In recent decades, our ability to understand and manipulate the quantum phenomena is leading to the development of a variety of technologies, such as quantum communication systems and quantum computers, that promise to bring significant economic and societal benefits, along with major security implications.
A century of research into the strange phenomena of the quantum world has given us technologies that are central to modern society: lasers, magnetic resonance imaging, atomic clocks (and thus, GPS), semiconductor electronics (and thus, computers)
An increasing ability to control and manipulate quantum systems is fomenting what physicists Jonathan Dowling and Gerard Milburn termed, in a paper in 2003, the "2nd Quantum Revolution"