Guest Post by Miriam Meckel, Charles Ma, Gina-Maria Pöhlmann, Léa Steinacker, Viktor Suter
It’s the world’s most famous cat, and it wasn’t born on Instagram. It doesn’t even have a name – except for that of its famous creator: Erwin Schrödinger. He wasn’t a cat lover, but an Austrian quantum physicist and Nobel Prize winner in Physics. His penchant for very young girls recently led to his name being removed from a lecture hall at Trinity College, University of Dublin. But the cat named after him remained – as the most well-known scientific meme in quantum physics to this day.
“Schrödinger’s Cat” is the tale of the unthinkable in nature and progress. And that’s how Schrödinger wanted it to be understood: the demystification of subatomic wizardry. Put a live cat and an unstable atomic nucleus in a wooden box. At some point, the atomic nucleus decays, triggering a mechanism via a Geiger counter that releases hydrogen cyanide, killing the cat. We don’t know how long the atomic nucleus needs to decay. So we also don’t know whether the cat in the box is still alive or has already died. To determine this, we must open the box and look. As long as we don’t do that, the cat is both dead and alive simultaneously, existing in a superposition state that only collapses through human measurement.
Erwin Schrödinger wanted to use this “burlesque” story in 1935 to illustrate how absurd the foundations of quantum physics seem. It was a narrative of resistance against the revolution in physics that was meant to shatter human imagination. In quantum physics, subatomic particles, such as photons, can exist in a superposition state. They can also be thousands of kilometers apart yet connected (entanglement). If the state of one changes, so does the state of the other particle. Albert Einstein didn’t want to believe that such a thing was possible, that entangled quantum particles could supposedly communicate faster than light (which they can’t). This form of “spooky action at a distance” was as foreign to him as the cat that is simultaneously alive and dead.
And yet, something about this simultaneously dead and alive cat has fascinated people for generations. It too possesses a “spooky action at a distance” – as the most cited image for the fascination of the subatomic physical world. Such images and stories, called narratives, still shape how we deal with quantum physics today. On the positive side, Schrödinger’s cat has managed to condense the most complicated theoretical foundations of quantum physics into a popular narrative. Under the search term “Schroedinger” on Instagram, you can scroll through an almost endless series of cat videos and memes. On the negative side, it means that almost no one understands how quantum physics actually works, and very few want to look deeper into the wooden box with the superpositioned cat.
Every technology has its own narratives, becoming more understandable to people through specific stories, and in the best case, applicable and meaningful. Narratives are stories or discourses that organize human experiences into meaningful patterns and allow individuals to connect the diverse facts into a coherent story. Through narratives, we give meaning to new things, such as technologies, which allows us to contextualize and more easily apply them. They help determine whether a technology is adopted and how it spreads in a society.
How difficult this can be is currently well observed in the narratives surrounding artificial intelligence. There are enough questions for which we now need to find very concrete answers so that AI can enrich the economy and society. However, many discourses revolve around a different narrative: that of AI’s super-dominance, which will soon make us humans obsolete. This can be seen as a distraction maneuver from Silicon Valley, trying to divert attention from the quite relevant current problems: faulty or stereotypical AI responses, deepfakes and disinformation, or the enormous energy consumption of language models. But one can also simply state that this narrative doesn’t help to promote an informed engagement with AI. Who wants to use a technology that makes oneself obsolete?
A similar problem is now emerging with the next stage of technological development – quantum computing, which utilizes the “spooky” foundations of quantum physics. When quantum computers are widely usable, the application possibilities of artificial intelligence will grow exponentially. Large simulations of traffic systems, financial market developments, or population growth may then become possible, as well as promising applications in pharmaceutical and material development. Quantum is the next revolution of the computer. If we want to understand it and engage with its properties, it’s not enough to rely on an enigmatic popular meme. We need to kill the cat named after Schrödinger.
As part of a European research project with the Universities of St. Gallen, Lund, Copenhagen, and the Charité in Berlin, we investigated which narratives currently shape future expectations of quantum computing and influence technological innovations. To do this, we analyzed market reports from the 15 largest consulting firms worldwide, political strategy papers, and more than 2,300 media articles from eight newspapers from the UK, USA, India, and China using AI-supported text data analysis.
The results show: There is a whole spectrum of different narratives, but the dominant ones focus on problems and one-sided views. An important narrative describes quantum computing as a “cryptography killer” and thus the fear that the technology could crack any previous encryption. Einstein’s “spookiness” or other interpretations of “magic” are also found as narratives to (poorly) describe the complicated technology.
In a world of global technological competition, the topic is heavily politicized. One such narrative is the “Sino-American rivalry,” which portrays technological progress as a rat race between China and the USA. Quantum computing is also interpreted as a “trump card” in international export restrictions, thus becoming a medium of economic diplomacy. This field also includes the “quantum supremacy” for which individual states and corporations are vying. These narratives fit perfectly into the media’s topic cycles and are correspondingly frequent there.
Comparing the narratives in politics, business, and media, one thing stands out: They’re all cooking their own discursive soup. The strategy papers of the business world largely ignore political questions. This can be dangerous for companies, because geopolitical conditions may limit technological development just as much as government funding programs can stimulate it. Economic and political narratives also ignore aspects of social integration. This is a problem with a technology for which a direct consumer market will probably never emerge. Quantum computers are technically highly complex, sensitive, and expensive. End users will likely activate their computing power via the cloud rather than through their desk at home. This raises the question of whether we are heading towards a societal “quantum divide.”
The narratives about quantum computing have so far been much more moderate than the discourses around an all-powerful AI. This could be built upon to make the technology more understandable and thus more popular step by step. For if it is to become a driver of progress, it must not only be understood and used in elite circles and dominated by a few large countries and corporations.
Therefore, it is not enough for politics, business, and media to stir their favorite narratives in separate pots. What applies to the subatomic particles of our physical world also applies to communication about a new technology: Only when narratives overlap and connect over the distance between politics, business, and media can they have an effect over time horizons and different parts of society. After all, no one wants to eventually open the box of progress only to find a dead quantum cat inside.
Miriam Meckel is a professor for communication management at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Charles Ma and Gina-Maria Pöhlmann are doctoral students, Viktor Suter is a postdoc, and Léa Steinacker a lecturer at the same university.
The full paper can be found here and will be presented at HICSS 2025.
