Posthuman Blues

SETI@home killed off

The workunit totals of users and teams will be frozen at that point, and the final totals will be available on the web.

The BOINC site will allow boffins to build other volunteer computing projects in areas like molecular biology, high-energy physics, and climate change study.

Before I started exclusively using my laptop, I ran SETI@home regularly, typically finishing a work unit a week. (My old CRT monitor still bears pixelated scars from the experience.) I cringe when I see offices full of computers doing nothing but cyling through cosmetic screen-savers.

I've been pondering a distributed computing effort called "AI@home." It doesn't exist -- at least not that I know of -- but maybe it should. And I see no reason why the software behind attempts such as the Lunascan Project can't be doled out to PCs as part of an ongoing search for anomalies on planetary surfaces.