  By the early eighties, Fredkin, Feynman, Minsky and others were exploring the
notion that the laws of physics could be simulated with computers. Feynman's
particular contribution was to bring quantum mechanics into the discussion and
his ideas played a key role in the development of quantum computation. It was
shown in 1995 by Barenco et al that all quantum computation processes could be
written in terms of local operations and CNOT gates. We show how one of the
most important of all physical systems, the quantized bosonic oscillator, can
be rewritten in precisely those terms and therefore described as a quantum
computational process, exactly in line with Feynman's ideas. We discuss single
particle excitations and coherent states.
