GRID Computing: The Modern Utility?
Another interesting distributed computing project that is just beginning to take shape is grid computing. The idea is similar to plugging an appliance into a wall outlet, tapping into your local utility's electrical power grid. Future grid-computing appliances could be plugged into the Internet, tapping into thousands (millions?) of high-performance computers, allowing you to do word processing, spreadsheet calculations, email, and so on with a very low-cost computing device.
One trouble with this idea is that very powerful computers are already low-cost devices and are getting more powerful and cheaper all the time. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, though. The cluster site mentioned above has more information on this subject.