Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What? (Score 3, Interesting)

Why do ideas like this always involve centralization? What if almost all computer hardware operated in a fashion similar to Seti@home? You own a basic client (ie laptop, fancy PDA thingy, etc), with a basic processor that can do most everyday tasks, but when you start editing pictures or video, unused processing power around you is utilized to speed things up. Everyone would also have some sort of real computer (though maybe not, depending on how ubiquitous processors become... imagine every device having a pentium 4 equivlant running it) and when your laptop does something more intensive than web browsing the unused processing power from around you (neighbor's computers, microwaves, etc.) is enlisted to complete the task. Basically there is networked processing power all around you, and it does whatever task/s that are going on around in the area. I recall reading at one point that the Cell processor was designed for networked computing (forgive the lack of reference). Imagine you have a multi-cell home server... and everyone else does... you are only using two of the processors, and your neighbor needs more than they have? Yours process the neighbors data. It would be kinda neat, you would have slower processing at peak times when more people are doing things, and it could be insanely fast during non-peak times. Now to bring this sorts onto topic... What about the same sort of system for data? The only real challenge as far as I'm concerned is having a network system (Internet 2.0?, 3.0?, 11.0?) that ensures complete anonymity for users. All my data is encrypted with my unique key so that only I can read it, but because it was remotely stored in the first place, it would be available to me wherever. A future like this woul make laptops even lighter and more battery efficient (no hard disk, and smallish processor)