“What is mind? Does not matter. What is matter? Never mind.” was my favorite quote whilst growing up to ascertain how to absorb (or not) the information that was thrust upon us during our schooling years. The word “matter” is doing the circuit these days with different types of lives – Black, Blue, Brown, Yellow, Pink, even Orange and most definitely Pet.

PROLOGUE

As we explore the large and the small, the universe and its constituent sub-atomic particles, we are also beginning to realize that all is not as it seems to be. The amount of visible matter is only a fraction of the total content of matter. Here’s a sobering fact: The matter we know and that makes up all stars and galaxies only accounts for 5% of the content of the universe! Dark matter seems to outweigh visible matter roughly six to one, making up about 27% of the universe.

In this paper, we will talk about a different type of darkness that needs light to be shed on, a set of emerging technologies that will form the underpinnings for change to be brought about by Industry and Services 5.0. Codenamed DARQ, it will define and detail:

• Distributed Ledger, 
• Applied Intelligence, 
• the different types of Realities – virtual, augmented, extended and hybrid, and Quantum Computing 

All of the above will form the essential ingredients for defining the future. DARQ offers businesses the tools they need to build robust processes and develop new personalized experiences for their customers. Each element of DARQ will independently usher in new opportunities and ways of working, but it’s the convergence of these technologies that really drives innovation.

For Numorpho Cybernetic Systems (NUMO), these emerging technologies will create the foundation for the different types of schemas that we have defined in our computational fabric for cybernetics. Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with regulatory and purposive systems. These will be the basis for providing actionable intelligence for all our solutions, products, and services.

LET THERE BE LIGHT – DARQ DEFINITIONS

Understanding the DNA of DARQ technologies is key to implementing a robust ecosystem for Industry 4.0. It is not enough to just implement a solution, but we need to ascertain that all the pieces will coordinate and work and ensure that during the lifetime of the product and service it is appropriately conditioned to meet its goals.

1. Distributed Ledger – Blockchain, the backbone behind distributed ledger is the embodiment of decentralization: a transparent, public, append-only ledger that enables trust without the risk or danger of trusting. It is a way to ensure transparency of transaction while protecting individual privacy and autonomy. It is, simply put, a shared database that enables peer-to-peer transactions without the need of a centralized third party to manage, record, or verify them. Information and transactions recorded on the blockchain are:

• distributed – there is no single fail point,
• immutable – it is nearly impossible to go back and change or alter a transaction due to distribution, encryption, and the complex mathematical processes that must be engaged in for a transaction to go through; it is un-censorable, in a sense, and
• decentralized meaning that no one individual controls the network or the ledger.

Blockchains are new technology layers that rewire the Internet and threaten to side-step older legacy constructs and centrally served businesses. At its core, a blockchain injects trust into the network, cutting off some intermediaries from serving that function and creatively disrupting how they operate. Metaphorically, blockchains are the ultimate non-stop computers. Once launched, they never go down, and offer an incredible amount of resiliency, making them dependable and attractive for running a new generation of decentralized services and software applications.

2. Applied Intelligence also called Cybernetics is the combination of Artificial Intelligence with appropriate mechanisms to make them actionable. Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics grew from a desire to understand and build systems that can achieve goals, whether complex human goals or just goals like maintaining the temperature of a room under changing conditions. It includes the study of feedback loops, black boxes, and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organizations including the study of recursive self-organizing systems. Such applied intelligent mechanisms focus on studying and understanding the underlying principles of natural computation and control, and how these theories and technologies can be adopted to extend and enrich computer science and effect the communication and control in society and in individual human beings. Algorithms, techniques, and theories in these fields have been successfully applied to a wide range of complex real-world problems.

3. Realities – virtual, augmented, extended and hybrid enable:

• engineering simulation (virtualization),
• adding dynamic features to manipulate systems (enhanced interactions using Digital twin)
• extending the concept of reality by immersive environments using augmented reality headgear
• hybrid interactions using physical (tactile) and digital means.

Mixed reality solutions, inclusive of virtual reality and augmented reality solutions, have changed the modern world and opened up new possibilities. As more organizations build applications with these technologies, uses for AR and VR are expanding rapidly across industries. Now more than ever it’s important to stay ahead of the curve by embracing these cutting-edge technologies for business innovation.

4. Quantum Computing is the use of quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to perform computations. There are several types of quantum computers (or rather, quantum computing systems), including the quantum circuit model, quantum Turing machine, adiabatic quantum computer, one-way quantum computer, and various quantum cellular automata. The most widely used model is the quantum circuit, based on the quantum bit, or “qubit”, which is somewhat analogous to the bit in classical computation. A qubit can be in a 1 or 0 quantum state, or in a superposition of the 1 and 0 states. When it is measured, however, it is always 0 or 1; the probability of either outcomes depends on the qubit’s quantum state immediately prior to measurement.

The promise of quantum computers is that certain computational tasks might be executed exponentially faster on a quantum processor than on a classical processor. A fundamental challenge is to build a high-fidelity processor capable of running quantum algorithms in an exponentially large computational space. In the early 1980s, Richard Feynman proposed that a quantum computer would be an effective tool with which to solve problems in physics and chemistry, given that it is exponentially costly to simulate large quantum systems with classical computers. Realizing Feynman’s vision poses substantial experimental and theoretical challenges:

• First, can a quantum system be engineered to perform a computation in a large enough computational (Hilbert) space and with a low enough error rate to provide a quantum speedup?
• Second, can we formulate a problem that is hard for a classical computer but easy for a quantum computer?

In quantum computing, quantum supremacy or quantum advantage is the goal of demonstrating that a programmable quantum device can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve in any feasible amount of time (irrespective of the usefulness of the problem). Conceptually, quantum supremacy involves both the engineering task of building a powerful quantum computer and the computational-complexity-theoretic task of finding a problem that can be solved by that quantum computer and has a super-polynomial speedup over the best known or possible classical algorithm for that task.

A TAPESTRY FOR CYBERNETICS

The tapestry for cybernetics defines a protocol for the interoperability between human and machine interactions, diverse sets of large data, technological advances, computational techniques, and user interfaces – current and future – in different domains to manage and coordinate the flow of information. Elaborated in a prior whitepaper, the diagram below represents the layers for ingesting source data, its appropriate storage based on different protocols and its depiction after mapping, analysis, and computation. The connected tissue hexagons (items in gray) are the basis for the interactions and will be further elaborated on based on our Digital Twine and systems integration protocol Tendril Connector. Blank Hexagons in the right will be filled as we discover and invent more techniques and procedures as be build the smart and intelligent products and services of the future.

BUILDING THE CYBERNETIC FRAMEWORK

Based on need, type, and flavor, we have created 6 types of schemata to store information:

1. Write – Operational Database definition based on SQL constructs, where the form (structure) is predefined before data storage
2. Read – Big Data and the Hydration of Data Lakes, where raw data is initially stored in its original format before acted upon
3. Demand – Real time Embedded Systems for specialized operations, that assembles data to enable autonomous activities
4. Automate – Graph Databases for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, where discovered patterns are made actionable, intelligently
5. Evolve – Optimized storage for Genetic Programming based on DNA folding, where intelligence encoded in information evolves based on inherent basis and environmental forces, and
6. Measure – for qubit-based Quantum Computing, to enable next generation security, operations and new products and services based on entanglement and other principles of quantum mechanics

These schemas (or schemata) are the core foundation of the blueprint of our cybernetics for actionable intelligence.

SUMMARY

In his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation describes an industrial revolution as the appearance of “new technologies and novel ways of perceiving the world that trigger a profound change in economic and social structures.”  This Fourth Industrial Revolution is being driven by a staggering range of new technologies that are blurring the boundaries between people, the internet, and the physical world. It’s a convergence of the digital, physical, and biological spheres.

DARQ – Distributed Ledger, Applied Intelligence or Cybernetics, AR/VR/XR and Quantum Computing will be dominating the future of Industry and Services 5.0, and beyond, and we need to include them in our compositions to effectively create the solutions of tomorrow. These technologies have much potential to change the way we think and find solutions to our problem, the way we do business, or the way governments make decisions for the public. DARQ is like the internet of the early 1990s and 2000s, ignoring its potential will lead to a huge downfall in our advancements and future technologies.

DARQ has immense potential to change the world with its realities that are nonexistent. Now, it’s time for businesses to examine their level, whether they will keep themselves linked to new technologies of the future or not.  DARQ technology is already influencing the digital world when it’s in the development phase. Its potential is huge once it becomes a reality. Those who do not understand the potential to incorporate themselves with DARQ technologies will know the outcome only in hindsight.

As Schwab writes: “The new technology age, if shaped in a responsive and responsible way, could catalyze a new cultural renaissance that will enable us to feel part of something much larger than ourselves – a true global civilization. We can use the Fourth Industrial Revolution to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny.”

The reality of a connected world is here and now. Technological innovation is a core business strategy and the roles of a company’s strategy and technology leadership have become explicitly interwoven. Tomorrow’s leading companies will live by the creed of “disrupt or be disrupted.” Emerging technologies have the potential to create new markets and disrupt existing ones. The goal of NUMO is not just to create intelligent systems that can think and summarize but also enact – the physical portion that will be fluidly coupled to the AI and other emerging technology basis.

NITIN UCHIL Founder, CEO & Technical Evangelist

nitin.uchil@numorpho.com