If you can convince teenagers that WCG is a "cool" thing to do, getting one million of them will be easy. Problem is, while they may be toting around their iPods, PDAs, game boys and cell phones, toting around their computer won't pass for looking good.

Hey, hang on a minute!

That analysis might be true for some. But those of us approaching our seventh decade and investing significant sums of cash in hardware and electricity bills don't see this as a pop culture fad thing at all...

David.

As I approach my sixth decade, I don't see it as pop either but what counts in the end is how society sees it. It's society's perception of it and subsequent level of adoption/internalization of the behavior (crunching) that determines its longevity and impact. Remember zoot suits, 23 skidoo, hip chains... all pop and where is it now? CB radio, rubber ducky, Smokey and the Bandit... all culminated in certain pop culture behaviors such as pounding. But who pounds now?

If crunching were introduced in the schools and kids were encouraged to value and internalize the behavior, if it becomes as accepted and widespread as brushing teeth, mowing lawns, setting out the trash then it moves out of the pop stream into the mainstream, something everybody does automatically, THEN grid computing will accomplish more than we pioneers dream of even now. And if we are not the pioneers, if we are the pinnacle, then in 10 years grid computing will be a memory for most and have only a small cult following. Your children will tell your grandchildren that you were a cruncher and they'll say "what's that" and your kids will say "crunching is what the old hippies did after they grew up and became materialistic" and the little ones will ask "what's a hippy?"

We want BOINC, UD and whatever other new agents come along to be pre-installed on every machine sold. Failing that we want a WCG/BOINC/UD disk packaged with every new computer. And we want that if someone unpacks a new machine and finds the software is not on the drive or the disk is not in the box then they phone the store and complain about it. We want people to say "I know how to install and maintain BOINC because I learned about it in school, it's easy and it's the right thing to do." Now it's just pop, something the geeks do and the rest just admire and talk about but don't do themselves. Or has it even got that far?

Actually, I'm not sure if it's pop now or not. I tried to convey that in my previous post but may have failed.

I am sure that if it's not pop now then we should try to avoid making it pop. Gasp! What did he just say? Well, for me pop is more than just "that which is popular". For me it's "that which is popular today but probably won't be tomorrow". By making something pop we sign it's death warrant. See, it's all to do with one's emotional attachment to the behavior called crunching. If you do it because it's cool then you'll stop doing it when everybody's doing it and you want to boost your cool rating. The kids will talk about it in whatever terms are in vogue but we want them, in their hearts, to think of crunching as something more important than "cool", something they'll do until they die or it's no longer needed.

Regarding your opinion that most people simply haven't heard of it... I can't disagree with that because I haven't polled most people. I can say that of the people I have talked to about it and of those who own computers, the majority have heard of SETI.