and often confusing) ways. One may find that given any two points on this alien world there may be loops between them. This has drastic effects on ones every representation (including, of course, the self-other divide). The particular feeling that comes with this may explain the presence of PSIS-like experiences induced by DMT and high dose LSD (cf. LSD and Quantum Measurements). Since the topological bifurcations are happening on a 3D1T world-sheet, this may look like multiple things happening at once or objects taking multiple non-overlapping paths at once in order to get from one place into another. The entities at this level feel transpersonal: due to the extreme curvature it is hard to distinguish between the information you ascribe toyour self-model and the information you ascribe to others. Thus one is all over the place, in a literal topological sense.

While on the Waiting Room one can stabilize the context where the experience seems to be taking place, on a DMT breakthrough state one invariably moves across vast regions, galaxies, universes, realities, etc. in a constant uncontrollable way. Why is this? This may be related to whether one can contain the curvature of the objects one attends to. If the curvature is uncontrollable, it will pass on to the walls and result in constant context switches. In fact, such a large fraction of 3D space is perceived as hyperbolic in one way or another, that one seems to have access to vast regions of reality at the same time. Thus a sense of radical openness is often experienced.

Unlike 5-MeO-DMT,normal DMT experiences are not typically so mind-warping that they dissolve ones self-model completely. On the contrary, many people report DMT as having surprisingly little effect on ones sense of self except at very high doses relative tothe overall intensity of the alteration. Thus, DMT usually does not produce amnesia due toego death directly. Rather, the amnesic properties of DMT at high doses can be blamed onthe difficulty ofinstantiating the necessary geometry to make sense of what was experienced. In the case of doses above breakthrough experiences there is a chance that the user will not be able to recall anything about the most intense periods of the journey. Unfortunately, we are not likely to learn much from these states (that is, until we live in a community of people who can access other phenomenal geometries in a controlled fashion).

We postulate that the difficultypeople have remembering the phenomenal qualityof aDMT experience is in part the result of not being able to access the geometry required to accurately relive their hallucinations.The few and far apartelements of the experience that people do somehow manage to remember, we posit,are those that happen to be (relatively) easy to embed in 3D Euclidean space. Thus, we predict that what people do manage to bring back from hyperspace will be biased towards those things that can be represented in R3.

This explains why people remember experiencing intensely saddled scenes (e.g. fractals, tunnels, kale worlds, recursive processes, and so on). Unfortunatelymost information-rich and interesting (irreducible, prime) phenomenal objects one experiences on DMT are by their very nature impossible to embed in our normal experiential geometry. This problem revealsan intrinsic limitation that comes from living in a community of intelligences (i.e. contemporaryhumans) who are constrainedin the range of state-spaces of consciousness that they can access. This realization calls for a new epistemological paradigm, one that incorporate state-specific representationsinto a globally accessible database of states of consciousness, together withthe network that emerges fromtheir mutual (in)intelligibility.

The increased curvature of ones world-sheet can manifest in endless ways. In some important ways, the state-space of possible scenes that you can experience on DMT is much bigger than what you can experience on normal states of consciousness. Strictly speaking, you can represent more scenes on DMT states than in most other states because the overall amount qualiaavailable is much larger. Of course the very dynamics of these experiences constrains what can be experienced, so there are still many things inaccessible on DMT. For instance, it may be impossible to experience a perfectly uniform blue screen (since the Chrysanthemum texture is saturated with edges, surfaces and symmetrical patterns). Likewise, scenes that are too irregular may be impossible to stabilizegiven the omnipresent symmetry enhancementfound in the state.

What are the nature of the objects and entities one experiences on DMT? Magic Eye level experiences tend to include objects that are usually found in our everyday life. It is at the DMT waiting room level and above that the truly impossible objects begin to emerge. In particular, all of these objects are often curved in extreme ways. They condensewithin them complex networks of interlocking structures sustaining an overallsuperlative curvature. Here are some example objects that one can experience on Waiting Room and Breakthrough level experiences:

Notice that all of these images have many saddles everywhere. Ultimately, the range of objects one can experience on such states includes many other features that are impossible to represent in R3. The objects that people do manage to bring back and recall later on, are precisely those that can be embedded in R3. Thus you often see extremelly contorted wrapped-up objects. The most interesting ones (such as quasi-regular H3 tilings or irreducible objects) are next-to-impossible to bring back in any meaningful way, for now at least.

The expansion of space responsible for the increased curvature happens anywhere you direct your attention (including the objects you see). Here you can see what it may look like to stare at a DMT object: This is called the jitterbox mechanism.

DMT entities come in many forms, andtheir overall quality is extremelly dose-dependent. Rather than describing any specific manifestation we will instead briefly characterize the rough properties of the entities experienced based on the level reached.

How can we explain the drastic geometric changes of phenomenal space onDMT? As mentioned earlier, we will discuss three (non-mutually exclusive) hypothesis. These hypothesis work at the level of an algorithmic reduction, which means that we will godeeper than just describinginformation processing andphenomenology. We will stop short of addressing the implementation level of abstraction. It is worth pointing out that describing the ways in which DMT experiences are hyperbolic is in itself an algorithmic reduction. What we are about to do is to develop a more granular algorithmic reduction in which we try to explain why hyperbolic geometry emerges onDMT states by postulatingunderlying processes. Here are the three reductions:

Recall that on a previous article we algorithmically reduced general psychedelic states. The building blocks of that reduction were:

Using this framework one can argue that DMT makes space more hyperbolic in the following way: in high amounts the synergistic effect of control interruptiontogether with extremelly lowered symmetry detection thresholdsexperienced in quick succession makes the subjective distance between the points in the phenomenal objects in the scene evolve a hyperbolic metric. How would this happen? The key thing to realize is that in this model the usualquasi-Euclidean space we experience is an emergent effect of anequilibrium betweenthese two forces. Even in normal circumstances our world-sheet is continuously regenerated; the rate at which symmetrical relationships in the scene are detectedis balanced by the rate at which these subjective measurements are forgotten. This usually results in an emergent Euclidean geometry. On DMT the rate of symmetry detection increases while the rate of forgetting (inhibiting control) decreases. Attention points out more relationships in quick succession and thiscreates a network of measured subjective distances that cannot be embedded in Euclidean 3D space. Thus there is an overflow of symmetries. We are currently working on a precise mathematical model of this process in order to reconstruct a hyperbolic metric out of these two parameters. In this model, control interruption is interpreted as a change in the decay for subjective measurements of distance in ones mind, whereas the lowered symmetry detection threshold is interpreted as a change in the probability of measuring the distance between any two given points as a function of the network of distances already measured.

The curvature increase is most salient where there is already a lot of measurements made, since highly-measured regionsfocus attention and attention drives symmetry detection. Thus, focusing on any surface will make the surface itself hyperbolic (rather than the 3D space, since measurements are mostly concentrated on the surface). On the other hand, if the curvature is too high to keep on a 2D surface, it will jump to3D or even 3D1T (i.e.branching out the temporal component of ones experience). The result is that the totalcurvature of ones 3D1T world-sheet increases on DMT in a dose-dependent way.

Different doses lead to different states of curvature homeostasis. Each part of the worldsheet has constantly-morphing shapes and sudden curvature changes, but the totalcurvature is nonetheless more or less preserved on a given dose. It is not easy to get rid of excess curvature. Rather, whenever one tries to reduce the curvature in one part of the scene one issimply pushing it elsewhere.Even when one manages to push most of the curvature out of a given modality (e.g. vision)it is likely to quickly return in another modality (e.g. kinesthetic or auditory landscape) since attention never ceases on a DMT trip. Such apparent dose-dependent global curving of the world-sheet (and itsjump from onemodality into another) constrains the shape of the objects one can represent on the state (thus leading to alien-looking highly-curved objects similar to the ones shown above).

Let usdefine a notion of energy in consciousnessso that we can formalize the way experiences warps and transforms on DMT. Assume that one needs energy in order to instantiate a given experience (really, this is just an implicit invariant and we could use a different name). Each feature of a given experience needs a certain amount of energy, which roughly corresponds to a weightedsum ofthe intensity and the information content of an experience. For instance, the brightness of a point of colored light in ones visual field is energy-dependent. Likewise, the information content in a texture, the number of represented symmetrical relationships, the speed by which an object moves (plus its acceleration), and even the curvature of ones geometry. All of these features require energy to be instantiated.

Under normal circumstances the brain has many clever and (evolutionarily) appropriate ways of modulating the amount of energy present in different modules of ones mind. That is, we have many programs that work asenergy switches for different mental activities depending on the context. When we think, we have allocated a certain amount of energy to finding a shape/thought-form that satisfies a number of constraints. When it shape-shifting that energy in various ways andfinding a solution, we either allocate more energy to it or perhaps give up. However, on DMT the energy cannot be switched off, and it can only pass from one modality into another. In other words, whereas in normal circumstances one uses strategically ones ability to give energy limits to different tasks, on DMT one simply has constant high energy globally no matter what.

More formally, this model of DMT action says that DMT modifies the structure of ones mind so that (1) energy freely passes from one form into another, and (2) energy floodsthe entire system. Lets talk about energy sources and sinks.

In this algorithmic reduction DMT increases the amount of consciousness in ones mind by virtue of impairing our normal energy sinks while increasing the throughput of its energy sources. This may frequently manifests asphenomenal spaces becoming hyperbolic in the mathematical-geometric sense of increasing its negative curvatureas such curvature is one manifestation of higher levels of energy. Energy sinks are still present and they struggle to capture as much of the energy as possible. In particular, one energy sink is recognition of objects on the world-sheet.

This model postulates that attention functions as an energy source, whereas pattern recognitionfunctions as an energy sink.

The total energy in ones consciousness increases on DMT, and there is a constant flow between different ways for this energy to take form. That said, one can analyze piecewise the various components of ones experience, specially if the network of energy exchange clusters well. In particular, we can postulate that world-sheets are fairly self-contained. Relative to other parts of the environment the mind is simulating, the world-sheet itself has a very high within-cluster energy exchange and a relatively low cross-cluster energy exchange. Ones world-sheet is very fluid, and little deformations propagate almost linearly throughout it. In a given dose plateau, if you add up the acceleration, the velocity, the curvature, and so on of every point in the world-sheetyou will comeup with a number that remains fairly constant over time. Thus studying the Hamiltonian of a world-sheet (i.e. the state-space given by a constant level of energy) can be very informative in describing both theinformation content and the experiential intensity of DMT experiences.

You can deform a surface without changing its local curvature. (Source: Gauss Remarkable Theorem [seriously not my quotes]). Thus on a DMT trip plateau there is still a lot of room for transformations of the world-sheet into different shapes with similar curvature.

It takes effort and wakefulness to focus on a complex scene with many intricate details. (Reading and trying to comprehend this essaymay itself require significant conscious energy expenditure). For this reason we might say that DMT is an exceedingly effective arouser of consciousness.

One essential property of our minds is that our level of mental arousal decreases when we interpret our experience as expected. People who can enjoy their own minds do so, in part, by finding unexpected ways of understandingexpected things. In the presence of new information that one cannot easily integrate, however, ones level of energy is adjusted upwards so that we try out a variety of different models quickly and try to sort out a model that does make the new information expected (though perhaps integrating new assumptions or adding content in other ways). When we cannot manage togenerate a mental model that works outa likely model of what weare experiencing we tend toremain in an over-active state.

This general principle applies to the world-sheet. One of the predominant ways in which a world-sheetreduces its energy (locally) is by morphing into something you can recognize or interpret. Thus the world-sheet in some way keeps on producing objects, at first familiar, but in higher energies the whole process can seemdesperate or hopeless: one can only recognize things with a stretch of the imagination. Since humans in general lack much experience with hyperbolic geometry, we usually dont manage to imagine objects that are symmetric on their own native geometry. But when we do, and we fill them up with resonant light-mind-energy, then BAM! New harmonics ofconsciousness! New varieties of bliss! Music of the angels! OMG! Laughter till infinity and more- shared across the galaxy- in a hyperbolic transpersonal delight! Its like LSD and N2O! Wow!

Forgive me, it is my first day. Lets carry on. As one does not know any object that the world-sheet can reasonably be able to generate in high doses, and the world-sheet has so much energy on its own, energy can seem to spiralout of control. This explains in part the non-linear relationship between experienced intensity and DMT dose.

Like all aspects of ones consciousness, the negativecurvature of phenomenal space tends to decay over time (possibly through inhibition by the cortex). In this case, the feeling is one of smoothing out the curves andembedding the phenomenal objects in 3D euclidean space. However, this is opposed by the effect that attention and (degrees of) awareness have on our phenomenal sheet, which is to increase its negative curvature. On DMT, anything that attention focuses on will begin branching, copying itself and multiplying, a process that quickly saturates the scene to the point of filling more spatial relationships than would fit in Euclidean 3D.The rate at which this happens is dose-dependent. The higher the dose, the less inhibiting control there is and the more intensethe folding property of attention will be. Thus, for different dosages one reaches different homeostatic levels of overall curvature in ones phenomenal space. Since attention does not stop at any point during a DMT trip (it keeps being bright and intense all throughout) there isnt really any rest period tosit back and see the curvature get smoothed out on its own. Everything one thinks about, perceives or imagines branches out and bifurcate at a high speed.

Every moment during the experience is very hard to grasp because the way one normally does that in usual circumstances is by focusing attention on it and shaping ones world-sheet to account for the input. But here that very attention makes the world-sheetwobble, warp and expand beyond recognition. Thus one might say that during a solid DMT experience one never sees the same thing twice, as the experience continues to evolve. That is, of course, as long as you do not stumble upon (or deliberatively create) stable phenomenal objects whose structure can survive the warping effect of attention.

Subjectively, A says, negative curvature is associated with more energy. Perhaps this curvature happens at a very low level? An example to light up the imagination is using heat to folda sheet of metal(thanks to thermal expansion). Whatever your attention focuses on seems to get heated up (in some sense) and expand as a result. The folding patterns themselvesseem to storepotential energy. Left on their own, this extra energy stored as negative curvature usually dissipates, but on DMT this process is lowered (while the effect of increasing the energy is heightened). Could this be the result of some very very fine-level micro-experiential change that gradually propagates upwards? With the help of our normal mental processes the change in the micro-structure may propagate all the way into seemingly hyperbolic 2D and 3D surfaces.

Perhaps the most important difference between DMT in high doses and other psychedelics is that the micro-structure of consciousness drifts in such a way that tiny Drosteeffectsbubble up into large Mbius transforms.

As noted already, these three algorithmic reductions are not incompatible. We just present them here due to their apparent explanatory power. A lot more theoretical work will be needed to make them quantitative and precise, but we are optimistic. The aim is now to develop an experimental framework to distinguish between the predictions that each candidate algorithmic reduction makes(including many not presented here). This is a work in progress.

In the case of experiential fields such as body feelings, smells and concepts, the hyperbolization takes different forms depending on the algorithmic reduction you use. I prefer the very general interpretation that one experiences hyperbolic information geometry rather than just hyperbolic space. In other words, when we talk about body feelings and so on, on a psychedelic one organizes such information in a hyperbolic relational graph, which also exhibits a negative curvature relative to its normal geometry. Arguing in favor of this interpretation would take another article, so we will leave that for another time.

Gluinga 1-handle is easy on a 2-sphere. Tongue in cheek, stickinga little doughnuton a big ballallows you to grab the sphere and control it in some way. But how do you get a handle on hyperbolic space? The answer is to build hyperbolic manifolds at the core of ones being, by imagining knots very intensely. The higher one is, the more complex the knot one can imagine in detail. Having practiced visualizations of this sort while sober certainly helps. If you imagine the knot with enough detail, you can then stress the environment surrounding it to represent a warpedhyperbolic space. This way yougive life to the complement of the knot(which is almost always hyperbolic!). We postulate that it is possible tostudy in detail the relationship between the knots imagined, and the properties of the experiential worlds that result from their inversion (i.e. thinking about the geometry of the space surrounding the knot rather than the knot itself). A reports that different hyperbolic spaces generated this way (i.e. imagining knots on tryptamines) have different levels of energy, and have unique resonant properties. Different kinds of music feel better in different kinds of hyperbolic manifolds. It takes more energy to light up a hyperbolic space like that, mostly due to its openness. Thisis why using small doses of 2C-B can be helpful to create a positive backbone to the experience (providing the necessary warmth to light up the hyperbolic space). Admittedly MDMA tends to work best, but its use is unadvisable for reasons we will not get into (related to the hedonic treadmill). A healthy combination that both enablesthe visualization of the hyperbolic spaces in a vivid way and also lights them up with positive hedonic tone healthily and reliably has yet to be found.

Relatedly Get a handle on your DMT trip by creating a stabilizing 4Dhyperbolic manifold in four easy steps:

God, the divine, open individualism, the number one, an abstract notion of self, or the thought of existence itself are all thoughts that work as great unifiers of large areas of phenomenal space. Indeed these concepts can allow a person to connect the edges of the hyperbolic space and create a pocket of ones experience that does not seem to have a boundary yet is extremelly open. This may be a reason why such ideas are very common in high levels ofpsychedelia. In a sense, depending on the mind, they have at times the highest recruiting power for your multi-threaded attention.

Beyondmeredesigner synesthesia, the future of consciousness research contains the possibility of exploring alternative geometries for the layout of our experiences. Ones overall level of energy, its manifestation, the allowed invariants, the logic gates, the differences in resonance, the granularity ofthe patterns, and so on, are all parameters that we will get to change in our minds to see what happens (in controlled and healthy ways, of course). The exploration of the state-space of consciousness is sure to lead to a combinatorial explosion. Even with good post-theoretical quantitative algorithmic reductions, it is likely that qualia computing scientists will still find an unfathomable number of distinct prime permutations. For some applications it may be more useful to use special kinds of hyperbolic spaces (like the compliment of certain class of knot), but for others it may suffice to be a little sphere. Who knows. In the end, if a valence economy ends up dominating the world, then the value of hyperbolic phenomenal spaces will be proportional to the level of wellbeing and bliss that can be felt in them. Which space in which resonant mode generates the highest level of bliss? This isan empirical question with far-reaching economicimplications.

I predict that some time in the next century or so manyof the breakthroughs in mathematics will take place in consciousness researchcenters. The ability to utilize arbitrary combinations of qualia with programablegeometry and information content (in addition to our whole range of pre-existing cognitive skills) will allow people to have new semantic primitives related to mathematical structures and qualia systems currently unfathomable to us. In the end, studyingthe mathematics of consciousness and valence is perhaps the ultimate effective altruist endeavor in a world filled with suffering, since reverse-engineering valence would simplify paradise engineering But even in a post-scarcity world, consciousness research will also probablybethe ultimate past time given the endless new discoveries awaiting to be found inthe state-space of consciousness.

*On the unexpected side effects of staring at a cauliflower on DMT: You can get lost in the hyperbolic reality of the (apparent) life force that spirals in a scale-free fractal fashion throughout the plant. The spirals may feel like magnetic vortexes that take advantage of your state to attractyour attention. The cauliflower may pull you into its own world of interconnected fractals, and as soon as you start to trust it, it begins trying to recruit you for the cauliflower cause. The cauliflower may scare you into not eating it, and make you feel guilty about frying it. You may freak out a little, but when you come down you convince yourself that itwas all just a hallucination. That said, you secretly worry it was for real. You may never choose toabstain from eating cauliflowers, but you will probably drop the knife when cooking it. You will break it apart with your own hands in the way you think minimizes its pain. You sometimeswonder whether it experiences agony as it is slowly cooked in the pan, and you drink alcohol to forget. Damn, dont stare at a cauliflower while high on DMT if you ever intend to eat one again.

P.S. Note onOriginality:The onlymention I have been able to find that explicitly connects hyperbolic geometry in a literal sense with DMT (rather than just metaphorical talk of hyperspace) is a 2014 post in the Psychonaut subredit. To my knowledge, no one has yet elaborated to any substantial degree on this interesting connection. That said, Im convinced that during the days that follow a strong trip, psychedelic self-experimentersmay frequently wonder about the geometry of the places they explored. Yet they usually lack any conceptual framework to justify their intuitions or even verbalize them, so they quickly forget about them.

P.S.S. ExampleSelf-Dribbling Basketball:

Self-dribbling basketball

To the right you can see what a self-dribbling basketball looks like. The more you try to grasp what it is, the more curved it gets. Thats because you are adding energy with you attention and you do not have enough recognition ability in this space to lower its energy and reduce the curvature to stabilize it. The curvature is so extreme at times that it produces constant context switches. This is the result of excess curvature being pushed towards the edge of your experience and turning into walls and corridors.

P.S.S.S.: Exampleon world-sheet bending:

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The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries ...

Moon Trance – Lindsey Stirling (Original Song) – YouTube

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Written and Directed by EMMY Award winning director Nathan D. Lee

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Director of Photography Jacob Schwarz http://mysterybox.us/

Dance Choreography by Marc AlexandaUtah Urban Dance Organization (U.D.O.) utahudo@gmail.comhttp://www.facebook.com/utahudo

Dancers: Chaz Layne Bodily, Marcquet Hill, Arianna Brockbank, Kelsey Skousen, Leif Belnap, Rylie Tucker, Denali Pontvianne, Tia Aiono, Bethany Boutwell, Kalli Haws

Makeup:Dale Flink, Noah Bailey, Joanna Bishop, Shiloh White, Meg Sorensen, and Emily Jacobsen

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What is quantum computing? – Definition from WhatIs.com

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Quantum computing is the area of study focused on developing computer technology based on the principles of quantum theory, which explains the nature and behavior of energy and matter on the quantum (atomic and subatomic) level. Development of a quantum computer, if practical, would mark a leap forward in computing capability far greater than that from the abacus to a modern day supercomputer, with performance gains in the billion-fold realm and beyond. The quantum computer, following the laws of quantum physics, would gain enormous processing power through the ability to be in multiple states, and to perform tasks using all possible permutations simultaneously. Current centers of research in quantum computing include MIT, IBM, Oxford University, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The essential elements of quantum computing originated with Paul Benioff, working at Argonne National Labs, in 1981. He theorized a classical computer operating with some quantum mechanical principles. But it is generally accepted that David Deutsch of Oxford University provided the critical impetus for quantum computing research. In 1984, he was at a computation theory conference and began to wonder about the possibility of designing a computer that was based exclusively on quantum rules, then published his breakthrough paper a few months later. With this, the race began to exploit his ideas. However, before we delve into what he started, it is beneficial to have a look at the background of the quantum world.

Quantum theory's development began in 1900 with a presentation by Max Planck to the German Physical Society, in which he introduced the idea that energy exists in individual units (which he called "quanta"), as does matter. Further developments by a number of scientists over the following thirty years led to the modern understanding of quantum theory.

Niels Bohr proposed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which asserts that a particle is whatever it is measured to be (for example, a wave or a particle) but that it cannot be assumed to have specific properties, or even to exist, until it is measured. In short, Bohr was saying that objective reality does not exist. This translates to a principle called superposition that claims that while we do not know what the state of any object is, it is actually in all possible states simultaneously, as long as we don't look to check.

To illustrate this theory, we can use the famous and somewhat cruel analogy of Schrodinger's Cat. First, we have a living cat and place it in a thick lead box. At this stage, there is no question that the cat is alive. We then throw in a vial of cyanide and seal the box. We do not know if the cat is alive or if it has broken the cyanide capsule and died. Since we do not know, the cat is both dead and alive, according to quantum law - in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and see what condition the cat is in that the superposition is lost, and the cat must be either alive or dead.

The second interpretation of quantum theory is the multiverse or many-worlds theory. It holds that as soon as a potential exists for any object to be in any state, the universe of that object transmutes into a series of parallel universes equal to the number of possible states in which that the object can exist, with each universe containing a unique single possible state of that object. Furthermore, there is a mechanism for interaction between these universes that somehow permits all states to be accessible in some way and for all possible states to be affected in some manner. Stephen Hawking and the late Richard Feynman are among the scientists who have expressed a preference for the many-worlds theory.

Which ever argument one chooses, the principle that, in some way, one particle can exist in numerous states opens up profound implications for computing.

Classical computing relies, at its ultimate level, on principles expressed by Boolean algebra, operating with a (usually) 7-mode logic gate principle, though it is possible to exist with only three modes (which are AND, NOT, and COPY). Data must be processed in an exclusive binary state at any point in time - that is, either 0 (off / false) or 1 (on / true). These values are binary digits, or bits. The millions of transistors and capacitors at the heart of computers can only be in one state at any point. While the time that the each transistor or capacitor need be either in 0 or 1 before switching states is now measurable in billionths of a second, there is still a limit as to how quickly these devices can be made to switch state. As we progress to smaller and faster circuits, we begin to reach the physical limits of materials and the threshold for classical laws of physics to apply. Beyond this, the quantum world takes over, which opens a potential as great as the challenges that are presented.

The Quantum computer, by contrast, can work with a two-mode logic gate: XOR and a mode we'll call QO1 (the ability to change 0 into a superposition of 0 and 1, a logic gate which cannot exist in classical computing). In a quantum computer, a number of elemental particles such as electrons or photons can be used (in practice, success has also been achieved with ions), with either their charge or polarization acting as a representation of 0 and/or 1. Each of these particles is known as a quantum bit, or qubit, the nature and behavior of these particles form the basis of quantum computing. The two most relevant aspects of quantum physics are the principles of superposition and entanglement .

Think of a qubit as an electron in a magnetic field. The electron's spin may be either in alignment with the field, which is known as a spin-up state, or opposite to the field, which is known as a spin-down state. Changing the electron's spin from one state to another is achieved by using a pulse of energy, such as from a laser - let's say that we use 1 unit of laser energy. But what if we only use half a unit of laser energy and completely isolate the particle from all external influences? According to quantum law, the particle then enters a superposition of states, in which it behaves as if it were in both states simultaneously. Each qubit utilized could take a superposition of both 0 and 1. Thus, the number of computations that a quantum computer could undertake is 2^n, where n is the number of qubits used. A quantum computer comprised of 500 qubits would have a potential to do 2^500 calculations in a single step. This is an awesome number - 2^500 is infinitely more atoms than there are in the known universe (this is true parallel processing - classical computers today, even so called parallel processors, still only truly do one thing at a time: there are just two or more of them doing it). But how will these particles interact with each other? They would do so via quantum entanglement.

Entanglement Particles (such as photons, electrons, or qubits) that have interacted at some point retain a type of connection and can be entangled with each other in pairs, in a process known as correlation . Knowing the spin state of one entangled particle - up or down - allows one to know that the spin of its mate is in the opposite direction. Even more amazing is the knowledge that, due to the phenomenon of superpostition, the measured particle has no single spin direction before being measured, but is simultaneously in both a spin-up and spin-down state. The spin state of the particle being measured is decided at the time of measurement and communicated to the correlated particle, which simultaneously assumes the opposite spin direction to that of the measured particle. This is a real phenomenon (Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance"), the mechanism of which cannot, as yet, be explained by any theory - it simply must be taken as given. Quantum entanglement allows qubits that are separated by incredible distances to interact with each other instantaneously (not limited to the speed of light). No matter how great the distance between the correlated particles, they will remain entangled as long as they are isolated.

Taken together, quantum superposition and entanglement create an enormously enhanced computing power. Where a 2-bit register in an ordinary computer can store only one of four binary configurations (00, 01, 10, or 11) at any given time, a 2-qubit register in a quantum computer can store all four numbers simultaneously, because each qubit represents two values. If more qubits are added, the increased capacity is expanded exponentially.

Perhaps even more intriguing than the sheer power of quantum computing is the ability that it offers to write programs in a completely new way. For example, a quantum computer could incorporate a programming sequence that would be along the lines of "take all the superpositions of all the prior computations" - something which is meaningless with a classical computer - which would permit extremely fast ways of solving certain mathematical problems, such as factorization of large numbers, one example of which we discuss below.

There have been two notable successes thus far with quantum programming. The first occurred in 1994 by Peter Shor, (now at AT&T Labs) who developed a quantum algorithm that could efficiently factorize large numbers. It centers on a system that uses number theory to estimate the periodicity of a large number sequence. The other major breakthrough happened with Lov Grover of Bell Labs in 1996, with a very fast algorithm that is proven to be the fastest possible for searching through unstructured databases. The algorithm is so efficient that it requires only, on average, roughly N square root (where N is the total number of elements) searches to find the desired result, as opposed to a search in classical computing, which on average needs N/2 searches.

The above sounds promising, but there are tremendous obstacles still to be overcome. Some of the problems with quantum computing are as follows:

Even though there are many problems to overcome, the breakthroughs in the last 15 years, and especially in the last 3, have made some form of practical quantum computing not unfeasible, but there is much debate as to whether this is less than a decade away or a hundred years into the future. However, the potential that this technology offers is attracting tremendous interest from both the government and the private sector. Military applications include the ability to break encryptions keys via brute force searches, while civilian applications range from DNA modeling to complex material science analysis. It is this potential that is rapidly breaking down the barriers to this technology, but whether all barriers can be broken, and when, is very much an open question.

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What is quantum computing? - Definition from WhatIs.com

Quantum computing in the NISQ era and beyond

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Quantum computing in the NISQ era and beyond Preskill, Q2B 2017

Todays paper is based on the keynote address given by John Preskill at the December 2017 Quantum computing for business conference. It provides a great overview of the state of quantum computing today, and what we might reasonably expect to see over the coming years.

we are now entering a pivotal new era in quantum technology. For this talk, I needed a name to describe this impending new era, so I made up a word: NISQ. This stands for Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum.

Intermediate scale refers to computers with between 50 and a few hundred qubits. The 50 qubit milestone is significant because that takes us beyond what we can simulate by brute force using the most powerful existing supercomputers. Noisy emphasises that well have imperfect control over those qubits. Because of the noise, we expect a limit of about 1000 gates in a circuit i.e., 1000 fundamental two-qubit operations. Executing a single gate is about 1000 times slower on an ion trap quantum processor than on a superconducting circuit.

Eventually we expect to be able to protect quantum systems and scale up quantum computers using the principle of quantum error correction Unfortunately, there is a significant overhead cost for doing quantum error correction, so reliable quantum computers using quantum error correction are not likely to be available very soon.

For example, using quantum error correction we would need physical systems with millions of qubits in order to run algorithms involving thousands of protected (fault-tolerant) qubits. For the next few years, our limit is on the order of a hundred physical qubits.

Crossing the quantum chasm, from hundreds of physical qubits to millions of physical qubits, is going to take some time, but well get there eventually It is important to realize that we will need significant advances in basic science as well as in systems engineering to attain fully scalable fault-tolerant quantum computers.

What about those D-Wave machines available today then, which already have 2000 qubits? Its complicated, but these are not circuit-based quantum computers, rather they are quantum annealers. Well take more about those later.

If quantum error correction is our basis for thinking that quantum computers will be scalable to large devices solving hard problems, quantum complexity is our basis for thinking that quantum computing is powerful. We have at least three good reasons for thinking that quantum computers have capabilities surpassing classical computers:

Its a remarkable claim one of the most amazing ideas Ive encountered in my scientific life that there is a distinction between problems that are classically hard and problems that are quantumly hard. And it is a compelling challenge to understand better what problems are classically hard but quantumly easy.

We dont expect quantum computers to be able to solve the hard instances of NP-hard problems. But when will quantum computers be able to solve problems we care about faster than classical computers, and for what problems?

Quantum speedup refers to a quantum computer solving a problem faster than competing classical computers using the best available hardware and running the best algorithm which performs the same task.

A few years ago I spoke enthusiastically about quantum supremacy as an impeding milestone for human civilization. I suggested this term as a way to characterize computational tasks performable by quantum devices, where one could argue persuasively that no existing (or easily foreseeable) classical device could perform the same task, disregarding whether the task is useful in any other respect But from a commercial perspective, obviously we should pay attention to whether the task is useful!

Preskill then goes on to outline several areas where quantum computers hold promise for outperforming their classical cousins, including optimisation, deep learning, matrix inversion, recommendation systems, semidefinite programming, and quantum simulation. Lets take a brief look at each of them.

We dont expect quantum computers to be able to efficiently solve worst case instances of NP-hard problems (such as combinatorial optimisation), but they might be better than classical computers at finding approximate solutions. That is, they might find better approximations, and/or they might find approximations faster.

For many problems there is a big gap between the approximation achieved by the best classical algorithm we currently know and the barrier of NP-hardness. So it would not be shocking to discover that quantum computers have an advantage over classical ones for the task of finding approximate solutions, an advantage some users might find quite valuable.

The emerging approach is a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm where a quantum processor prepares an n-qubit state, and a classical optimiser processes the measurement outcomes, instructing the quantum processor how to alter the n-qubit state for the next iteration. Iteration continues until the algorithm converges on a quantum state from which the approximate solution can be extracted.

If applied to classical approximation problems, this goes by the name Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), when applied to quantum problems it is called a Variation Quantum Eigensolver (VQE).

Quantum annealers (such as the DWave 2000Q machine) are noisy versions of something called adiabatic quantum computing, and we dont have a convincing theoretical argument indicating that they can outperform the best classical hardware. (We do in the noiseless version). So far quantum annealers have mostly been applied to cases where the annealing is stochastic, which means it is relatively easy for a classical computer to simulate what the quantum annealer is doing.

Whats coming soon are non-stochastic quantum annealers, which may have greater potential for achieving speedups over what the best classical algorithms can do.

In quantum deep learning (or just quantum machine learning) we can construct quantum analogs of e.g. a restricted Boltzmann machine, but with the spins represented by qubits rather than classical bits.

It may be that quantum deep learning networks have advantages over classical ones; for example they might be easier to train for some purposes. But we dont really know its another opportunity to try it and see how well it works. One possible reason for being hopeful about the potential of quantum machine learning rests on the concept known as QRAM quantum random access memory.

QRAM can represent a large amount of classical data very succinctly, encoding a vector with_N_ components in just log N qubits. Even with QRAM though, we have to take into account the costs of encoding the input into QRAM in the first place. Moreover, when reading the results we can recover only log N classical bits (not N) from a single shot measurement of log N qubits.

Thus quantum deep learning has most advantage in scenarios where both the input and output are quantum states. quantum deep learning networks might be very well suited for quantum tasks, but for applications of deep learning that are widely pursued today it is unclear why quantum networks would have an advantage.

QRAM also helps with matrix inversion, where the HHL algorithm gives an exponential quantum speedup, running in time O(log N). Once again, we have to pay encoding costs though if applying it to classical data.

We do have good reason to believe this quantum matrix inversion algorithm is powerful, because it solves what we call a BQP-complete problem. That is, any problem that can be solved efficiently with a quantum computer can be encoded as an instance of this matrix inversion problem.

Unfortunately, HHL is not likely to be feasible in the NISQ era, the algorithm is probably just too expensive to be executed successfully by a quantum computer which doesnt use error correction.

A quantum algorithm has been proposed which gives an exponential speedup over the best currently known classical algorithm for the task of making high-value recommendations.

The goal is to recommend a product to a customer that the customer will probably like, based on limited knowledge of the preferences of that customer and other customers.

Whereas the classical algorithm attempts to reconstruct the full recommendation matrix, the quantum one samples efficiently from a low-rank approximation to the preference matrix.

This is a significant quantum speedup for a real-world application of machine learning, encouraging the hope that other such speedups will be discovered. However, we dont currently have a convincing theoretical argument indicating that the task performed by quantum recommendation systems (returning a high-quality recommendation in polylog(mn) time) is impossible classically.

Alas, the algorithm is also probably too costly to be convincingly validated in the NISQ era.

Semidefinite programming is the task of optimising a linear function subject to matrix inequality constraints. Convex optimization problems of this type have widespread applications. A recently discovered quantum algorithm finds an approximate solutions to the problem in time polylog(N), an exponential speedup.

The good news: a quantum solver for semidefinite programs might be within reach of NISQ technology!

Finally, quantum computers should be really good for running quantum simulations! We can get started in the NISQ era, but the most exciting discoveries are perhaps beyond it. The theory of classical chaos advanced rapidly once we could simulate chaotic dynamical systems. Quantum simulation may promote similar advances in our understanding of quantum chaos.

Valuable insights might already be gleaned using noisy devices with of order 100 qubits.

Quantum technology is rife with exhilarating opportunities, and surely many rousing surprises lie ahead. But the challenges we face are still formidable. All quantumists should appreciate that our field can fulfill its potential only through sustained, inspired effort over decades. If we pay that price, the ultimate rewards will more than vindicate our efforts.

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Quantum computing in the NISQ era and beyond

The Era of Quantum Computing Is Here. Outlook: Cloudy | WIRED

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After decades of heavy slog with no promise of success, quantum computing is suddenly buzzing with almost feverish excitement and activity. Nearly two years ago, IBM made a quantum computer available to the world: the 5-quantum-bit (qubit) resource they now call (a little awkwardly) the IBM Q experience. That seemed more like a toy for researchers than a way of getting any serious number crunching done. But 70,000 users worldwide have registered for it, and the qubit count in this resource has now quadrupled. In the past few months, IBM and Intel have announced that they have made quantum computers with 50 and 49 qubits, respectively, and Google is thought to have one waiting in the wings. There is a lot of energy in the community, and the recent progress is immense, said physicist Jens Eisert of the Free University of Berlin.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

There is now talk of impending quantum supremacy: the moment when a quantum computer can carry out a task beyond the means of todays best classical supercomputers. That might sound absurd when you compare the bare numbers: 50 qubits versus the billions of classical bits in your laptop. But the whole point of quantum computing is that a quantum bit counts for much, much more than a classical bit. Fifty qubits has long been considered the approximate number at which quantum computing becomes capable of calculations that would take an unfeasibly long time classically. Midway through 2017, researchers at Google announced that they hoped to have demonstrated quantum supremacy by the end of the year. (When pressed for an update, a spokesperson recently said that we hope to announce results as soon as we can, but were going through all the detailed work to ensure we have a solid result before we announce.)

It would be tempting to conclude from all this that the basic problems are solved in principle and the path to a future of ubiquitous quantum computing is now just a matter of engineering. But that would be a mistake. The fundamental physics of quantum computing is far from solved and cant be readily disentangled from its implementation.

Even if we soon pass the quantum supremacy milestone, the next year or two might be the real crunch time for whether quantum computers will revolutionize computing. Theres still everything to play for and no guarantee of reaching the big goal.

IBMs quantum computing center at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, holds quantum computers in large cryogenic tanks (far right) that are cooled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

Connie Zhou for IBM

Both the benefits and the challenges of quantum computing are inherent in the physics that permits it. The basic story has been told many times, though not always with the nuance that quantum mechanics demands. Classical computers encode and manipulate information as strings of binary digits1 or 0. Quantum bits do the same, except that they may be placed in a so-called superposition of the states 1 and 0, which means that a measurement of the qubits state could elicit the answer 1 or 0 with some well-defined probability.

To perform a computation with many such qubits, they must all be sustained in interdependent superpositions of statesa quantum-coherent state, in which the qubits are said to be entangled. That way, a tweak to one qubit may influence all the others. This means that somehow computational operations on qubits count for more than they do for classical bits. The computational resources increase in simple proportion to the number of bits for a classical device, but adding an extra qubit potentially doubles the resources of a quantum computer. This is why the difference between a 5-qubit and a 50-qubit machine is so significant.

Note that Ive not saidas it often is saidthat a quantum computer has an advantage because the availability of superpositions hugely increases the number of states it can encode, relative to classical bits. Nor have I said that entanglement permits many calculations to be carried out in parallel. (Indeed, a strong degree of qubit entanglement isnt essential.) Theres an element of truth in those descriptionssome of the timebut none captures the essence of quantum computing.

Inside one of IBMs cryostats wired for a 50-qubit quantum system.

Connie Zhou for IBM

Its hard to say qualitatively why quantum computing is so powerful precisely because it is hard to specify what quantum mechanics means at all. The equations of quantum theory certainly show that it will work: that, at least for some classes of computation such as factorization or database searches, there is tremendous speedup of the calculation. But how exactly?

Perhaps the safest way to describe quantum computing is to say that quantum mechanics somehow creates a resource for computation that is unavailable to classical devices. As quantum theorist Daniel Gottesman of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, put it, If you have enough quantum mechanics available, in some sense, then you have speedup, and if not, you dont.

Some things are clear, though. To carry out a quantum computation, you need to keep all your qubits coherent. And this is very hard. Interactions of a system of quantum-coherent entities with their surrounding environment create channels through which the coherence rapidly leaks out in a process called decoherence. Researchers seeking to build quantum computers must stave off decoherence, which they can currently do only for a fraction of a second. That challenge gets ever greater as the number of qubitsand hence the potential to interact with the environmentincreases. This is largely why, even though quantum computing was first proposed by Richard Feynman in 1982 and the theory was worked out in the early 1990s, it has taken until now to make devices that can actually perform a meaningful computation.

Theres a second fundamental reason why quantum computing is so difficult. Like just about every other process in nature, it is noisy. Random fluctuations, from heat in the qubits, say, or from fundamentally quantum-mechanical processes, will occasionally flip or randomize the state of a qubit, potentially derailing a calculation. This is a hazard in classical computing too, but its not hard to deal withyou just keep two or more backup copies of each bit so that a randomly flipped bit stands out as the odd one out.

Researchers working on quantum computers have created strategies for how to deal with the noise. But these strategies impose a huge debt of computational overheadall your computing power goes to correcting errors and not to running your algorithms. Current error rates significantly limit the lengths of computations that can be performed, said Andrew Childs, the codirector of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science at the University of Maryland. Well have to do a lot better if we want to do something interesting.

Andrew Childs, a quantum theorist at the University of Maryland, cautions that error rates are a fundamental concern for quantum computers.

Photo by John T. Consoli/University of Maryland

A lot of research on the fundamentals of quantum computing has been devoted to error correction. Part of the difficulty stems from another of the key properties of quantum systems: Superpositions can only be sustained as long as you dont measure the qubits value. If you make a measurement, the superposition collapses to a definite value: 1 or 0. So how can you find out if a qubit has an error if you dont know what state it is in?

One ingenious scheme involves looking indirectly, by coupling the qubit to another ancilla qubit that doesnt take part in the calculation but that can be probed without collapsing the state of the main qubit itself. Its complicated to implement, though. Such solutions mean that, to construct a genuine logical qubit on which computation with error correction can be performed, you need many physical qubits.

How many? Quantum theorist Aln Aspuru-Guzik of Harvard University estimates that around 10,000 of todays physical qubits would be needed to make a single logical qubita totally impractical number. If the qubits get much better, he said, this number could come down to a few thousand or even hundreds. Eisert is less pessimistic, saying that on the order of 800 physical qubits might already be enough, but even so he agrees that the overhead is heavy, and for the moment we need to find ways of coping with error-prone qubits.

An alternative to correcting errors is avoiding them or canceling out their influence: so-called error mitigation. Researchers at IBM, for example, are developing schemes for figuring out mathematically how much error is likely to have been incurred in a computation and then extrapolating the output of a computation to the zero noise limit.

Some researchers think that the problem of error correction will prove intractable and will prevent quantum computers from achieving the grand goals predicted for them. The task of creating quantum error-correcting codes is harder than the task of demonstrating quantum supremacy, said mathematician Gil Kalai of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. And he adds that devices without error correction are computationally very primitive, and primitive-based supremacy is not possible. In other words, youll never do better than classical computers while youve still got errors.

Others believe the problem will be cracked eventually. According to Jay Gambetta, a quantum information scientist at IBMs Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Our recent experiments at IBM have demonstrated the basic elements of quantum error correction on small devices, paving the way towards larger-scale devices where qubits can reliably store quantum information for a long period of time in the presence of noise. Even so, he admits that a universal fault-tolerant quantum computer, which has to use logical qubits, is still a long way off. Such developments make Childs cautiously optimistic. Im sure well see improved experimental demonstrations of [error correction], but I think it will be quite a while before we see it used for a real computation, he said.

For the time being, quantum computers are going to be error-prone, and the question is how to live with that. At IBM, researchers are talking about approximate quantum computing as the way the field will look in the near term: finding ways of accommodating the noise.

This calls for algorithms that tolerate errors, getting the correct result despite them. Its a bit like working out the outcome of an election regardless of a few wrongly counted ballot papers. A sufficiently large and high-fidelity quantum computation should have some advantage [over a classical computation] even if it is not fully fault-tolerant, said Gambetta.

Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine

One of the most immediate error-tolerant applications seems likely to be of more value to scientists than to the world at large: to simulate stuff at the atomic level. (This, in fact, was the motivation that led Feynman to propose quantum computing in the first place.) The equations of quantum mechanics prescribe a way to calculate the propertiessuch as stability and chemical reactivityof a molecule such as a drug. But they cant be solved classically without making lots of simplifications.

In contrast, the quantum behavior of electrons and atoms, said Childs, is relatively close to the native behavior of a quantum computer. So one could then construct an exact computer model of such a molecule. Many in the community, including me, believe that quantum chemistry and materials science will be one of the first useful applications of such devices, said Aspuru-Guzik, who has been at the forefront of efforts to push quantum computing in this direction.

Quantum simulations are proving their worth even on the very small quantum computers available so far. A team of researchers including Aspuru-Guzik has developed an algorithm that they call the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), which can efficiently find the lowest-energy states of molecules even with noisy qubits. So far it can only handle very small molecules with few electrons, which classical computers can already simulate accurately. But the capabilities are getting better, as Gambetta and coworkers showed last September when they used a 6-qubit device at IBM to calculate the electronic structures of molecules, including lithium hydride and beryllium hydride. The work was a significant leap forward for the quantum regime, according to physical chemist Markus Reiher of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. The use of the VQE for the simulation of small molecules is a great example of the possibility of near-term heuristic algorithms, said Gambetta.

But even for this application, Aspuru-Guzik confesses that logical qubits with error correction will probably be needed before quantum computers truly begin to surpass classical devices. I would be really excited when error-corrected quantum computing begins to become a reality, he said.

If we had more than 200 logical qubits, we could do things in quantum chemistry beyond standard approaches, Reiher adds. And if we had about 5,000 such qubits, then the quantum computer would be transformative in this field.

Despite the challenges of reaching those goals, the fast growth of quantum computers from 5 to 50 qubits in barely more than a year has raised hopes. But we shouldnt get too fixated on these numbers, because they tell only part of the story. What matters is not justor even mainlyhow many qubits you have, but how good they are, and how efficient your algorithms are.

Any quantum computation has to be completed before decoherence kicks in and scrambles the qubits. Typically, the groups of qubits assembled so far have decoherence times of a few microseconds. The number of logic operations you can carry out during that fleeting moment depends on how quickly the quantum gates can be switchedif this time is too slow, it really doesnt matter how many qubits you have at your disposal. The number of gate operations needed for a calculation is called its depth: Low-depth (shallow) algorithms are more feasible than high-depth ones, but the question is whether they can be used to perform useful calculations.

Whats more, not all qubits are equally noisy. In theory it should be possible to make very low-noise qubits from so-called topological electronic states of certain materials, in which the shape of the electron states used for encoding binary information confers a kind of protection against random noise. Researchers at Microsoft, most prominently, are seeking such topological states in exotic quantum materials, but theres no guarantee that theyll be found or will be controllable.

Researchers at IBM have suggested that the power of a quantum computation on a given device be expressed as a number called the quantum volume, which bundles up all the relevant factors: number and connectivity of qubits, depth of algorithm, and other measures of the gate quality, such as noisiness. Its really this quantum volume that characterizes the power of a quantum computation, and Gambetta said that the best way forward right now is to develop quantum-computational hardware that increases the available quantum volume.

This is one reason why the much vaunted notion of quantum supremacy is more slippery than it seems. The image of a 50-qubit (or so) quantum computer outperforming a state-of-the-art supercomputer sounds alluring, but it leaves a lot of questions hanging. Outperforming for which problem? How do you know the quantum computer has got the right answer if you cant check it with a tried-and-tested classical device? And how can you be sure that the classical machine wouldnt do better if you could find the right algorithm?

So quantum supremacy is a concept to handle with care. Some researchers prefer now to talk about quantum advantage, which refers to the speedup that quantum devices offer without making definitive claims about what is best. An aversion to the word supremacy has also arisen because of the racial and political implications.

Whatever you choose to call it, a demonstration that quantum computers can do things beyond current classical means would be psychologically significant for the field. Demonstrating an unambiguous quantum advantage will be an important milestone, said Eisertit would prove that quantum computers really can extend what is technologically possible.

That might still be more of a symbolic gesture than a transformation in useful computing resources. But such things may matter, because if quantum computing is going to succeed, it wont be simply by the likes of IBM and Google suddenly offering their classy new machines for sale. Rather, itll happen through an interactive and perhaps messy collaboration between developers and users, and the skill set will evolve in the latter only if they have sufficient faith that the effort is worth it. This is why both IBM and Google are keen to make their devices available as soon as theyre ready. As well as a 16-qubit IBM Q experience offered to anyone who registers online, IBM now has a 20-qubit version for corporate clients, including JP Morgan Chase, Daimler, Honda, Samsung and the University of Oxford. Not only will that help clients discover whats in it for them; it should create a quantum-literate community of programmers who will devise resources and solve problems beyond what any individual company could muster.

For quantum computing to take traction and blossom, we must enable the world to use and to learn it, said Gambetta. This period is for the world of scientists and industry to focus on getting quantum-ready.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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The Era of Quantum Computing Is Here. Outlook: Cloudy | WIRED

Censorship in Turkey – Wikipedia

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Censorship in Turkey is regulated by domestic and international legislation, the latter (in theory) taking precedence over domestic law, according to Article 90 of the Constitution of Turkey (so amended in 2004).[1]

Despite legal provisions, media freedom in Turkey has steadily deteriorated from 2010 onwards, with a precipitous decline following the attempted coup in July 2016.[2][3] President Tayyip Erdoan has arrested hundreds of journalists, closed or taken over dozens of media outlets, and prevented journalists and their families from traveling. By some accounts, Turkey currently accounts for one-third of all journalists imprisoned around the world.[4]

Since 2013, Freedom House ranks Turkey as "Not Free".[2] Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey at the 149th place out of over 180 countries, between Mexico and DR Congo, with a score of 44.16.[5] In the third quarter of 2015, the independent Turkish press agency Bianet recorded a strengthening of attacks on the opposition media during the AKP interim government.[6] Bianet's final 2015 monitoring report confirmed this trend and underlined that once regained majority after the AKP interim government period, the Turkish government further intensified its pressure on the country's media.[7]

According to Freedom House,

The government enacted new laws that expanded both the states power to block websites and the surveillance capability of the National Intelligence Organization (MT). Journalists faced unprecedented legal obstacles as the courts restricted reporting on corruption and national security issues. The authorities also continued to aggressively use the penal code, criminal defamation laws, and the antiterrorism law to crack down on journalists and media outlets. Verbal attacks on journalists by senior politiciansincluding Recep Tayyip Erdoan, the incumbent prime minister who was elected president in Augustwere often followed by harassment and even death threats against the targeted journalists on social media. Meanwhile, the government continued to use the financial and other leverage it holds over media owners to influence coverage of politically sensitive issues. Several dozen journalists, including prominent columnists, lost their jobs as a result of such pressure during the year, and those who remained had to operate in a climate of increasing self-censorship and media polarization.[2]

In 2012 and 2013 the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) ranked Turkey as the worst journalist jailer in the world (ahead of Iran and China), with 49 journalists sitting in jail in 2012 and 40 in 2013.[8][9] Twitter's 2014 Transparency Report showed that Turkey filed over five times more content removal requests to Twitter than any other country in the second half of 2014, with requests rising another 150% in 2015.[10][11]

During its 12-year rule, the ruling AKP party has gradually expanded its control over media.[12] Today, numerous newspapers, TV channels and internet portals dubbed as Yanda Medya ("Partisan Media") or Havuz Medyas ("Pool Media") continue their heavy pro-government propaganda.[13] Several media groups receive preferential treatment in exchange for AKP-friendly editorial policies.[14] Some of these media organizations were acquired by AKP-friendly businesses through questionable funds and processes.[15] Media not friendly to AKP, on the other hand, are threatened with intimidation, inspections and fines.[16] These media group owners face similar threats to their other businesses.[17] An increasing number of columnists have been fired for criticizing the AKP leadership.[18][19][20][21]

Regional censorship predates the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. On 15 February 1857, the Ottoman Empire issued law governing printing houses ("Basmahane Nizamnamesi"); books first had to be shown to the governor, who forwarded them to commission for education ("Maarif Meclisi") and the police. If no objection was made, the Sultanate would then inspect them. Without censure from the Sultan books could not be legally issued.[22] On 24 July 1908, at the beginning of the Second Constitutional Era, censorship was lifted; however, newspapers publishing stories that were deemed a danger to interior or exterior State security were closed.[22] Between 1909 and 1913 four journalists were killedHasan Fehmi, Ahmet Samim, Zeki Bey, and Hasan Tahsin (Silah).[23]

Following the Turkish War of Independence, the Sheikh Said rebellion was used as pretext for implementing martial law ("Takrir-i Skun Yasas") on March 4, 1925; newspapers, including Tevhid-i Efkar, Sebl Reat, Aydnlk, Resimli Ay, and Vatan, were closed and several journalists arrested and tried at the Independence Courts.[22]

During World War II (19391945) many newspapers were ordered shut, including the dailies Cumhuriyet (5 times, for 5 months and 9 days), Tan (7 times, for 2 months and 13 days), and Vatan (9 times, for 7 months and 24 days).[22]

When the Democratic Party under Adnan Menderes came to power in 1950, censorship entered a new phase. The Press Law changed, sentences and fines were increased. Several newspapers were ordered shut, including the dailies Ulus (unlimited ban), Hrriyet, Tercman, and Hergn (two weeks each). In April 1960, a so-called investigation commission ("Tahkikat Komisyonu") was established by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. It was given the power to confiscate publications, close papers and printing houses. Anyone not following the decisions of the commission were subject to imprisonment, between one and three years.[22]

Freedom of speech was heavily restricted after the 1980 military coup headed by General Kenan Evren. During the 1980s and 1990s, broaching the topics of secularism, minority rights (in particular the Kurdish issue), and the role of the military in politics risked reprisal.[24][24]

Article 8 of the Anti-Terror Law (Law 3713), slightly amended in 1995 and later repealed,[25] imposed three-year prison sentences for "separatist propaganda." Despite its name, the Anti-Terror Law punished many non-violent offences.[24] Pacifists have been imprisoned under Article 8. For example, publisher Fatih Tas was prosecuted in 2002 under Article 8 at Istanbul State Security Court for translating and publishing writings by Noam Chomsky, summarizing the history of human rights violations in southeast Turkey; he was acquitted, however, in February 2002.[24] Prominent female publisher Ayse Nur Zarakolu, who was described by The New York Times as "[o]ne of the most relentless challengers to Turkey's press laws", was imprisoned under Article 8 four times.[26][27]

Since 2011, the AKP government has increased restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of the press and internet use,[28] and television content,[29] as well as the right to free assembly.[30] It has also developed links with media groups, and used administrative and legal measures (including, in one case, a $2.5 billion tax fine) against critical media groups and critical journalists: "over the last decade the AKP has built an informal, powerful, coalition of party-affiliated businessmen and media outlets whose livelihoods depend on the political order that Erdogan is constructing. Those who resist do so at their own risk."[31] Since his time as prime minister through to his presidency Erdogan has sought to control the press, forbidding coverage, restricting internet use and stepping up repression on journalists and media outlets.[32]

Foreign media noted that, particularly in the early days (31 May 2 June 2013) of the Gezi Park protests, the events attracted relatively little mainstream media coverage in Turkey, due to either government pressure on media groups' business interests or simply ideological sympathy by media outlets.[33][34] The BBC noted that while some outlets are aligned with the AKP or are personally close to Erdoan, "most mainstream media outlets such as TV news channels HaberTurk and NTV, and the major centrist daily Milliyet are loath to irritate the government because their owners' business interests at times rely on government support. All of these have tended to steer clear of covering the demonstrations."[34] Ulusal Kanal and Halk TV provided extensive live coverage from Gezi park.[35]

Turkeys Journalists Union estimated that at least "72 journalists had been fired or forced to take leave or had resigned in the past six weeks since the start of the unrest" in late May 2013 due to pressure from the AKP government. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) party, said 64 journalists have been imprisoned and We are now facing a new period where the media is controlled by the government and the police and where most media bosses take orders from political authorities. The government says most of the imprisoned journalists have been detained for serious crimes, like membership in an armed terrorist group, that are not related to journalism.[36][37]

Bianet's periodical reports on freedom of the press in Turkey published in October 2015 recorded a strengthening of attacks on the opposition media during the AKP interim government in the third quarter of 2015. Bianet recorded the censorship of 101 websites, 40 Twitter accounts, 178 news; attacks against 21 journalists, three media organs, and one printing house; civil pursuits against 28 journalists; and the six-fold increase of arrests of media representatives, with 24 journalists and 9 distributors imprisoned.[38] The increased criminalisation of the media follows the freezing of the Kurdish peace process and the failure of AKP to obtain an outright majority at the June 2015 election and to achieve the presidentialisation of the political system. Several journalists and editors are tried for being allegedly members of unlawful organisations, linked to either Kurds or the Glen movement, others for alleged insults to religion and to the President. In 2015 Cumhuriyet daily and Doan Holding were investigated for "terror", "espionage" and "insult". On the date of Bianet's publication, 61 people, of whom 37 journalists, were convict, defendant or suspect for having insulted or personally attacked the then-PM, now-President Recep Tayyip Erdoan. The European Court of Human Rights condemned Turkey for violation of the freedom of expression in the Abdurrahman Dilipak case (Sledgehammer investigation),[39][40] and the Turkish Constitutional Court upheld the violation of the freedom of expression of five persons, including a journalist. RTK could not yet choose its President; it still warned companies five times and fined them six times. The Supreme Electoral Council ordered 65 channels twice to stop broadcasting the results of the June 2015 election before the end of the publishing ban.

Attack to media freedom went far beyond the AKP interim government period. The January 2016 updated Bianet's report confirmed this alarming trend, underlining that the whole 2014 figure of arrested journalists increased in 2015, reaching the number of 31 journalists arrested (22 in 2014) [41] Once regained the majority on November 1, 2015 elections, the Turkish government intensified the pressure on the country's media, for example by banning some TV channels, in particular those linked to the Fethullah Glen movement, from digital platforms and by seizing control of their broadcasting. In November 2015, Can Dndar, Cumhuriyet's editor in chief and its Ankara representative Erdem Gl were arrested on charges of belonging to a terror organisation, espionage and for having allegedly disclosed confidential information. Investigation against the two journalists were launched after the newspaper documented the transfer of weapons from Turkey to Syria in trucks of the National Intelligence Organization previously involved in the MT trucks scandal. Dndar and Gl were released in February 2016 when the Supreme Court decided that their detention was undue.[42] In July 2016, in the occasion of the launch of the campaign "I'm a journalist", Mehmet Koksal, project officer of the European Federation of Journalists declared that "Turkey has the largest number of journalists in jail out of all the countries in the Council of Europe.[43]

The situation further deteriorated as consequence of the 2016 Turkish coup d'tat attempt of 15 July 2016 and the subsequent government reaction, leading to an increase of attacks targeting the media in Turkey. Mustafa Cambaz, a photojournalist working for the daily Yeni Safak was killed during the coup. Turkish soldiers attempting to overthrow the government took control of several newsrooms, including the Ankara-based headquarter of the state broadcaster TRT. They also forced a TV channel's anchor to read a statement at gunpoint while the member of the editorial board were held hostage and threatened. Also, soldiers seized the offices in Istanbul of Doan Media Center which hosted several media outles, including Hurriyet daily newspaper and the private TV station CNN Trk, holding journalists and other professionals hostage for many hours during the night. During the coup's night, in the streets of Istanbul, a photojournalist working for Hurriyet and the Associated Press was assaulted by civilians that were demonstrating against the coup.[44] In the following days, after the government regained power, the state regulatory authority named Information Technologies and Communications Authority shut down 20 independent online news portals. On July 19, the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council decided to revoke the licence of 24 TV channels and radio stations for being allegedly connected to the Glen community, without providing much details on this decision. Also, following the decision of declaring the state of emergency for three months taken on 21 July,[45] a series of limitation to freedom of expression and freedom of the media have been imposed. The measures within the regime of emergency include the possibility to ban printing, copying, publishing and distributing newspapers, magazines, books and leaflets.[46]

An editorial criticizing press censorship published May 22, 2015[47] and inclusion of Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as one of a rising class of "soft" dictators in an op-ed published in May 2015 in The New York Times[48] resulted in a strong reaction by Erdogan.[49] In an interview Dndar gave in July 2016, before the coup attempt and the government reaction, the journalist stated that "Turkey is going through its darkest period, journalism-wise. In has never been an easy country for journalists, but I think today it has reached its lowest point and is experiencing unprecedented repression".[50]

The Constitution of Turkey, at art. 28, states that the press is free and shall not be censored. Expressions of non-violent opinion are safeguarded by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, ratified by Turkey in 1954, and various provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, signed by Turkey in 2000.[24] Many Turkish citizens convicted under the laws mentioned below have applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and won their cases.[24]

Yet, Constitutional and international guarantees are undermined by restrictive provisions in the Criminal Code, Criminal Procedure Code, and anti-terrorism laws, effectively leaving prosecutors and judges with ample discretion to repress ordinary journalistic activities.[2] The 2017 Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights' report on freedom of expression and media freedom in Turkey reiterated that censorship problems stem mainly from the Turkish Criminal Code and the Turkish Anti- Terrorism Law No. 3713.[51][52][53] Prosecutors continued to bring a number of cases for terrorism or membership of an armed organization mainly based on certain statements of the accused, as coinciding with the aims of such organization.[52]

Beside the Article 301, amended in 2008, and Article 312, more than 300 provisions constrained freedom of expression, religion, and association, according to the Turkish Human Rights Association (2002).[24] Article No. 299 of the Turkish Criminal Code provides for criminal defamation of the Head of the State. which is being increasingly enforced. 18 persons were in prison for this offence as of June 2016.[52][53] Article No. 295 of the Criminal Code is increasingly being enforced as well, imposing a press silence (Yayn Yasa) on topics of relevant public interest such as terrorist attacks and bloody blasts.[54] The silence can be imposed on TVs, print media, radios as well as to Internet content, hosting and service providers. Violating this norm can lead up to three years of detention.[55]

Many of the repressive provisions found in the Press Law, the Political Parties Law, the Trade Union Law, the Law on Associations, and other legislation were imposed by the military junta after its coup in 1980. As to the Internet, the relevant Law is Law No. 5651 of 2007.[56]

According to the Council of Europe Commissioner and to the Venice Commission for Democracy through Law, the decrees issued under the state of emergency since July 2016, conferred an almost limitless discretionay power to the Turkish executive to apply sweeping misure against NGOs, the media and the public sector.[52][57][58] Specifically, many NGOs were closed, the media organizations seized or shut down and public sector employees as well as journalists and media workers arrested or intimidated.[52]

Article 301 is a provision in the Turkish penal code that, since 2005 made it a punishable offense to insult Turkishness or various official Turkish institutions. Charges were brought in more than 60 cases, some of which were high-profile.[59]

The article was amended in 2008, including changing "Turkishness" into "the Turkish nation", reducing maximum prison terms to 2 years, and making it obligatory to get the approval of the Minister of Justice before filing a case.[60][61] Changes were deemed "largely cosmetic" by Freedom House,[2] although the number of prosecutions dropped. Although only few persons were convicted, trials under Art. 301 are seen by human rights watchdogs as a punitive measure in themselves, as time-consuming and expensive, thus exerting a chilling effect on free speech.[2]

Article 312 of the criminal code imposes three-year prison sentences for incitement to commit an offence and incitement to religious or racial hatred. In 1999 the mayor of Istanbul and current president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment under Article 312 for reading a few lines from a poem that had been authorized by the Ministry of Education for use in schools, and consequently had to resign.[24] In 2000 the chairman of the Human Rights Association, Akin Birdal, was imprisoned under Article 312 for a speech in which he called for "peace and understanding" between Kurds and Turks,[24] and thereafter forced to resign, as the Law on Associations forbids persons who breach this and several other laws from serving as association officials.[24] On February 6, 2002, a "mini-democracy package" was voted by Parliament, altering wording of Art. 312. Under the revised text, incitement can only be punished if it presents "a possible threat to public order."[24] The package also reduced the prison sentences for Article 159 of the criminal code from a maximum of six years to three years. None of the other laws had been amended or repealed as of 2002.[24]

Defamation and libel remain criminal charges in Turkey (Article 125 of the Penal Code). They often result in fines and jail terms. Bianet counted 10 journalists convicted of defamation, blasphemy or incitement to hatred in 2014.[2]

Article 216 of the Penal Code, banning incitement of hatred and violence on grounds of ethnicity, class or religion (with penalties of up to 3 years), is also used against journalists and media workers.[2]

Article 314 of the Penal Code is often invoked against journalists, particularly Kurds and leftists, due to its broad definition of terrorism and of membership in an armed organisation. It carries a minimum sentence of 7,5 years. According to the OSCE, most of 22 jailed journalsts as of June 2014 had been charged or condemned based on Art. 314.

Article 81 of the Political Parties Law (imposed by the military junta in 1982) forbids parties from using any language other than Turkish in their written material or at any formal or public meetings. This law is strictly enforced.[24][bettersourceneeded] Kurdish deputy Leyla Zana was jailed in 1994, ostensibly for membership to the PKK.

In 1991, laws outlawing communist (Articles 141 and 142 of the criminal code) and Islamic fundamentalist ideas (Article 163 of the criminal code) were repealed.[24] This package of legal changes substantially freed up expression of leftist thought, but simultaneously created a new offence of "separatist propaganda" under Article 8 of the Anti-Terror Law.[24] Prosecutors also began to use Article 312 of the criminal code (on religious or racial hatred) in place of Article 163.[24]

The 1991 antiterrorism law (the Law on the Fight against Terrorism) has been invoked to charge and imprison journalists for activities that Human Rights Watch define as nonviolent political association and speech. The European Court of Human Rights has in multiple occasions found the law to amount to censorship and breach of freedom of expression.[2]

Constitutional amendments adopted in October 2001 removed mention of "language forbidden by law" from legal provisions concerning free expression. Thereafter, university students began a campaign for optional courses in Kurdish to be put on the university curriculum, triggering more than 1,000 detentions throughout Turkey during December and January 2002.[24] Actions have also been taken against the Laz minority.[24] According to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey only recognizes the language rights of the Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities.[24] The government ignores Article 39(4) of the Treaty of Lausanne, which states that: "[n]o restrictions shall be imposed on the free use by any Turkish national of any language in private intercourse, in commerce, religion, in the press or in publications of any kind or at public meetings."[24][bettersourceneeded] Pressured by the EU, Turkey has promised to review the Broadcasting Law.[24]

Other legal changes in August 2002 allowed for the teaching of languages, including Kurdish.[68] However, limitations on Kurdish broadcasting continue to be strong: according to the EU Commission (2006), "time restrictions apply, with the exception of films and music programmes.[bettersourceneeded] All broadcasts, except songs, must be subtitled or translated in Turkish, which makes live broadcasts technically cumbersome. Educational programmes teaching the Kurdish language are not allowed. The Turkish Public Television (TRT) has continued broadcasting in five languages including Kurdish. However, the duration and scope of TRT's national broadcasts in five languages is very limited. No private broadcaster at national level has applied for broadcasting in languages other than Turkish since the enactment of the 2004 legislation."[69][bettersourceneeded] TRT broadcasts in Kurdish (as well as in Arab and Circassian dialect) are symbolic,[70][bettersourceneeded] compared to satellite broadcasts by channels such as controversial Roj TV, based in Denmark.

In 2003 Turkey adopted a freedom of information law. Yet, state secrets that may harm national security, economic interests, state investigations, or intelligence activity, or that violate the private life of the individual, are exempt from requests. This has made accessing official information particularly difficult.[2]

Amendments in 2013 (the Fourth Judicial Reform package), spurred by the EU accession process and a renewed Kurdish peace process, amended several laws. Antiterrorism regulations were tweaked so that publication of statements of illegal groups would only be a crime if the statement included coercion, violence, or genuine threats. Yet, the reform was deemed as not reaching international human rights standards, since it did not touch upon problematic norms such as the Articles 125, 301 and 314 of the Penal Code.[2] In 2014 a Fifth Judicial Reform package was passed, which among others reduced the maximum period pretrial detention from 10 to 5 years. Consequently, several journalists were released from jail, pending trial.[2]

New laws in 2014 were nevertheless detrimental to freedom of speech.[2]

Turkey is one of the Council of Europe member states with the greatest number of ECHR-recognised violations of rights included in the European Convention on Human Rights. Of these, several concern Article 10 of the Convention, on freedom of expression.

The physical safety of journalists in Turkey is at risk.

Several journalists died in the 1990s at the height of the Turkey-PKK conflict. Soon after the pro-Kurdish press had started to publish the first daily newspaper by the name of "zgr Gndem" (Free Agenda) killings of Kurdish journalists started. Hardly any of them has been clarified or resulted in sanctions for the assailants. "Murder by unknown assailants" (tr: faili mehul) is the term used in Turkish to indicate that the perpetrators were not identified because of them being protected by the State and cases of disappearance. The list of names of distributors of zgr Gndem and its successors that were killed (while the perpetrators mostly remained unknown) includes 18 names.[80] Among the 33 journalists that were killed between 1990 and 1995 most were working for the so-called Kurdish Free Press.

The killings of journalists in Turkey since 1995 are more or less individual cases. Most prominent among the victims is Hrant Dink, killed in 2007, but the death of Metin Gktepe also raised great concern, since police officers beat him to death. The death of Metin Alata in 2010 is also a source of disagreement - while the autopsy claimed it was suicide, his family and colleagues demanded an investigation. He had formerly received death threats and had been violently assaulted.[81] Since 2014, several Syrian journalists who were working from Turkey and reporting on the rise of Daesh have been assassinated.

In 2014, journalists suffered obstruction, tear gas injuries, and physical assault by the police in several instances: while covering the February protests against internet censorship, the May Day demonstrations, as well as the Gezi Park protests anniversaries (when CNN correspondent Ivan Watson was shortly detained and roughed up). Turkish security forces fired tear gas at journalists reporting from the border close to the Syrian town of Kobane in October.[2]

Despite the 2004 Press Law foresees only fines, other restrictive laws have led to several journalists and writers being put behind bars. According to a report published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least seven journalists remained in prison by the end of 2014. The independent Turkish press agency Bianet counted 22 journalists and 10 publishers in jail - most of them Kurds, charged with association with an illegal organisation.[2]

In 2016, Turkey became the biggest jail for journalists. As to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) rank, Turkey was the first country ever to jail 81 journalists, editors and media practitioners in one year.[82]

According to a CPJ report, Turkish authorities are engaging in widespread criminal prosecution and jailing of journalists, and are applying other forms of severe pressure to promote self-censorship in the press. The CPJ has found highly repressive laws, particularly in the penal code and anti-terror law; a criminal procedure code that greatly favors the state; and a harsh anti-press tone set at the highest levels of government. Turkeys press freedom situation has reached a crisis point.[83] This reports mentions 3 types of journalists targeted:

Kemalist and / or nationalist journalists were arrested on charges referring to the Ergenekon case and several left-wing and Kurdish journalists were arrested on charges of engaging in propaganda for the PKK listed as a terrorist organization. In short, writing an article or making a speech can still lead to a court case and a long prison sentence for membership or leadership of a terrorist organisation. Together with possible pressure on the press by state officials and possible firing of critical journalists, this situation can lead to a widespread self-censorship.[84]

In November 2013, three journalists were sentenced to life in prison as senior members of the illegal MarxistLeninist Communist Party - among them the founder of zgr Radio, Fsun Erdoan. They had been arrested in 2006 and held until 2014, when they were released following legal reforms on pre-trial detention terms. An appeal is still pending.[2]

In February 2017, German-Turkish journalist Deniz Ycel was jailed in Istanbul.[85][86][87]

On April 10, 2017, the Italian journalist Gabriele Del Grande was arrested in Hatay and jailed in Mugla.[88] He was in Turkey in order to write a book on the war in Syria. He went on hunger strike on April 18, 2017.[88]

Defamation and libel remain criminal charges in Turkey. They often result in fines and jail terms. Bianet counted 10 journalists convicted of defamation, blasphemy or incitement to hatred in 2014.[2]

Courts' activities on media-related cases, particularly those concerning the corruption scandals surrounding Erdoan and his close circle, have cast doubts on the independence and impartiality of the judiciary in Turkey. The Turkish Journalists' Association and the Turkish Journalists' Union counted 60 new journalists under prosecution for this single issue in 2013, for a total number of over 100 lawsuits.[2]

Particularly since 2013, the President Erdoan and other governmental officials have resorted to hostile public rhetoric against independent journalists and media outlets, which is then echoed in the pro-governmental press and TV, accusing foreign media and interest groups of conspiring to bring down his government.[2]

Tukish authorities have been reported as denying access to events and information to journalists for political reasons.[2]

Since 2011, the AKP government has increased restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of the press and internet use,[28] and television content,[29] as well as the right to free assembly.[30] It has also developed links with media groups, and used administrative and legal measures (including, in one case, a billion tax fine) against critical media groups and critical journalists: "over the last decade the AKP has built an informal, powerful, coalition of party-affiliated businessmen and media outlets whose livelihoods depend on the political order that Erdogan is constructing. Those who resist do so at their own risk."[31]

These behaviours became particularly prominent in 2013 in the context of the Turkish media coverage of the 2013 protests in Turkey. The BBC noted that while some outlets are aligned with the AKP or are personally close to Erdogan, "most mainstream media outlets - such as TV news channels HaberTurk and NTV, and the major centrist daily Milliyet - are loth to irritate the government because their owners' business interests at times rely on government support. All of these have tended to steer clear of covering the demonstrations."[34] Few channels provided live coverage one that did was Halk TV.[35] Several private media outlets were reported as engaging in self-censorship due to political pressures. The 2014 local and presidential elections exposed the extent of biased coverage by progovernment media.[2]

The state-run Anadolu Agency and the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) have also been criticized by media outlets and opposition parties, for acting more and more like a mouthpiece for the ruling AKP, a stance in stark violation of their requirement as public institutions to report and serve the public in an objective way.[95]

In 2014 the TRT, the state broadcaster, as well as the state-owned Anadolu Agency, were subject to stricter controls. Even RTK warned TRT for disproportionate coverage of the AKP; the Supreme Board of Elections fined the public broadcaster for not reporting at all on presidential candidates other than Erdoan, between August 6 and 8. The Council of Europe observers reported concern about the unfair media advantage for the incumbent ruling party.[2]

During its 12-year rule, the ruling AKP has gradually expanded its control over media.[12] Today, numerous newspapers, TV channels and internet portals also dubbed as Yanda Medya ("Partisan Media") or Havuz Medyas ("Pool Media") continue their heavy pro-government propaganda.[13] Several media groups receive preferential treatment in exchange for AKP-friendly editorial policies.[14] Some of these media organizations were acquired by AKP-friendly businesses through questionable funds and processes.[15]

Leaked telephone calls between high ranking AKP officials and businessmen indicate that government officials collected money from businessmen in order to create a "pool media" that will support AKP government at any cost.[96][97] Arbitrary tax penalties are assessed to force newspapers into bankruptcyafter which they emerge, owned by friends of the president. According to a recent investigation by Bloomberg,[98] Erdogan forced a sale of the once independent daily Sabah to a consortium of businessmen led by his son-in-law.[99]

Leading pro-AKP newspapers are Yeni afak, Akit, Sabah, Star, Takvim, Akam, Trkiye, Milli Gazete, Gne, and Milat, among others. Leading pro-AKP TV channels are Kanal 7, 24, lke TV, TRT, ATV, TGRT, Sky Turk 360, TV Net, NTV, TV8, Beyaz TV, Kanaltrk, and Kanal A. Leading pro-government internet portals are Haber 7, Habervaktim and En Son Haber. Leading pro-AKP news agencies are state owned Anadolu Agency and hlas News Agency.

Major media outlets in Turkey belong to certain group of influential businessman or holdings. In nearly all cases, these holding companies earn only a small fraction of their revenue from their media outlets, with the bulk of profits coming from other interests, such as construction, mining, finance, or energy.[100] Therefore, media groups usually practice self-censorship to protect their wider business interests.

Media not friendly to the AKP are threatened with intimidation, inspections and fines.[16] These media group owners face similar threats to their other businesses.[17] An increasing number of columnists have been fired for criticizing the AKP leadership.[18][19][20][21]

In addition to the censorship practiced by pro-government media such as Sabah, Yeni afak, and Star, the majority of other newspapers, such as Szc, Zaman, Milliyet, and Radikal have been reported as practicing self-censorship to protect their business interests and using the market share (65% of the total newspapers sold daily in Turkey as opposed to pro-government media[101]) to avoid retaliatory action by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Recep Tayyip Erdoan.[102]

During the period before the Turkish local elections of 2014, a number of phone calls between prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoan and media executives were leaked to the internet.[103] Most of the recordings were between Edoan and Habertrk newspaper & TV channel executive Fatih Sara. In those recordings, it can be heard that Erdoan was calling Fatih Sara when he was unhappy about a news item published in the newspaper or broadcast on TV. He was demanding Fatih Sara to be careful next time or censor any particular topics he is not happy about.[104] At another leaked call, Erdoan gets very upset and angry over a news published at Milliyet newspaper and reacts harshly to Erdoan Demirren, owner of the newspaper. Later, it can be heard that Demirren is reduced to tears.[105] During a call between Erdoan and editor-in-chief of Star daily Mustafa Karaaliolu, Erdoan lashes out at Karaaliolu for allowing Mehmet Altan to continue writing such critical opinions about a speech the prime minister had delivered recently. In the second conversation, Erdoan is heard grilling Karaaliolu over his insistence on keeping Hidayet efkatli Tuksal, a female columnist in the paper despite her critical expressions about him.[106] Later, both Altan and Tuksal got fired from Star newspaper. Erdoan acknowledged that he called media executives.[107]

In 2014, direct pressures from the executive and the Presidency have led to the dismissal of media workers for their critical articles. Bianet records over 339 journalists and media workers being laid off or forced to quit in the year - several of them due to political pressures.[2]

Trksat is the sole communications satellite operator in Turkey. There have been allegations that TV channels critical of the AKP party and President Erdoan have been removed from Trksat's infrastructure, and that Trksat's executive board is dominated by pro-Erdoan figures.

In October 2015 a video recording emerged of a 2 February 2015 conversation between Mustafa Varank, advisor to President Erdoan and board member of Trksat, and some journalists in which Varank states that he had urged Trksat to drop certain TV channels because "they are airing reports that harm the government's prestige". Later that year the TV channels Irmak TV, Bugn TV, and Kanaltrk, known for their critical stance against the government, were notified by Trksat that their contracts would not be renewed as of November 2015, and were told to remove their platforms from Trksat's infrastructure.[135]

Trksat dropped TV channels critical of the government from its platform in November 2015. The broadcasting of TV stationsincluding Samanyolu TV, Mehtap TV, S Haber and Radio Cihanthat are critical of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government were halted by Trksat because of a legal obligation to the order of a prosecutor's office, based on the suspicion that the channels support a terrorist organization. Among the TV and radio stations removed were Samanyolu Europe, Ebru TV, Mehtap TV, Samanyolu Haber, Irmak TV, Yumurcak TV, Dnya TV, MC TV, Samanyolu Africa, Tuna Shopping TV, Bur FM, Samanyolu Haber Radio, Mehtap Radio and Radio Cihan.[136]

The critical Bugn and Kanaltrk TV channels, which were seized by a government-initiated move in October 2015, were also dropped from Trksat in November 2015. Later on 1 March 2016 these two seized channels closed due to financial reasons by government trustees.[137]

In March 2016 the two TV channels from other wings of the politics were also removed from Trksat, namely, Turkish Nationalist Benguturk and Kurdish Nationalist IMC TV.[138]

On September 25, 2017, Turkey decided to remove broadcaster Rudaw Media Network (Rudaw), which is affiliated to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, from its satellite broadcasting on the same day voting took place on an independence referendum in the KRG.[139]

Censorship of sensitive topics in Turkey happens both online and offline. Kurdish issues, the Armenian genocide, as well as subjects controversial for Islam or the Turkish state are often censored. Enforcement remains arbitrary and unpredictable.[2] Also, defamation of the Head of the State is a crime provision increasingly used for censoring critical voices in Turkey.[53]

In the 2016 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, Turkey is ranked in the 151st place out of 178 countries.[140] The situation for free expression has always been troubled in Turkey.[141][142] The situation dramatically deteriorated after the 2013 Gezi protests,[143] reaching its peak after the July 15, 2016 coup attempt. From that moment on, a state of emergency is in force,[144] tens of thousand of journalists, academics, public officials and intellectuals have been arrested or charged, mainly with terrorist charges, sometimes following some statement or writing of them.[140]

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights' report on freedom of expression and media freedom in Turkey, after his 2016 visits to Turkey, noted that the violations to freedom of expression in Turkey have created a distinct chilling effect, manifesting in self- censorship both among the remaining media and among ordinary citizens.[52] In addition, the Commissioner wrote that the main obstacle to an improvement of the situation of freedom of expression and media freedom in Turkey is the lack of political will both to acknowledge and to address such problems.[52]

In 2017, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights noted that with regard to judicial harassment restricting freedom of expression the main issues consist in:[52]

As to January 18, 2017, more than 150 media outlets were closed and their assets liquidated by governmental decrees.[57][58][131] Under emergency decree No. 687 of February 9, 2017, Turkeys Saving Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF) will be authorized to sell companies seized by the state through the appointment of trustees.[132][133] Also, through the use of emergency decrees- such as Nos. 668 (July 27, 2016), 675 (October 29, 2016) and 677 (November 22, 2016), 178 media organizations were closed down being charged of having terrorist affiliations. As to November 2016, Twenty-four of these shut-down media organizations were radio stations, twenty- eight televisions, eighty newspapers.[134]

In 2014, Turkish regulators issued several reporting bans on public interest issues.[2]

In 2012, as part of the Third Reform Package, all previous bans on publications were cancelled unless renewed by court - which happened for most leftist and Kurdish publications.[2]

Academics are also affected by governments censorship. In this regard, the case of the Academics for Peace is particularly relevant:[65] on January 14, 2016, 27 academics were detained for interrogations after having signed a petition with more than other 1.000 people asking for Peace in the South- East of the country, where there are ongoing violent clashes between the Turkish Army and the PKK.[66] The academics accused the government of breaching international law. An investigation started upon those academics under charges of terrorism propaganda, incitement to hatred and enmity and for insulting the State under Article No. 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code.[67]

In television broadcasts, scenes displaying nudity, consumption of alcohol, smoking, drug usage and violence are commonly censored by blurring out respective areas.[145] TV channels also practice self-censorship of subtitles in order to avoid heavy fines from the Radio and Television Supreme Council (Radyo ve Televizyon st Kurulu,RTK). For example, CNBC-e channel usually translates the word gay as marginal.[146]

State agency RTK continues to impose a large number of closure orders on TV and radio stations on the grounds that they have made separatist broadcasts.[24]

Turkey's Internet censorship regime shifted from "moderate" to "severe" in late 2016 following a series of social media shutdowns, regional Internet blackouts and restrictions on VPN and Tor circumvention tools documented by independent digital rights watchdog Turkey Blocks.[172][173] Months earlier, human rights research group Freedom House had already downgraded its outlook of internet freedom in the country to "Not Free," noting in its report that the assessment was made before further restrictions following the abortive military coup in July.[174]

With regard to Internet censorship, in the 2017 Report on media freedom and freedom of expression in Turkey, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe found out:[52]

In earlier years, the Turkish government implemented legal and institutional reforms driven by the countrys ambitions to become a European Union member state. At the same time Turkey demonstrated its high sensitivity to defamation and other "inappropriate" online content, resulting in the closure of a number of local and international Web sites. All Internet traffic passes through Turk Telecoms infrastructure, allowing centralized control over online content and facilitating the implementation of shutdown decisions.[175][176]

In December 2010 the OpenNet Initiative, a non-partisan organization based in Canada and the United States that investigates, analyzes, and exposes Internet filtering and surveillance practices, classified Internet censorship in Turkey as selective (third lowest of four classifications) in the political, social, and Internet tools areas and found no evidence of censorship in the conflict/security area.[177] However, also in 2010, Reporters Without Borders added Turkey to its list of 16 countries "under surveillance" (the less serious of two Internet censorship lists that it maintains), saying:

The year 2010 was marked by the widely covered deblocking of the video-sharing website YouTube which, unfortunately, did not equate to a lifting of online censorship in Turkey. In a country where taboo topics abound, several thousand websites are still inaccessible and legal proceedings against online journalists persist.[178]

In July 2010 the Alternative Informatics Association organized one of the first and largest street protests against Internet censorship in Istanbul. A second protest took place in May 2011 with demonstrations in 30 cities in Turkey.[179]

In its Freedom on the Net 2016 report, Freedom House gave Turkey a "freedom on the net status" of "not free" saying that:[180]

The Freedom on the Net 2015 report, tracked that over 60,000 websites remain blocked in Turkey, and that TIB blocked 22,645 websites without prior court order only in 2014. Twitter was blocked for two weeks and YouTube for two months in 2014.[2][181] On March 21, 2014, Twitter access for Turkish users was blocked for two weeks in the run-up to local elections to prevent a stream of leaked wiretapped recordings of senior officials that had appeared on the site, prompting Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to declare he would "root out" the network.[182]

In the 11th biannual transparency report published on September 19, 2017, Twitter said that Turkey was the first among countries where about 90 percent of removal requests came from.[183] Also, Turkey has submitted the highest volume of removal requests to Twitter on 2014,[184] 2015[185][186] and 2016.[185]

During the 201617 purges, the secure instant messaging app ByLock was accused by the Turkish government of being used primarily by members of the Glen movement, which it classifies as a terrorist organization, during the failed coup. The government launched investigations of over 23,000 citizens for connections to Glen, based solely on evidence that they had downloaded or used ByLock. Some of these investigations resulted in arrests and detainment. However, in December 2017, the government announced that it would investigate 11,480 phone numbers had been falsely accused of ties to ByLock and Glen, after finding that the accusations were induced by unrelated apps embedding a web beacon pointing to the ByLock website from within. An arrest warrant was also issued against the developer of one of these apps.[187][188]

Internet Law No. 5651 was enacted in 2007 Turkey with the declared objective of protecting families and minors.[56][189] The way for its enactment was paved after the ban imposed on Youtube.com in 2007, because of a video insulting the Turkish Republics funder Kemal Atatrk.[189] Since then, such law was enforced in a restrictive manner, often causing episodes of censorship against common citizens, journalists and media outlets.[190] For this reason, experts consider Law No. 5651 particularly controversial.[191]

On 5 February 2014 the Turkish Parliament adopted a controversial bill amending the Internet regulation in Turkey. It allows the telecommunications authority (TIB) to block any website within 4 hours without first seeking a court ruling, and requires Internet providers to store all data on web users' activities for two years and make it available to the authorities upon request.[192] After the July 15, 2016 coup attempt, TIBS power were transferred to the Technology and Communications Authority (Bilgi Teknolojileri ve Iletisim Kurumu BTK), which previously oversaw the TIBs operations.[193]

Internet Law No. 5651 prohibits:

Web sites are also blocked for the following reasons:

Since the 2015 amendments, national security is also a basis for broad access bans.[194]

Decisions to block a website can be appealed, but usually only after a site has been blocked. Nevertheless, due to the public profile of the major websites banned and the lack of juridical, technical, or ethical arguments to justify the censorship, the blocked sites are often available using proxies or by changing DNS servers.

On September 2017, Turkeys Supreme Court has ruled that having ByLock, mobile messaging application, installed on phone is enough evidence to convict a suspect as a member of FET.[195]

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NSA Philadelphia

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You can have everything in life you want, if youll just help enough other people get what they want. Zig ZiglarNSA-PHL: Building a community of professional speakers helping other speakers

NSA-PHL is your local chapter of the National Speakers Association. Serving the professional speaking community in the Philadelphia and the tri-state region, our goal is to provide professional and emerging speakers with the support and community to develop a successful speaking business. Networking together and building relationships with other speaking professionals will enhance all aspects of your speaking career including growing your speaking opportunities

Members enjoy monthly training events, special member-only meetings, and resources to learn and answer questions or help you with direction as you build your business as a speaker.

Through our Speakers Academy, we offer training to beginning and emerging speakers who desire to take a big step toward full national membership as you build your career as a paid speaking professional.

As a Professional Speaker, a supportive and experienced community can be the building block in the progress of your success no matter what level you are currently at as a Professional Speaker. Becoming a part of our community will be one of the most pivotal things you can do for your business.

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Test automation – Wikipedia

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In software testing, test automation is the use of special software (separate from the software being tested) to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes.[1] Test automation can automate some repetitive but necessary tasks in a formalized testing process already in place, or perform additional testing that would be difficult to do manually. Test automation is critical for continuous delivery and continuous testing.

Some software testing tasks, such as extensive low-level interface regression testing, can be laborious and time-consuming to do manually. In addition, a manual approach might not always be effective in finding certain classes of defects. Test automation offers a possibility to perform these types of testing effectively. Once automated tests have been developed, they can be run quickly and repeatedly. Many times, this can be a cost-effective method for regression testing of software products that have a long maintenance life. Even minor patches over the lifetime of the application can cause existing features to break which were working at an earlier point in time.

There are many approaches to test automation, however below are the general approaches used widely:

Test automation tools can be expensive, and are usually employed in combination with manual testing. Test automation can be made cost-effective in the long term, especially when used repeatedly in regression testing. A good candidate for test automation is a test case for common flow of an application, as it is required to be executed (regression testing) every time an enhancement is made in the application. Test automation reduces the effort associated with manual testing. Manual effort is needed to develop and maintain automated checks, as well as reviewing test results.

In automated testing the test engineer or software quality assurance person must have software coding ability, since the test cases are written in the form of source code which, when run, produce output according to the assertions that are a part of it. Some test automation tools allow for test authoring to be done by keywords instead of coding, which do not require programming.

One way to generate test cases automatically is model-based testing through use of a model of the system for test case generation, but research continues into a variety of alternative methodologies for doing so.[citation needed] In some cases, the model-based approach enables non-technical users to create automated business test cases in plain English so that no programming of any kind is needed in order to configure them for multiple operating systems, browsers, and smart devices.[2]

What to automate, when to automate, or even whether one really needs automation are crucial decisions which the testing (or development) team must make.[3] A multi-vocal literature review of 52 practitioner and 26 academic sources found that five main factors to consider in test automation decision are: 1) System Under Test (SUT), 2) the types and numbers of tests, 3) test-tool, 4) human and organizational topics, and 5) cross-cutting factors. The most frequent individual factors identified in the study were: need for regression testing, economic factors, and maturity of SUT.[4]

A growing trend in software development is the use of testing frameworks such as the xUnit frameworks (for example, JUnit and NUnit) that allow the execution of unit tests to determine whether various sections of the code are acting as expected under various circumstances. Test cases describe tests that need to be run on the program to verify that the program runs as expected.

Test automation mostly using unit testing is a key feature of agile software development, where it is known as test-driven development (TDD). Unit tests are written to define the functionality before the code is written. However, these unit tests evolve and are extended as coding progresses, issues are discovered and the code is subjected to refactoring.[5] Only when all the tests for all the demanded features pass is the code considered complete. Proponents argue that it produces software that is both more reliable and less costly than code that is tested by manual exploration.[citation needed] It is considered more reliable because the code coverage is better, and because it is run constantly during development rather than once at the end of a waterfall development cycle. The developer discovers defects immediately upon making a change, when it is least expensive to fix. Finally, code refactoring is safer when unit testing is used; transforming the code into a simpler form with less code duplication, but equivalent behavior, is much less likely to introduce new defects when the refactored code is covered by unit tests.

Many test automation tools provide record and playback features that allow users to interactively record user actions and replay them back any number of times, comparing actual results to those expected. The advantage of this approach is that it requires little or no software development. This approach can be applied to any application that has a graphical user interface. However, reliance on these features poses major reliability and maintainability problems. Relabelling a button or moving it to another part of the window may require the test to be re-recorded. Record and playback also often adds irrelevant activities or incorrectly records some activities.[citation needed]

A variation on this type of tool is for testing of web sites. Here, the "interface" is the web page. However, such a framework utilizes entirely different techniques because it is rendering HTML and listening to DOM Events instead of operating system events. Headless browsers or solutions based on Selenium Web Driver are normally used for this purpose.[6][7][8]

Another variation of this type of test automation tool is for testing mobile applications. This is very useful given the number of different sizes, resolutions, and operating systems used on mobile phones. For this variation, a framework is used in order to instantiate actions on the mobile device and to gather results of the actions.[9][bettersourceneeded]

Another variation is script-less test automation that does not use record and playback, but instead builds a model[clarification needed] of the application and then enables the tester to create test cases by simply inserting test parameters and conditions, which requires no scripting skills.

API testing is also being widely used by software testers due to the difficulty of creating and maintaining GUI-based automation testing. It involves directly testing APIs as part of integration testing, to determine if they meet expectations for functionality, reliability, performance, and security.[10] Since APIs lack a GUI, API testing is performed at the message layer.[11] API testing is considered critical when an API serves as the primary interface to application logic since GUI tests can be difficult to maintain with the short release cycles and frequent changes commonly used with agile software development and DevOps.[12][13]

Continuous testing is the process of executing automated tests as part of the software delivery pipeline to obtain immediate feedback on the business risks associated with a software release candidate.[14][15] For Continuous Testing, the scope of testing extends from validating bottom-up requirements or user stories to assessing the system requirements associated with overarching business goals.[16]

Testing tools can help automate tasks such as product installation, test data creation, GUI interaction, problem detection (consider parsing or polling agents equipped with test oracles), defect logging, etc., without necessarily automating tests in an end-to-end fashion.

One must keep satisfying popular requirements when thinking of test automation:

A test automation framework is an integrated system that sets the rules of automation of a specific product. This system integrates the function libraries, test data sources, object details and various reusable modules. These components act as small building blocks which need to be assembled to represent a business process. The framework provides the basis of test automation and simplifies the automation effort.

The main advantage of a framework of assumptions, concepts and tools that provide support for automated software testing is the low cost for maintenance. If there is change to any test case then only the test case file needs to be updated and the driver Script and startup script will remain the same. Ideally, there is no need to update the scripts in case of changes to the application.

Choosing the right framework/scripting technique helps in maintaining lower costs. The costs associated with test scripting are due to development and maintenance efforts. The approach of scripting used during test automation has effect on costs.

Various framework/scripting techniques are generally used:

The Testing framework is responsible for:[17]

Test automation interface are platforms that provide a single workspace for incorporating multiple testing tools and frameworks for System/Integration testing of application under test. The goal of Test Automation Interface is to simplify the process of mapping tests to business criteria without coding coming in the way of the process. Test automation interface are expected to improve the efficiency and flexibility of maintaining test scripts.[18]

Test Automation Interface consists of the following core modules:

Interface engines are built on top of Interface Environment. Interface engine consists of a parser and a test runner. The parser is present to parse the object files coming from the object repository into the test specific scripting language. The test runner executes the test scripts using a test harness.[18]

Object repositories are a collection of UI/Application object data recorded by the testing tool while exploring the application under test.[18]

Tools are specifically designed to target some particular test environment, such as Windows and web automation tools, etc. Tools serve as a driving agent for an automation process. However, an automation framework is not a tool to perform a specific task, but rather an infrastructure that provides the solution where different tools can do their job in a unified manner. This provides a common platform for the automation engineer.

There are various types of frameworks. They are categorized on the basis of the automation component they leverage. These are:

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Automation – Cloud process & workflow automation | Microsoft …

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Simplify cloud management with process automation

Automate all of those frequent, time-consuming, and error-prone cloud management tasks. Azure Automation helps you focus on work that adds business value. By reducing errors and boosting efficiency, it also helps to lower your operational costs.

In Automation, Windows PowerShell scripts and workflowsknown as runbookshelp you work smarter by handling the creation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of Azure resources and partner applications. The Azure Automation Runbook Gallery puts samples, utilities, and scenario runbooks at your fingertips, so that you can get up and running quickly with your automation tasks. Use the Runbook Gallery to browse and import runbooks to your Automation account without leaving the Azure portal

Automation runbooks work with the Web Apps feature of Azure App Service, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Storage, Azure SQL Database, and other popular Azure services. Use them with any service that offers public Internet APIs. Easy-to-read dashboard charts and log records make runbooks easier to monitor.

By efficiently handling processes that span tools, systems, and department silos, Automation lets you deliver services faster and more consistently. Its highly reliable and you can create checkpoints to resume your workflow after unexpected errors, crashes, and network issues.

Author and manage PowerShell configurations, import configuration resources, and generate node configurations, all in the cloud. Use Azure Configuration Management to monitor and automatically update machine configuration across physical and virtual machines, Windows or Linux, in the cloud or on-premises.

Related products and services

Quickly create powerful cloud apps for web and mobile

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Automation (Automation) – msdn.microsoft.com

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This documentation is archived and is not being maintained.

Automation (formerly called OLE Automation) enables software packages to expose their unique features to scripting tools and other applications.

Automation uses the Component Object Model (COM), but may be implemented independently from other OLE features, such as in-place activation.

While Automation runs on several platforms, the focus of this content is on applications that run on the Microsoft Windows operating system.

To get the most out of this content, you should be familiar with:

The Microsoft Windows programming environment.

The OLE protocols that are implemented through dynamic-link libraries (DLL) and used in conjunction with other Windows-based programs.

The Component Object Model (COM).

Overview of Automation

Automation enables software packages to expose their unique features to scripting tools and other applications.

Exposing ActiveX Objects

Exposing objects makes them available for programmatic use by other applications and programming tools.

Accessing ActiveX Objects

To access exposed objects, you can create ActiveX clients using Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Excel, and other applications and programming languages that support the Automation technology.

Implementing the IDispatch Interface

ActiveX or OLE objects can implement the IDispatch interface for access by ActiveX clients, such as Visual Basic.

Standard Objects and Naming Guidelines

This section describes the standard ActiveX objects, and discusses naming guidelines for creating objects that are unique to applications, especially user-interactive applications that support a multiple-document interface (MDI).

Type Libraries and the Object Description Language

Type libraries enable others to use ActiveX objects you have created.

User-Defined Data Types

User-defined data types (UDT) are groups of related data items declared as one type of information.

Reference

Contains the reference content for Automation.

Appendices

Additional technical details related to Automation.

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The Essential Cyberpunk Reading List – io9.gizmodo.com

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Its now been over three decades since cyberpunk first exploded, and in that time weve seen gorgeous movies, read fascinating books, and seen dozens of offshoots like steampunk (and my new favorite, deco punk) develop. Here are the 21 cyberpunk books you absolutely must read.

This 1956 novel, originally serialized in four parts in Galaxy magazine, predates the cyberpunk movement by more than twenty years, but nonetheless serves as one of its more important ancestors. With its bleak future, cybernetic body modification and evil megacorporations, The Stars My Destination set up a number of themes that became central to later cyberpunk works.

The source material for Blade Runner, which has been inspiring cyberpunk movies and visuals for more than three decades, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is set in a near future (a near future thats changed, actually, since the books publication: originally 1992, later editions set it in 2021) where bounty hunter Rick Deckard hunts fugitive androids. Although its less cyberpunk than Blade Runner, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is still an important forerunner.

In this Hugo-award winning 1973 novella, corporations are king and computers allow people to control artificially grown bodies. When deformed seventeen-year-old Philadelphia Burke is chosen to be a Remote, shes given control of a perfect, beautiful fifteen-year-old body named Delphi, and, as Delphi, immediately becomes a celebrity. The Girl Who Was Plugged In is essential reading, both for people interested in cyberpunk and for those interested in discussions about gender and the female body (relevant: James Tiptree, Jr. is the pen name of Alice Sheldon).

The first book in the Ware Tetralogy, this 1982 novel is part of the first wave of the actual cyberpunk movement. Cobb Anderson is a poor, aging, ex-computer scientist who, many years ago, tried to give robots free will. Now theyve offered to give him immortality, but, of course, how robots view immortality is a little different than what we may be used to.

This hugely influential manga is set in post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo, where gangs fight for power, terrorists attack the government, and some people possess psychic abilities. Akira was also adapted into a cyberpunky and much beloved animated film version, and a live action version has been percolating in Hollywood for over a decade (the latest news is that Marco J. Ramirez, who will be the co-showrunner of Daredevil season 2, is writing the script.)

Henry Dorsett Case used to be a hacker, before his employer caught him stealing and he was dosed with a drug that made him incapable of accessing the global computer network. Now a mysterious person needs his hacking skills, and promises him a cure in return. The book that defined the sub-genre, this 1984 novel is likely the most essential of the books on this list (it was also the first winner of the science fiction triple crown, taking the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Philip K. Dick Award).

Gibson is, of course, responsible for any number of influential cyberpunk novels, including the rest of the Sprawl Trilogy (of which Neuromancer is the first), the Bridge Trilogy, and the short story collection Burning Chrome.

Also written in 1984, this debut novel from Lewis Shiner is set in a world controlled by corporations, one of which decides to send an expedition to a lost Martian colony to discover and gain ownership of a crucial secret. Corporate control, body augmentation, and other cyberpunk themes blend with golden age elements.

John Shirley is another writer usually grouped with foundational cyberpunk authors like Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Rucker, and Shiner. Eclipse, the first book in the A Song Called Youth trilogy, is set in a dystopian near future, but with an extra-punky twist. After the Third World War, a multinational police force has taken control, leaving only rock classicist Rick Rickenharp and the rebel group New Resistance to fight back.

Following a sprinter who runs computer chips to the black market and becomes the focus of a new religion, The Glass Hammer is perhaps slightly less famous than many of its cyberpunk comrades. Nonetheless, its an early and important work from Jeter, who also includes writing three Blade Runner sequels and coining the phrase Steampunkamong his accomplishments.

Written in 1985, Schismatrix is set amidst a struggle between the Mechanists, a group who believe in cybernetic body modification, and the Shapers, who believe that modifications should be accomplished through genetics and mental training. A classic and important early work from a foundational author.

Another defining work, Mirrorshades (1986) is a collection of short stories from early and influential cyberpunk authors, including Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Rucker, Greg Bear, Shiner, Shirley, and several more.

Recently reissued in a deluxe new edition, this dystopian novel by the author of the Sandman Slim series takes place in late 21st-century Los Angeles, where the rich live in unimaginable luxury and everybody else lives in a wasteland of misery. And a small-time drug dealer discovers a strange new plague, and gets drawn into the secret warfare between huge economic blocs.

First published in 1989, The Ghost in the Shell has spawned a ton of iconic cyberpunk artwork, several films (including a live action version scheduled for release in 2017), television shows and even video games. Set in a near future world where people have cyberbrains that allow them to interface directly with networks, the manga follows Public Security Section 9, a counter-cyberterrorism organization made up of members specializing in cyber warfare.

This book won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was shortlisted for the Nebula. Cadigan creates a lively, bizarre vision of a world of pervasive brain implantswhere the line between the virtual and the real is thinner than everand populates it with hackers, music-video makers, and rebels. What happens when brain sockets have unexpected consequences?

This delightful and hugely influential 1992 novel manages to combine Sumerian mythology with cyberpunk elements to create something new and incredibly fun. Set in the near future, Hiro Protagonist is a pizza delivery guy (in a world where pizza delivery is under Mafia control), but hes also a hacker and the self-proclaimed greatest swordfighter in the world. When he comes upon a drug, Snow Crash, which is experienced both in the virtual-reality Metaverse and the real world, he decides to investigate and embarks on a truly wild journey.

Trouble is semi-retired from being a hacker, in a dystopian future where the frontier of cyberspace is being civilized by the forces of law and orderuntil someone starts impersonating Trouble online, and she has to take matters into her own hands. This is basically a Wild West thriller, set in cyberspace.

Written in 1997, Diaspora is set in 2975, by which time humanity has diverged into three different groups: the fleshers, who are biological, the gleisner robots, who are software-based individuals located in artificial bodies, and the citizens, software without bodies who comprise most of the population. The book follows Yatima, a newborn citizen who meets a flesher colony and, when disaster strikes, must try to rescue the species.

This awesome cyberpunk comic book series (1997-2002) is set sometime in the 23rd century and follows the infamous gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem as he fights corruption, exposes politicians and generally gets into trouble in the filthy, hedonistic City. A must read in cyberpunk and transhumanism.

The first in the series of Takeshi Kovacs novels, in which cyberpunks noir tendencies are taken to their most brutal extreme. In the 25th century, the rich never have to diethey just upload their brains to cyberspace and then download them into a new body. But when someone hires Kovacs to solve a murder, except that he winds up uncovering a huge conspiracy.

Most cyberpunk novels feature a nightmarish world of corporate control and extreme wealth disparitiesbut Doctorows groundbreaking book was part of a move to link cyberpunk tropes to a post-scarcity world. So in Doctorows future, theres no more wealth or poverty, and the only scarce resource is social capital, or whuffie. Which doesnt mean you cant still be broke.

This 2005 novel of connected short stories follows three generations of one family as they approach and then pass the technological singularity. Widely praised upon its release, Accelerando won the 2006 Locus (along with the 2010 Estonian SF Award for Best Translated Novel, which I think we can all agree is awesome).

This io9 flashback originally appeared in June 2015.

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The Libertarian Party Won’t Let Ron Paul Speak at Their …

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With the 2018 Libertarian Party National Convention rapidly approaching, the Libertarian Party Mises Caucus thought that it would be wise to invite Ron Paul, the father of the liberty movement, to the convention. To the shock of any principled libertarian, the leadership of the Libertarian Party rejected Ron Paul, who was their presidential nominee 30 years ago.

Interestingly enough, the Libertarian Party would not have had to pay a dime to host Ron Paul. The Libertarian Party Mises Caucus was willing to pay the speaking fees for Ron Paul, incurring no costs to the LNC. In addition to Paul, the Mises Caucus also sought to bring Judge Andrew Napolitano to the convention. The Libertarian Party rejected these heroes. If one rejects someone like Ron Paul, it is safe to assume that they are not libertarians by any stretch of the imagination.

Here we see Daniel Hayes, the Convention Coordinator for the Libertarian Party, explicitlyreject Ron Paul, claiming the former congressman has no idea what the party stands for. Hayes is also a Member-At-Large for the LNC. He is supposed to represent the entirety of the LPs membership. This is not where libertarians stand, but perhaps the Libertarian Party hates Ron Paul and true libertarianism now.

In the article that Hayes is triggered over enough to reject Ron Paul, Paul outlines the failings of the Libertarian Party in 2016. Unfortunately the Libertarian Party has failed to live up to what should have been its role as an ideological alternative to Washingtons one-party system. As was quite obvious in the 2016 presidential election, the Libertarians yielded to prevailing attitudes on war, welfare, the Federal Reserve, and more. In believing that winning was more important than standing for something, they ended up achieving neither.

Nothing Ron Paul said was false. The Libertarian Party sold out when they nominated people like Gary Johnson and Bill Weld. If Hayes thinks he is above criticism, he ought not to hold a public position in any political party. In the Libertarian Party Mises Caucuss official statement regarding the Libertarian Partys rejection of Ron Paul, Michael Heise, founder of the Libertarian Party Mises Caucus said You would think that Ron would be a valued source of advice and that his followers and audience at the Ron Paul Liberty Report would be a prime recruiting ground for the Libertarian Party.

But it seems that the Libertarian Party is more interested in getting cozy with Mike Shipley, founder of the Socialist Caucus of the Libertarian Party. Is anyone really surprised that the people rejecting Ron Paul are openly associating with communists who reject private property? Here we have Nicholas Sarwark, chairman of the Libertarian Party, showing his affection for the communists who have hijacked libertarianism.

This isnt the first time the LP attacked true libertarians. Think about the time they equated Ron and Rand Paul with the Bushes and the Clintons.

What about the time Chairman Sarwark attacked Rand Paul for not doing enough for liberty (implying the Libertarian Party has done ANYTHING for liberty). In addition, the same chairman attacked the Ludwig von Mises Institute, calling it a Nazi organization. The Mises Institute is the most principled libertarian organization that has dedicated itself to spreading the teachings of Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises. The Mises Institute also served as inspiration for Ron Paul. Sarwark also thinks that Bernie Sanders is Ron Paul. In other words, the Libertarian Party leadership is a bunch of morons who hold their positions as a trophy. Liberty is not their objective.

In light of this event, Liberty Hangout informed the Republican Liberty Caucus of this incident. Citing Matt Nye, the Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, The RLC released the following official response:

If you didnt think the Libertarian Party had gone off the rails after the full monte display at the last National convention and the Johnson-Weld presidential fiasco, you might be justified in thinking so now, RLC Chairman Matt Nye said. Ive just been informed that the Libertarian Party (LP) National Committee has declined Dr. Ron Paul as a guest speaker at their National Convention in New Orleans.

Last year at FreedomFest in Las Vegas, LP Chairman Nicholas Sarwark took credit on stage for Ron Paul being one of the few prominent libertarian-leaning politicians ever elected while answering a question I posed from the audience, Nye said. Apparently things have changed; now Ron Paul who almost single-handedly created an entire movement of libertarian leaning young people working to change the world of politics is no longer welcome at the LP.

Ive not heard the explanation or rationale for this, and there may be more to the story, but one thing I can say for sure is that Ron Paul will always be welcome at the Republican Liberty Caucus, Nye said. No other individual in recent memory has done more to advance the cause of liberty than Dr. Paul, and I can personally cite him as one of the primary catalysts for my own activism.

So long as the Libertarian Party rejects Ron Paul, the LP is dead. As mentioned before, the LP leadership sees their positions as trophies, not as tools to promote liberty. They are complacent as government grows and tyranny expands. It is for this reason that the Libertarian Party Mises Caucus must take over the Libertarian Party in 2018. Things have gotten so bad under Nick Sarwark and Arvin Vohra that Ron Paul is shunned by the Libertarian Party.

Ron Paul wouldnt want us to get mad, nevertheless, he would want us to fight for freedom. And in this spirit, It is the goal of Liberty Hangout to host a Ron Paul rally in partnership with the Libertarian Party Mises Caucus and the Republican Liberty Caucus should they choose to accept this invitation. Details will follow. If the Libertarian Party will not defend the figure who dedicated his life to freedom, we will.

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : What the …

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The release of the House Intelligence Committees memo on the FBIs abuse of the FISA process set off a partisan firestorm. The Democrats warned us beforehand that declassifying the memo would be the end the world as we know it. It was reckless to allow Americans to see this classified material, they said. Agents in the field could be harmed, sources and methods would be compromised, they claimed.

Republicans who had seen the memo claimed that it was far worse than Watergate. They said that mass firings would begin immediately after it became public. They said that the criminality of US government agencies exposed by the memo would shock Americans.

Then it was released and the world did not end. FBI agents have thus far not been fired. Seeing classified material did not terrify us, but rather it demonstrated clearly that information is kept from us by claiming it is classified.

In the end, both sides got it wrong. Heres what the memo really shows us:

First, the memo demonstrates that there is a deep state that does not want things like elections to threaten its existence. Candidate Trumps repeated promises to get along with Russia and to re-assess NATO so many years after the end of the Cold War were threatening to a Washington that depends on creating enemies to sustain the fear needed to justify a trillion dollar yearly military budget.

Imagine if candidate Trump had kept his campaign promises when he became President. Without the Russia threat and without the China threat and without the need to dump billions into NATO, we might actually have reaped a peace dividend more than a quarter century after the end of the Cold War. That would have starved the war-promoting military-industrial complex and its network of pro-war think tanks that populate the Washington Beltway area.

Second, the memo shows us that neither Republicans nor Democrats really care that much about surveillance abuse when average Americans are the victims. It is clear that the FISA abuse detailed in the memo was well known to Republicans like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes before the memo was actually released. It was likely also well known by Democrats in the House. But both parties suppressed this evidence of FBI abuse of the FISA process until after the FISA Amendments Act could be re-authorized. They didnt want Americans to know how corrupt the surveillance system really is and how the US has become far too much like East Germany. That might cause more Americans to call up their Representatives and demand that the FISA mass surveillance amendment be allowed to sunset.

Ironically, Chairman Nunes was the biggest cheerleader for the extension of the FISA Amendments even as he knew how terribly the FISA process had been abused!

Finally, hawks on both sides of the aisle in Congress used Russia-gate as an excuse to build animosity toward Russia among average Americans. They knew from the classified information that there was no basis for their claims that the Trump Administration was put into office with Moscows assistance, but they played along because it served their real goal of keeping the US on war footing and keeping the gravy train rolling.

But dont worry: the neocons in both parties will soon find another excuse to keep us terrified and ready to flush away a trillion dollars a year on military spending and continue our arguments and new Cold War with Russia.

In the meantime, be skeptical of both parties. With few exceptions they are not protecting liberty but promoting its opposite.

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Ron Paul Forums / Rand Paul Forums – Grassroots Central Updates

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WASHINGTON, D.C. Yesterday, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the Government Shutdown Prevention Act to incentivize Congress to properly consider and debate spending legislation.

Instead of government shutting down operations over stalled funding in the future, the bill would institute a one percent cut to then-current funding levels for any agency, program, and activity that Congress failed to fund by the start of the fiscal year (October 1). Every 90 days thereafter, funding would be reduced by another one percent if an agreement is still not enacted.

It is time for Congress to take its job seriously and get its act together on spending. This legislation will stabilize our operations while imposing real restraints to push government toward fiscal responsibility, said Dr. Paul.

Currently, Congress does not face any consequences for failing to pass appropriations bills on time. Without such motivation, Congress has demonstrated it will pursue procrastination over prudence and risk shutdowns due to impasses.

In addition to ensuring government honors its obligations, the legislation will give agencies the certainty of knowing that, in a worst-case scenario, they will always be able to operate with a full year of funding at no less than 96 percent of their current levels.

https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/dr-...prevention-act

You can read Dr. Pauls Government Shutdown Prevention Act HERE. https://www.paul.senate.gov/governme...ntion-act-2018

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Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – AbeBooks

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About this Item: SparkNotes. Paperback. Condition: GOOD. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. Possible ex library copy, thatll have the markings and stickers associated from the library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Seller Inventory # 2812732146

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Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - AbeBooks

SparkNotes: Atlas Shrugged: Important Quotations Explained

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1.Butwhat can you do when you have to deal with people?

This question is uttered on many occasionsby Dr. Stadler, first in Part One, Chapter VII. The question demonstrateshis and the looters belief that people are generally irrationaland must be dealt with in a manipulative or repressive manner. Stadlerbelieves most people are incapable of rational thought and mustbe told what is best for them. He believes they will support purethought only if it is government-sanctioned, and this is why hehas supported the creation of the State Science Institute. As thestory progresses, this view of people becomes a justification forthe increasing power of the government and its adoption of bruteforce. The question is also stated by Dr. Floyd Ferrisat the unveiling of Project X. While coercing Stadler to deliverhis speech praising the monstrous machine, Ferris reminds him thatat a time of hysteria, riots, and mass violence, the people mustbe kept in line by any means necessary. He underscores his messageby quoting the question Stadler himself is known for asking.

Francisco says this to Dagny in PartOne, Chapter VII, when she challenges him for squandering his talentas a worthless playboy. Dagny asks him how he can be such a paradox,how a man as capable, brilliant, and accomplished as he is can alsochoose to be a worthless playboy. It does not seem possible thathe can be both, and yet he seems to be. In asking her to check herpremises, Francisco suggests that it is indeed not possible. Hecannot be both things at once, because contradictions cannot exist.A thing is what it is, not something else entirely. Therefore, theremust be another answer that Dagny has not seen yet. Hugh Akston(who had been Franciscos teacher) says something similar to Dagnywhen she meets him at the diner where he works as a short-ordercook. He tells her this in response to her disbelief over why afamous philosopher would choose to work in a diner, or why a motorwith the power to revolutionize industry would be abandoned in ruins.He urges her to look beyond her assumptions in the search for an answerthat could make sense.

Francisco says this to Dagny in PartTwo, Chapter V, after they discover the words Who is John Galt?scratched into a table at a restaurant. She says there are so manystories about him, and Francisco tells her that all the storiesare true. Metaphorically speaking, they are, and Franciscos Prometheusstory is especially apt. Prometheus was a figure from Greek mythology.He was a titan who stole fire from the gods and brought it to mento improve their lives. In return, he was chained to a rock andtortured. Vultures ate his liver each day, only to have it growback at night to be eaten again. In Franciscos comment, Prometheus(personified by Galt) represents the great industrialists who haveprovided men with prosperity and improved their lives with theirinventions and products, but have received only condemnation andgovernment interference in return. These men, led by Galt, havedisappeared and taken their prosperity-generating minds (the firethey had provided) with them. They will no longer allow themselvesto receive torture as payment for their talents, and they will onlyreturn their talents to the world when they are no longer punishedfor bringing them.

This is the oath the thinkers recitewhen they join the strike and come to live in the valley; we firstencounter this oath in Part Three, Chapter I. No one may stay untilhe or she is willing to take the oath freely. Dagny first encountersit as an inscription on the building where Galts motor is kept.The words are so powerful that the sound of Galt reciting them opensthe locks of the buildings door. When Dagny sees the inscription,she tells Galt this is already the code she lives by, but she doesnot think his way is the right way to practice the code. He tellsher they will have to see which one of them is right. Later, whenit is clear that Galts way was right, Dagny solemnly recites theoath to Francisco in the Taggart Terminal just before they rescueGalt from the looters, in Part Three, Chapter IX. The strikerscode presents Rands belief in egoism, or the doctrine of rationalself-interest. Rand believes that individuals have an inalienableright to pursue their own happiness based on their own values andthat they must be free to pursue their own self-interest as theychoose. Under this code, people have no obligations to each otherbeyond the obligation to respect the freedom and rights of otherself-interested people.

This passage is part of the radio broadcastdelivered by John Galt to the people of America in Part Three, ChapterVII. The man he refers to is the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle,whose work had a profound influence on Rand and her philosophy ofObjectivism. The concept that A is A was put forth in AristotlesLaw of Identity, where he held that everything that exists has aspecific nature and a single identity. A can only be A; it cannotalso be B. For Galt (embodying Rands philosophy), this means thatthings exist: they are what they are regardless of the nature ofthe observer. Even if a person wants A to be something else or believesit should be something else, it is still A. The work of a personsconsciousness is to perceive reality in its objective sense, toidentify and recognize it as what it is, not to invent an alternatereality. Galt and the thinkers he represents are rational and perceivethe reality that is, while the looters try, through denial, coercion,and manipulation, to assert an alternate reality that cannot be.

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Genetic Engineering in Agriculture | Union of Concerned …

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While the risks of genetic engineering are often exaggerated or misrepresented, GE crops do have the potential to cause a variety of health problems and environmental impacts. For instance, they may spread undesirable traits to weeds and non-GE crops, produce new allergens and toxins, or harm animals that consume them.

At least one major environmental impact of genetic engineering has already reached critical proportions: overuse of herbicide-tolerant GE crops has spurred an increase in herbicide use and an epidemic of herbicide-resistant "superweeds," which will lead to even more herbicide use.

How likely are other harmful GE impacts to occur? This is a difficult question to answer. Each crop-gene combination poses its own set of risks. While risk assessments are conducted as part of GE product approval, the data are generally supplied by the company seeking approval, and GE companies use their patent rights to exercise tight control over research on their products.

In short, there is a lot we don't know about the long-term and epidemiological risks of GEwhich is no reason for panic, but a good reason for caution, particularly in view of alternatives that are more effective and economical.

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Cary Wolfe: What Is Posthumanism? – UMP | University of …

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Cary Wolfe is Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English at Rice University. He is author of What Is Posthumanism? (2009), the 8th installment in UMP's Posthumanities Series. His previous books include Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the Outside and Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory, and editor of Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. Here is an excerpt of an essay Cary Wolfe wrote for this blog to introduce his posthumanist (as opposed to posthuman) theory. You can read the full text here.

DISCOVERING THE HUMAN

One of the main points I stress in my new book is that posthumanism as I understand it is not posthuman but rather posthumanist. Of course, humanism is a term that covers so much ground, comprises so many different thinkers, movements, and values, that any deployment of the term is bound to be a little reductive. I begin the book with this more or less representative definition that pops up in a Google search:

It will probably come as no surprise that I share many of the values and aspirations announced in such a definition. In fact, I go out of my way to insist that posthumanism as I use the term isnt about a wholesale rejection or surpassing of humanism and its values. Rather, my point is that humanisms often admirable aspirations are undercut by the conceptual and philosophical tools it uses to conceptualize them. For example, most of us would probably agree that people with disabilities should be treated with respect and equality, or that non-human animals should be protected from cruelty and abuse. But the problem, as I show in this book, is that the humanism of certain strains of disability studies or of animal rights philosophy, in their attempts to make good on these aspirations, reinscribes a very familiar form of liberal humanist subjectivity whose normative force was taken to be the problem in the first place. Shouldnt we instead endeavor for a mode of thought that values the heterogeneity of ways of being in the world for their difference, their uniqueness, their non-generic nature, rather than their ability to reproduce or approximate, however imperfectly, a normative picture of us?

To put this another way, I agree with humanism that transcendental justifications must be rejected and that solutions cant be parochial (commitments of humanism that would seem all the more relevant in the current geopolitical moment, after all), but the problem is that humanism does not adequately apply this principle to itself. It ends up indulging its own dogmas, its own parochial solutions. Chief among these, I argue, is the dogma that insists on an ontological differenceand the ethical consequences that follow from that differencebetween homo sapiens and every other life form on the planet. This flies in the face of current scientific knowledge about non-human life, and it flies in the face of what should be humanisms commitment to a conceptual frame that is more nuanced and responsible than the ham-fisted (pun intended) distinction between the human and the animal. So as Foucault once famously put it, in this sense, one might well argue that Enlightenment and Humanism are not two sides of the same coin, but are in tension with each other.

Part of the unfortunate fallout of the conceptual apparatus of humanism is that it gives us an overly simple picturea fantasy, reallyof what the human is. Consider, for example, the rise of what is often called transhumanism, often taken to be a defining discourse of posthumanism (as in Ray Kurzweils work on the singularitythe historical moment at which engineering developments such as nanotechnology enable us to transcend our physical and biological limitations as embodied beings, ushering in a new phase of evolution). As many of its proponents freely admit, the philosophical ideals of transhumanism are quite identifiably humanistnot only in their dream of transcending the life of the body and our animal origins but also in their investment in the ideals of human perfectibility, rationality, autonomy, and agency. In contrast to this dream of transcendence and perfectibility, posthumanism in my sense points toward the necessity of moving beyond the philosophical simplifications of humanism (many of them self-flattering, of course!) to arrive at a much thicker, more complex and layered description of this thing we call human and how it is bound up with all sorts of forces and factors that arent human at all (our animal biological inheritance and how it shapes our emotions, our behavior, our needs and wants; our ecological embeddedness as creatures of evolution in a web of life not of our making; the ahuman exteriority and technicity of the archives and prostheses of memory and culture, and so on).

Posthumanism in this sense thus forces us to attend to the paradox that we can become who we are only by virtue of being constituted by somethingactually, many somethingsthat we are not. Chief among these, perhaps, is language. You can think of language as humanism doesas something that institutes not just a phenomenological difference but an ontological difference between normal human beings and the rest of the universe (a view that draws into its wake a vast collection of very different thinkers from Heidegger to Daniel Dennett); or you can think of language as I do (following a similarly diverse genealogy that includes Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, and Jacques Derrida): as an essentially ahuman prosthesis, a technique and a machine that itself is a subset and second-order phenomenon of a larger domain of meaning that includes all sorts of non-linguistic forms of communication not limited to the human domain alone. This gives you a much more robust and nuanced picture of how language is (and is not) constitutive of human behavior; it allows you to describe how meaning gets made in recursive exchanges across previously discreet ontological domains (say, between humans and animals); and it also enables you to understand how human communication is a multi-dimensional and often asynchronous process that continues to be inhabited by the evolutionary and biological background out of which linguistic domains (to use Maturana and Varelas phrase) emerged. Or as Gregory Bateson once put it (humorously and perceptively), If you say to a girl, 'I love you,' she is likely to pay more attention to the accompanying kinesics and paralinguistics than to the words themselves (Steps to an Ecology of Mind 86). (This is one of the reasons, incidentally, that e-mail is such a brittle and incendiary form of communication; there is no such dampening mechanism, and it is difficult to make up for the loss of tone of voice, body posture, eye contact, and so on in such a thin and impoverished medium--hence the invention of that paltry substitute called the emoticon.)

What all of this suggests is that our thoughts, our concepts, are in an important sense not ours at all, but rather they derive from our constitution by something radically not us. And this in turn points to a second dimension of the argument of What Is Posthumanism?: that it is not enough to think of it simply as a kind of content, as merely a thematics of the historical moment in which the human becomes decentered by and disseminated in technological, informational, pharmacological, and communicational apparatuses that render it no longer master in its own house (as Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche long ago realized in their different, albeit problematic, ways). After all, as I have already suggested with the examples of transhumanism and animal rights philosophy, it is perfectly possible to do posthumanism in a thoroughly humanist way. The question of posthumanism, then, obtains not just on one level but on twonot just what posthumanism thinks about but also, and more importantly, how it thinks about it.

-----

Cary Wolfe is Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English at Rice University. He is author of What Is Posthumanism?, the 8th installment in the University of Minnesota Press's Posthumanities Series. His previous books include Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the Outside (Minnesota, 1998) and Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory, and he is editor of Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (Minnesota, 2003).

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