Call me a geek, but I love SETI@home. Way back when my computer was something along the lines of a glorified electric typewriter, I donated all my spare computing time to the SETI@home program. Long story short, it’s a massive project to sift through the overwhelming mountain of data collected by the telescope-based search for signals from space. As in extraterrestrial intelligence. Who knows if somebody else is out there, but considering the miserable cock-up we’ve got ourselves into here on earth, a little deus ex machina might be a good idea.
The SETI folks outsource their computing to people all over the globe–you download the SETI program, then when your processor is not busy, the program downloads a chunk of data from the SETI telescope and starts searching. If your computer finds the big ET signal, the data is sent to the scientists in charge for further investigation. Now that’s computing for a cause! They’re currently looking for more volunteers.
