Towards a Quantum World Wide Web
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Abstract (arXiv)
We elaborate a quantum model for the meaning associated with corpora of written documents, like the pages forming the World Wide Web. To that end, we are guided by how physicists constructed quantum theory for microscopic entities, which unlike classical objects cannot be fully represented in our spatial theater. We suggest that a similar construction needs to be carried out by linguists and computational scientists, to capture the full meaning carried by collections of documental entities. More precisely, we show how to associate a quantum-like 'entity of meaning' to a 'language entity formed by printed documents', considering the latter as the collection of traces that are left by the former, in specific results of search actions that we describe as measurements. In other words, we offer a perspective where a collection of documents, like the Web, is described as the space of manifestation of a more complex entity - the QWeb - which is the object of our modeling, drawing its inspiration from previous studies on operational-realistic approaches to quantum physics and quantum modeling of human cognition and decision-making. We emphasize that a consistent QWeb model needs to account for the observed correlations between words appearing in printed documents, e.g., co-occurrences, as the latter would depend on the 'meaning connections' existing between the concepts that are associated with these words. In that respect, we show that both 'context and interference (quantum) effects' are required to explain the probabilities calculated by counting the relative number of documents containing certain words and co-ocurrrences of words.
Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 20 Mar 2017.
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Citing papers per year: 2021: 2; 2022: 1; 2023: 1; 2024: 1; 2025: 0; 2026: 1.
6 papers.
- 2021Are Words the Quanta of Human Language? Extending the Domain of Quantum Cognitioncited by 7
- 2021Quantum Bose-Einstein Statistics for Indistinguishable Concepts in Human Languagecited by 5
- 2022Development of a Thermodynamics of Human Cognition and Human Culturecited by 2
- 2023Entanglement as a Method to Reduce Uncertaintycited by 1
- 2024Identifying Quantum Mechanical Statistics in Italian Corporacited by 1
- 2026Reply to comments arXiv:2512.07881 and arXiv:2601.06104 on quantum structure in human and AI-generated languagecited by 0
- 2026Reply to comments arXiv:2512.07881 and arXiv:2601.06104 on quantum structure in human and AI-generated language22 Sep 2026
- 2024Identifying Quantum Mechanical Statistics in Italian Corpora10 Dec 2024
- 2023Entanglement as a Method to Reduce Uncertainty12 Feb 2023
- 2022Development of a Thermodynamics of Human Cognition and Human Culture24 Dec 2022
- 2021Are Words the Quanta of Human Language? Extending the Domain of Quantum Cognition10 Oct 2021
- 2021Quantum Bose-Einstein Statistics for Indistinguishable Concepts in Human Language28 Mar 2021