It’s like the Lycos “Make Love Not Spam” project, only with all that concentrated computing power being focussed on the public good.
The World Community Grid is an organization whose lofty goal is to “create the world’s largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity”.
They do this by harnessing the computer power of your Internet-connected PC when it is otherwise idle. Much like the Seti project, or, again, the poorly executed yet clinically interesting “Make Love Not Spam” effort put forth by Lycos last month.
Projects on which this donated computing power has been expended include a smallpox research project, which, according to their website, “made it possible to discover smallpox therapy candidates at a record pace”, and an ongoing human proteome project aimed at identifying the proteins which make up the human proteome, in order to build “the understanding needed for novel and effective treatments for diseases like cancer, HIV/AIDS, SARS, and malaria”.
But, you say, how can we be sure this is on the up-and-up? After all, aren’t you the one who got taken in by Alek Komarnitsky and his holiday hoax?
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Yes, it’s true (and how kind of you to bring it up).
But the World Community Grid Project is not only underwritten by no less a stand-up organization than IBM itself, but has on its advisory board such illustrious advisors as the president of the California Institute of Technology, the director of the San Diego Supercomputer center, the president of the Mayo Clinic, and the president of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Not too shabby.
So, if you are running Windows, and are connected to the Internet (of course you are), check out the World Community Grid Project. Your spare computing cycles can do the world some good.
You can find out more at the World Community Grid website.
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