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Russel Underhill

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Folding Everywhere (Distributed Computing Power) Facebook/Google = World

THE DREAM
Each computer that participates increases our ability to understand the problems we all face. Once installed the distributed computing software runs behind the scenes using otherwise unused computing time/power. Mostly likely you will hardly even notice it. The potential wave of change TED?GOOGLE?FACEBOOK? could start is endless. With a little suggestive thinking to BILLIONS the wave will give endless amounts of processing power/information to Universities and their students/teachers who want to change the world we live in. All we need is an initial wave of followers to jump aboard to help those paying/sacraficing to learn/teach, people who care to change the world, teachers/students.
There are several different folding programs, there isn't one program that is more important than another, every folding program is contributing to new discoveries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects

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  • Malcolm Goodson

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    Mar 24 2012: Like Ken Brown I see one very large spanner in the works; viruses, malware, trojans, rootkits, exploits et al. I used to be a part of seti@home, the precursor to boinc, until I realised the potential dangers of opening my hardware firewall up to 'anybody'. Once you have a large body of users the potential for hackers becomes truly frightening. If everybody was as good/nice as we are, fine; but everybody isn't! Besides, I'm not sure that with the ever decreasing cost of processors, there may, in practice, be little advantage in parallel computing in this way given the risks. I used to manage a small team of people who worked from home into the central network. Despite constant reminders, firewalls, security etc you would not believe the stuff those people had on their computers! And purely because they wouldn't apply a little commonsense.

    One more thing, there is a cost in all of this - the electricity needed to power all those computers when we're not using them - more greenhouse gases. Perhaps we should wait for fusion reactors :)

  • Jess Underhill

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    Mar 24 2012: BOINC needs to advertise, could you imagine if everyone on facebook was aware of programs such as BOINC?

  • santiago rodriguez

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    Mar 23 2012: what about this - the most interesting questions you can find on ted conversations POST THEM ON FACEBOOK (just as your facebook status, not the link, cuz people are a little wierd about registering at sites they are not familiar with) i think that would intantly and effortleslly make the conversation broader =)
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    Ken brown 30+

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    Mar 23 2012: The big togetherness right? It will come eventually,one only has to look around and see it in the younger generations eyes,just one thing, any system can be hacked.I think i'll wait and see if the product will take off in a few years.

    It's an interesting idea and under no circumstances am i criticizing it,could you expand a little more on this idea?

    • Russel Underhill

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      Mar 23 2012: Yeah big togetherness is what the dream is. I just feel we need enough initial followers so that it starts a wave of people believing they can make a difference. Sorta like how many people don't think their vote counts.
      I was thinking if someone could help make it a competition on facebook. It could take off. Like have the different folding teams compete so that we can see what most people want changed the most. Hopefully now and not in years... I know someone out there could help if they believe in it.

    • Douglas Bell

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      Mar 23 2012: Hi Ted,

      You're aware of the BOINC initiave, right? There is a well developed system for using spare processor time to address massively computational scientific and health issues.

      Best wishes,
      Doug
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