I’ve heard it said that the revolutionary things will be using in 10 years time are in the labs today.

Thinking back to my time at Lucent at the start of this decade I was often intrigued by what its research division Bell Labs was doing in nanotechnology. I didn’t understand much of it but was intrigued all the same.

This was very early days for this branch of research but 10 years on we are starting to see more tangible real world examples of how materials created at a molecular level have a practical application in our day to day lives.

A few months back I met with a former project management colleague at Alcatel Lucent, who is currently working on 4G and Long Term Evolution projects, and he told me that all of the technology that used to fill several 2m tall racks in the early 3G base stations could now be fitted into a box around the size of a desktop PC. Besides potentially enabling orgainisations to run 3G networks within buildings, this very much illustrated the progress in molecular level electronics over the last decade.

I also remember it being said back in 2001 that all the technology in mobile handsets at that time would be fitted into devices the size of wrist watches within 10 years.

Nano-technology is making its way into our lives in many ways now to the extent that health organisations and trade unions are calling for tougher guidelines to prevent workers and consumers from being damaged by nano-particles.

The development of super strong materials and material types that could never have been conceivable before is well underway. Personally I’m looking forward to the self cleaning windows, cars and bathrooms as the useful output from such molecular level manipulation of materials. But beyond the many and varied ways in which the materials with which we build our world can and no doubt will be changed in amazing ways, the most significant output of nano-technology could well be quantum computing on an industrial scale.

There is a growing feeling amongst leading scientists that small scale quantum computers are just a few years away and some are even that confident to say they imagine quantum computers being on people’s desktops within 20 years.

When you look at the difference between today’s traditional computers and a quantum computer it is awesomely immense and to even consider having desktop computers that powerful in a 20 year timeframe is potentially world changing.

Typical personal computers calculate 64 bits of data at a time. A 64- qubit quantum computer would be about 18 billion billion times faster.

This type of capability will make the ‘power of Google’ that we worship today akin to a tortoise racing the space shuttle. Information creation and searching will be changed beyond measure and with quantum computing driving ‘the cloud’ every single one of use could have the computing power of the whole of Silicon Valley at our fingertips.