Appearance
A Note from the Desk
About the Editor
Quantum & Quill is edited and largely written by Zara Nova in Zurich. What follows is the briefest possible account of who is writing, and why.
I was trained as a theoretical physicist and presently work between Zurich and an unfashionably wood-panelled room in central London. My first interest was, as it turned out, not particle physics but the small, accumulating wrongs that occur when complex systems are operated by people who do not understand them. Quantum computing and modern machine learning are both such systems. They concentrate consequence in places that are difficult to see, and they distribute responsibility into corners where no single person can plausibly bear it. This publication is an attempt to look at those corners.
Quantum & Quill publishes one long essay each week, plus occasional conversations, reviews of new books and papers, and the syllabuses I assemble for my own reading. The essays are written slowly. They are not journalism, and they are not commentary on the news cycle. Where they overlap with debates already underway — with Bostrom on simulation, with Floridi on informational ethics, with Vallor on technomoral virtues — I have tried to credit the conversation rather than to claim it.
The publication has no advertising, takes no sponsorship, and pays no platform. The newsletter is free; the writing is paid for by my consultancy on AI governance, and by the patience of two collaborators whose names appear in the colophon. Reader corrections and substantive disagreements are welcome — for the latter, the most useful form is a long letter rather than a short one.
If you would like to read more, the archive contains everything published to date. If you would prefer to subscribe to the Weekly Essay, the form on the front page is the only place to do so.