So where's the computation superhighway? [WWW computing resources]
Olivier Marin · IEEE Distributed Systems Online · 2005
As the original Arpanet evolved, it opened to research communities and then to the general public. As the number of connected computers grew, so did the amount of resources. Nowadays this growth is nearly exponential, and many countries are still waiting to popularize Internet access. What we're arriving at is a planetary proliferation of networked equipment surrounding us that can run programs cooperatively. Starting from this conception, and putting aside a few technicalities for a jiffy, the WWW appears to be an unlimited pool of computing resources. Exploiting the huge amount of resources that sit idly on computers over the WWW sounds like the redistribution of goods without leveling everything to equality at the expense of comfort.