Arrangements of superconducting islands interspersed by Josephson junctions hold an enormous potential for the future of quantum and classical computation, sensing and metamaterials. Here we describe possible vortex quantum bits that have their design based upon Josephson technologies. The Josephson qubits are analogous to artificial atoms and exhibit clearly definable energy levels that are a function of the number of vortex states in a system and the applied magnetic flux. We describe these energies and a method to very accurately obtain them. We discuss quantum gates and algorithms that can be used for logic operations, entanglement, and also adiabatic quantum computing. The technologies being developed for quantum computation also have the potential for use in other applications, such as quantum sensing and metamaterials, and these topics run in parallel throughout the text.