Monday 8 June 2026, from 09:00 until Tuesday 9 June 2026 at 16:30.
Department of Mathematics, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 118, 8000 Aarhus C, Building 1532, Auditorium G2 (room 122).
Quantum science and technology are widely presented as transformative, yet they often remain socially distant and opaque. Public narratives frequently frame quantum technologies as revolutionary or even “spooky,” while expert and policy discourses emphasize competitiveness, security, and disruption. These sociotechnical imaginaries shape expectations, governance, and innovation pathways—but can also narrow participation and ethical reflection.
This workshop brings together scholars from STS, history and philosophy of science, communication studies, and related fields to examine how quantum imaginaries operate across scientific, commercial, military, and public domains, and to explore how more inclusive and accountable visions of quantum futures might be articulated.
Current governance frameworks for quantum technologies face a structural challenge: they must regulate capabilities that do not yet exist, under conditions where the transition from AI to Quantum AI is already reshaping the landscape of what is governable. This talk identifies pressure points - tensions between institutional capacity and technological momentum - that emerge when governance systems designed for stable, classifiable technologies encounter convergence dynamics that are fast-moving, dual-use, and deeply uncertain. Drawing on an ongoing research programme that maps these tensions across policy, industry, and platform ecosystems, it is argued that the critical governance question is not what quantum can do but who retains the agency to shape what it becomes. The talk concludes with a futures perspective: what happens to governance when the systems being governed begin to exercise agency themselves - and what this means for the sociotechnical visions we are constructing today.
Quantum science and technologies, also in conjunction with artificial intelligence, are becoming more than diversely powerful tools for computation, simulation, sensing, and communication: they are emerging as cultural forces that shape how societies can navigate from the development of core knowledge towards the horizon of uncertain futures.
This talk will explore different intertwined dimensions along which quantum science and technologies are driving this transformation, requiring a new form of intelligence and reshaping the very meaning of scientific authority. Among these dimensions, I will discuss the truly cross-disciplinary nature of knowledge building; a new epistemic relation between theoretical and experimental thinking and between technology and Nature; the value of intersectoral progress; the capability of scaling up the microphysics towards complexity, and of connecting Nature’s foundations across more than 40 orders of magnitude in length scales from the cosmology of the universe down to quarks.
Common to all these dimensions is a form of indiscipline.
The emerging culturo-scientific shift will impact any area of education, society, economics, and labor market, through medicine and materials design, communication, security, finance, empowered forms of education to scientific thinking, and new forms of intelligence. While these quantum futures take shape, it is mandatory to develop shared tools to reflect on the underlying values, responsively govern the relevant consequences, engage all types of minds to active participating the transformation, anticipate the many forms of divide that – as ever in human history – will open up, both within same and across diversely developed geographical planet areas.
In this mind-blowing scenario, navigating quantum futures requires the compass of a newly engendered scientific humanism.
Quantum technologies (QT) are no longer discussed only as distant or speculative futures. Increasingly, they are framed through near-term agendas of industrialisation, strategic competitiveness, security, infrastructure, standards, and deployment. Yet these near-term framings still depend on particular assumptions about desirable quantum futures: who should build them, who should benefit, which risks matter, and which forms of governance are considered legitimate.
This talk uses the theme “from hype to responsibility” not to focus narrowly on hype, but to ask what comes after it. If QT are moving from promise-making toward implementation, then questions of responsibility become more urgent rather than less. Drawing on Technology Assessment and responsible innovation perspectives, the talk examines how quantum futures are politically shaped through funding priorities, security narratives, public engagement, global inequalities, and institutional choices. It argues for a reflexive approach that keeps quantum futures open to scrutiny, contestation, and broader participation while remaining attentive to the concrete realities of emerging QT ecosystems.
Quantum technology is no longer confined to fundamental research: it is a strategic, inherently dual-use field whose impact on international security comes not from new weapons but from transforming how information is sensed, processed, secured and acted upon. This talk surveys the military and security applications now emerging across quantum computing, communications and sensing, from the Q-Day cryptographic threat and quantum-secure communication infrastructures to non-GNSS navigation and magnetometry, and argues that quantum's real significance lies in its convergence with other technologies ("quantum + X"). It then turns to the governance gap that the science is outpacing: the multilateral deadlock and national patchwork in export controls, the rise of research security and counter-intelligence, the near-absence of arms control and verification frameworks, the proliferation and supply-chain risks (down to chokepoints like helium-3), and the contested migration to post-quantum cryptography. The central message is one of proactive policymaking — shaping quantum's trajectory through governance, norms and cooperation before the security landscape is irreversibly reshaped.
Sociotechnical imaginaries are not only articulated in policy documents and corporate strategies; they are actively constructed and contested in the news media. Yet, despite a growing literature on quantum imaginaries, systematic large-scale analysis of how these visions circulate in public discourse remains limited. This talk addresses that gap, presenting work-in-progress from an ongoing PhD project. Drawing on a corpus of 7,077 English-language news articles spanning 1988–2025, sourced from 14 publications across the US, UK, India, and China — from elite financial titles such as the Financial Times to specialist outlets such as New Scientist — this research examines how quantum computing has been framed across three and a half decades of media coverage. A central methodological challenge motivates the design: existing computational approaches to framing analysis tend to conflate topics with frames, identifying, for instance, an "economic frame" simply by the presence of financial language, and thereby answering what is being discussed rather than how it is being packaged. To address this, the project employs a multi-stage, mixed-methods design: unsupervised topic modelling (BERTopic) to inductively derive dominant themes; supervised frame classification using the Media Frames Corpus (MFC) to identify strategic framing dimensions; and manual content analysis to provide the interpretive depth that purely computational approaches cannot. Preliminary findings reveal a marked longitudinal shift from physics-centred, science fiction-inflected coverage in the 1990s toward economically and geopolitically framed discourse by the 2020s. This trajectory reproduces what Butterfield (1931) identified as a "Whiggish" teleology — quantum computing as an inevitable march of progress — while simultaneously reflecting the emergence of what Mager and Katzenbach (2021) term "Corporate Imaginaries", in which tech companies absorb and redefine national visions of the quantum future. Notably absent from this dominant framing are counter-imaginaries that interrogate who controls these technologies and to what ends — the kinds of critical perspectives that McQuillan's (2025) "Decomputing as Resistance" framework demands we take seriously. The talk reflects on the methodological challenges of studying imaginaries at scale, arguing that moving beyond topic-frame conflation is essential to capturing not just the breadth of public discourse but the power dynamics and competing visions that shape it, and invites discussion on how mixed-methods frameworks can rise to that challenge.
Public engagement with quantum technologies is crucial for fostering public awareness, understanding and trust, as well as building a future quantum workforce. This was underscored by the United Nations’ proclamation of 2025 as the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. To mark this occasion, the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre brought together a consortium of fifteen institutions to showcase quantum science and technology research and innovation from across the UK. This consortium came together to develop public engagement demonstrations for ‘The Quantum Zone’ exhibit at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition 2025. These demos showcased quantum concepts and components, as well as quantum technologies and examples of their applications. As part of this activity, public consultation was embedded through prompted feedback postcards to gauge visitors’ perceptions of quantum technologies after visiting the exhibit. The consultation methodology enabled the exploration of emotional responses to quantum technologies and provided a glimpse into the views of the UK public around such technologies. The findings highlighted polarising views on what quantum technology is and what it might become. Throughout 2026 and beyond, ‘The Quantum Zone’ will be taken on tour to a variety of events and festivals across the UK. In preparation for this further work, we will reflect on the opportunity ahead and the best methods for collecting and analysing the views of various publics as our dataset grows. We are particularly interested in exploring the impact of context on public views of quantum technology, for instance, whether a science-focused festival yields a more optimistic view than a music or cultural festival. We propose that embedding public consultation on quantum technologies within a public engagement activity, a richer dataset may be collected as compared to more targeted public consultation exercises which may involve more self-selection of participants.
In the science communication literature, it is argued that the medialisation of science is ongoing. That is the scientific sphere adopting more media logic into its practices, for example, the promotion of scientific articles to the media. Previous research mainly focused on the communication activities accompanying the publication of a scientific article. This study, instead, focused on the core of the scientific sphere, the scientific articles. In the context of emerging technologies, communication of impacts, predictions, and expectations can routinely be found accompanying research results. To clarify this phenomenon, we draw on Science and Technology Studies, particularly the concept of expectation, which is central to how emerging technologies are communicated. Quantum technology is a suitable case because, despite uncertain impacts, growing attention suggests ongoing hype. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of highly cited papers regarding quantum technologies (2007-2023) to examine how expectations are articulated. Our findings suggest two dominant modes: use case and future projection. The use case frames quantum technology as a solution to (societal) problems. Our findings indicate that this framing is also used by scientists whose field is not traditionally related to quantum science. Due to its relatability, we stipulate that this use case has the potential to be further picked up by the media. The future projections articulate versions of the future in which quantum technology is mature and adopted, along with the anticipated pathways, which often contain technical terms. Our findings suggest that the promise-agenda-requirement pattern might be at play, which suggests that this future projection is more likely to be picked up by scientists with a closer tie to quantum science, and also policymakers. On one hand, the expectation concept helps us to focus on the future-looking statements and confirms the adaptation of media logic in the core of the scientific sphere. On the other hand, the expectation concept, together with our focus on the scientific sphere, we are contributing to the medialisation discussion that the scientific sphere is best treated as diverse and not homogeneous. That is, media logic not only affects the communication practice to the outside, but also inside the scientific sphere.
Quantum physics (QP) is becoming a worldwide boom driven by quantum technology development and the media. This boom can be seen as a great benefit for society, but it can also conceal a potential danger (“quantum hype”) if people are unaware of what QP is really about. Experts can quickly notice “quantum” in movies or supermarket products and determine their quantum relevance. But what perception of QP does the future quantum workforce, the students who recently started their university education, have? We investigated whether Finnish university students recognize QP in their surroundings, how familiar they are with quantum applications, how they perceive QP’s relevance, how different sociocultural contexts influence this perception, and to what extent they are interested in studying topics related to quantum physics. At the beginning of 2023, we designed a Finnish-language questionnaire and collected responses from 270 Finnish university students (122 men, 133 women, 8 others, 7 declined to respond), 50% of whom are studying STEM and 50% non-STEM fields. The results showed that most students (84%) had encountered QP, but many did not know much about it (45%) or knew it a little (39%). The most important contexts for encountering “quantum” were movies, TV, work, studies, news, and social media. Some differences were noticeable between STEM and non-STEM students due to their educational surroundings, but independent of their main subject, all students listed both quantum- and classical-like applications as quantum applications. Finally, we rediscovered the well-known attitude “quantum is relevant, but not for me” and moderate interest in studying QP-related topics. Our findings highlight the influence of both the sociocultural and educational environments in shaping students’ attitudes and perceptions of knowledge in quantum physics. Therefore, more well-planned educational and outreach initiatives are needed to articulate realistic and inclusive visions of quantum physics and technology.
Quantum technologies are widely imagined as transformative, yet the futures attached to them remain uncertain and contested, reflecting divergent priorities across firms, research institutions, policymakers, and the public. Existing research has mapped sociotechnical imaginaries articulated in public discourse, but it remains unclear how these imaginaries emerge, evolve, and gain traction over time. In particular, limited attention has been paid to who drives attention to specific narratives of quantum futures and how others respond. This paper addresses this gap by conceptualising sociotechnical imaginaries as temporally evolving narratives circulating across economic, scientific, political, and public spheres. Agenda leadership is the extent to which narratives introduced by actors gain prominence, while convergence captures how widely these narratives are taken up and align across spheres. Empirically, the paper presents a longitudinal analysis of X/Twitter data (2016–2025, ≈221,000 posts) using Germany as a case study and integrating German-language discourse with English-language communication by key European quantum organisations (QuIC and QBN members), capturing both national debate and transnational coordination. Actor classification draws on curated organisational and political account lists, complemented by manual coding of highly active accounts. Computational methods, e.g. BERTopic, are used to identify and trace recurring themes over time, while lead–lag relationships between actor groups are statistically analysed to examine how attention to these themes diffuses across spheres. Preliminary analyses reveal distinct temporal dynamics: German-language public discourse exhibits early, event-driven spikes, while English-language elite communication emerges later and becomes more sustained during phases of policy coordination and funding, pointing to a shift from rapid public reactions to sustained elite attention as quantum technologies become institutionalised. The findings suggest phase-dependent attention dynamics, motivating analysis of how these patterns relate to narrative convergence.
Relatively little empirical attention has been paid to how quantum imaginaries are experienced, reproduced, and at times contested by the researchers most directly embedded in the field, particularly outside the Anglo-American centers that dominate technoscientific discourse. Drawing on the case of the Czech Republic — a country that has recently adopted a National Quantum Technology Strategy and inaugurated the VLQ quantum computer as part of the EuroHPC infrastructure, positioning itself as an emerging player in European quantum competition — this work-in-progress paper asks whether those quantum imaginaries rehearse globally circulating narratives or carve out a distinct national inflection shaped by such policy ambitions and high-profile infrastructural investments. The study employs two complementary methodological approaches. Semi-structured interviews are designed around three thematic clusters: field-specific dynamics and the strategic use of the "quantum" label; media narratives and the management of public expectations; and power dynamics shaping whose visions and voices dominate quantum futures discourse. On the media side, quantitative and qualitative analysis of Czech journalistic coverage — built on data from the Media Lab repository through an automated extraction pipeline replicable in future imaginaries research — reconstructs the hype landscape within which researchers operate and position themselves. Preliminary reflections suggest that researchers occupy an ambivalent position: simultaneously critical consumers of quantum hype and active participants in its reproduction, shaped by funding pressures, publication incentives, and the competitive logics of technoscientific fields — dynamics that take on particular texture in a research environment navigating both the ambitions of a national quantum strategy and the pressures of international visibility. The paper discusses methodological challenges in studying imaginaries through these two approaches and reflects on what a more trajectory-oriented research design might look like — one that traces quantum imaginaries from expert articulation, through media and policy uptake, and back to the communities whose self-understanding they reshape, exposing feedback dynamics that studies anchored at one discursive site cannot capture.
Quantum futures are not merely speculative projections. They shape expectations, guide decision making, and influence the trajectories of quantum technology development. As such, they are a central object of inquiry for hermeneutic technology assessment, which examines how visions of the future affect present sociotechnical decisions. These futures are produced, deliberately and implicitly, by a wide range of actors, including policymakers, companies, and civil society. While such actors often mobilize dominant narratives of innovation, security, or competitiveness, these imaginaries are not always socially resonant. When quantum futures lack broader societal relevance, they can contribute to backlash, reinforce inequalities (“quantum divide”), or fail to generate the anticipated social and economic benefits. Against this background, the role of art and culture in the making of quantum futures remains underexplored. Yet artistic engagement with quantum technologies is growing, both organically and through strategic initiatives often linked to science communication [4]. This raises the question of what art can contribute beyond illustration or instrumentalized public outreach [5]. My work addresses this question by examining the role of art in the development of quantum technologies through the lens of hermeneutic technology assessment. It analyzes visions and narratives emerging from artistic and cultural contexts, with particular attention on how they imagine futures, create publics, and stimulate reflection. Empirically, this includes work on assessing what quantum computer & art could mean1, review-like studies on existing forms of “quantum art”, and participatory experiments in developing quantum futures with art students2. The paper expands debates on quantum futures by foregrounding cultural stakeholders as active participants in shaping socially desirable quantum futures. It asks how those can be imagined by artists best, how current artistic quantum futures might influence technological development, and whether they can open up more inclusive and socially meaningful alternatives.
My paper proposes a theoretically informed and empirically grounded account of the relational dynamic between expectations and sociotechnical imaginaries in the fields of quantum computing and post-quantum cryptography. Drawing on science and technology studies (STS), my aim is to mobilize the concepts of expectations and sociotechnical imaginaries to analyze how collectively held visions of the future performatively shape sociotechnical orders. Empirically, this paper describes and analyzes a corpus of editorial narratives published in a leading scientific journal (relevant in for the studied fields) over the past decades. Editorials are approached as sites of future-oriented discourse, where visions, imaginations and interpretations of so-called emerging technologies are articulated,
stabilized, and circulated. These texts construct quantum computing as a transformative and disruptive force capable of solving otherwise intractable problems, while simultaneously foregrounding its implications for information systems and governance. At the same time, they frame cryptography through a dual imaginary: as vulnerable to quantum-enabled disruption and as a domain of innovation through post-quantum and quantum-secure solutions. I argue that these domains are linked through a recursive dynamic of expectations. Narratives of a looming “quantum threat” to existing encryption infrastructures generate urgency around cryptographic innovation, while advances in post-quantum cryptography reinforce the perceived inevitability and strategic importance of quantum computing. This spiral loop exemplifies how promissory discourses travel across adjacent fields, producing mutually reinforcing imaginaries structured around security, risk, and technological competition. By foregrounding editorial discourses as empirical entry points, this paper contributes to STS debates on the performativity and circulation of expectations and sociotechnical imaginaries. It argues that quantum futures emerge not as linear projections of technical progress but as relational and contested regimes of anticipation, in which dominant and competing imaginaries are continuously shaped and re-shaped across scientific domains.
Quantum technologies are widely framed as transformative, yet public discourse remains dominated by expert communities. For lay audiences, the counterintuitive nature of quantum physics and the early-stage character of many applications make it particularly difficult to develop informed perspectives on possible quantum futures. At the same time, experts often hesitate about the speculation needed to translate fundamental research into imaginable everyday applications. This creates a double barrier to inclusive engagement with quantum futures. As scientists working in the field of foresight, we address this challenge from a methodological perspective, asking: How can participatory methods enable non-expert audiences to meaningfully engage with quantum futures – experiencing their implications and becoming aware of their own hopes, concerns, and assumptions? We present an approach developed within the project "Quanten(t)räume", funded under the German "Quantum aktiv" programme. Our methodology builds on two sets of introductory materials: four participatory scenarios exploring quantum futures in 2040, and 15 technology sheets describing potential applications spanning quantum computing, sensing, communication, and materials, serving as tangible reference points for experts and non-experts alike. In a pilot workshop with museum audiences, these materials were combined with a third building block – fictional personas grounding narratives in everyday life. Through Design Fiction, participants used the scenarios as "story worlds", the technology sheets as application examples, and the personas as protagonists to collaboratively develop everyday narratives set within these quantum futures, translating abstract technological possibilities into relatable, debatable situations. We reflect on the affordances and limitations of this approach, focusing on its process value: enabling participants to engage with quantum futures rather than merely learn about them, fostering dialogue between experts and lay audiences through shared narrative creation, sparking curiosity and interest in quantum technologies, and making implicit assumptions about desirable and undesirable futures explicit.
As quantum devices pose novel risks to existing cybersecurity infrastructure, many nations are planning transitions to quantum-safe systems. Sociotechnical imaginaries, in the sense of Jasanoff and Kim, have emerged as a key analytical lens for understanding how nations develop anticipatory governance in conditions of technological uncertainty. This empirical research investigates the Netherlands as a case study in how nations are responding to the quantum threat, identifying two competing imaginaries of quantum-safe futures and contributing to methodological debates around how sociotechnical imaginaries can be elicited and studied. Drawing on a participatory mapping workshop held with 15 experts from industry, government, civil society and academia, we examine the roles and responsibilities involved in the response to the quantum threat through thematic analysis. We find that transition responsibilities are highly distributed and interconnected, several having unclear ownership. From this landscape of responsibilities, two sociotechnical imaginaries emerge: a business-driven imaginary, in which a small number of industry actors compete to capture market share, and a society-driven imaginary, in which regulators guide collective transition through co-ordinated governance. By examining the current distribution of responsibilities, we find that existing governance levers are insufficient to prompt widespread transition, rendering the business-driven imaginary dominant. We then reflect on the governance implications of this dominance, identifying the critical requirements that would need to be met for the society-driven imaginary to become viable. From these requirements, we derive recommendations directed at key stakeholders, addressing both governance gaps and unclaimed transition responsibilities. We also reflect on our methodology, assessing its transferability to other national contexts and examining the inclusivity of the elicitation of imaginaries. We conclude that, without a robust and timely governance foundation, the business-driven imaginary will continue to dominate and the society-driven quantum-safe future will never arrive.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has drastically altered the digital landscape, eclipsing alternative areas of future-making innovation, including those arbitrated by the Quantum Technology Development sector (QTD). Our ability to anticipate the future is therefore increasingly inseparable from AI, as the ‘dominant construct’ influencing narrative-framings of what the next five, ten, and fifteen years might bring. Yet the future is capable of delivering jolts when we least expect them, including the potential for a resurgent quantum innovation system to overtake AI as the most likely arbiter of the next Industrial Revolution (IR). A sense of urgency is therefore beginning to accrue in support of making preparations for quantum adoption more real than hypothetical. These preparations will, invariably, consist of attempts to turn quantum imaginaries into extant plans, strategies and investment vehicles, destined for application in the real world. Anticipatory logics are fundamental to the processes by which imaginaries are transformed into strategies, playing a vital role in prompting and nudging potential adopters into action. This paper considers howthese forms of ‘looking ahead’ are inscripted within quantum imaginaries, emanating from the UK science base. Thus, taking QTD in the United Kingdom (UK) as a case example, the paper elaborates upon existing conceptions of anticipatory logics, using the work of STS scholars as an inflexion point.
The transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is typically framed as a technical response to the anticipated emergence of cryptographically relevant quantum computers. However, this transition is fundamentally shaped by sociotechnical imaginaries: shared, future-oriented narratives about quantum capabilities, timelines, and risks. In particular, the “harvest-now, decrypt-later” (HNDL) threat model constructs a temporal imaginary in which present-day encrypted data is rendered vulnerable by projected future breakthroughs. This paper investigates how such quantum threat imaginaries are operationalised within large, regulated organisations through governance practices and decision-making frameworks. Drawing on an empirical case study of a European critical service provider, we analyse how uncertainty about quantum futures is translated into actionable organisational knowledge via a discovery-first approach and the implementation of a Quantum Exposure Register (QER). We argue that quantum risk is not merely discovered but actively constructed through governance models. The QER functions as a sociotechnical artefact that stabilises competing interpretations of uncertain quantum futures by embedding assumptions about threat timelines, confidentiality horizons, and migration feasibility into calculative and auditable structures. In doing so, it transforms abstract imaginaries into measurable and governable exposure. Our findings show that PQC readiness is constrained less by algorithmic maturity than by epistemic and organisational factors, including fragmented ownership, uneven evidence quality, and dependence on third-party roadmaps. These constraints demonstrate how quantum imaginaries are mediated through institutional structures and risk governance practices. By linking future-oriented quantum narratives to concrete governance instruments, this work contributes to the study of sociotechnical imaginaries by showing how imagined futures are translated into operational decision-making systems that shape the trajectory of technological transition.
Quantum Information Technologies (QITs) are rapidly emerging as core infrastructures of the contemporary technological landscape (Timmers 2023) and regarded as societally disruptive technologies whose potential carries a pronounced dual-use character (Taylor 2020). This is why it is crucial to explore, today, discourses around QITs, insofar as these discourses contribute to shaping those same scenarios they envision.
Scholars have already warned about the need to adopt an anticipatory approach (de Jong 2022) to the governance of QITs. To be sure, normative frameworks for QITs regulation already exist (Johnson 2019; Perrier 2022; World Economic Forum 2022; OECD 2025; Kop 2025). However, these attempts remain chiefly “classical” in the treatment of QITs. This means that they either tend to overlook the specific nature of QITs in comparison with earlier technologies or maintain a soft-regulation approach, which risks being insufficient in today’s multipolar geopolitical scenario and potentially reinforcing power asymmetries between “‘quantum haves’ and ‘have-nots.’” (Der Derian & Wendt 2020).
It is not surprising that scholars consider the governance of QITs as a “wicked” sociotechnical issue (Moloney & Al-Kuwari 2025), that is, a highly complex and uncertain issue characterised by strong disagreement among stakeholders. To address such wickedness and overcome “classical” frameworks, here I build upon Calzati and de Kerckhove’s (2024) idea that QITs are “pharmakological technologies”, i.e., both poison and antidote of the emerging quantum landscape, or what the authors call “quantum ecology”. Specifically, the authors claim that the quantum ecology is fundamentally “communitarian”, a term that etymologically denotes a bond among actors based on mutual deficiency and collective necessity (cf. Esposito 2022).
Along this line, Calzati and de Kerckhove suggest that a viable path to the regulation of the communitarian quantum ecology lies in polycentric governance frameworks, in particular those informed by a republican approach to the digital transformation (Susskind 2022; Hoeksema, 2023; Calzati & van Loenen, 2023). These frameworks, indeed, aim to foster sustainable polities characterised by shared mechanisms for guaranteeing power distribution among actors, mutual accountability via checks and balances, and forms of collegial decision and control. In fact, Calzati & de Kerckhove already point toward the idea of a “quantum republic”; however, they do not fully elaborate on this concept.
Here I suggest that a republican framework for the governance of QITs might be achieved by operationalising the very pharmakological nature of QITs. Specifically, I look at quantum game theory (Eisert et al 1999) to illustrate an indigenous quantum way of facilitating cooperation among quantum actors over self-interest in the development, implementation, and use of QITs. Far from being a tech-only affair, the design of such a quantum game theory-inspired infrastructure remains a philosophical-political thought experiment, and it requires embeddedness into a broader sociotechnical context of global-level agreements, audibility, and arbitration, proper to a republican polity.
References
This workshop has been made possible through the generous support of the Aarhus University Research Foundation and the Carlsberg Foundation.
