As more and more scientific research in, for example, astronomy and biology uses computers more and more intensely, computer calculating time has become scarce. Of course, the calculating power has come a long way from when mental calculating still outran the best computer, but running thousands of simulations of how a certain drug molecule docks with HIV proteases  within a limited timeframe is still outside the realm of even the best supercomputers. And this is where the consumer steps in.

Millions of people have computers connected to the internet nowadays. You start yours up in the morning (at least I do), check your email, maybe work a few hours on Word, check out some websites, etc. Then, after dinner, you might really get into it and play a MMORPG  for some hours, before shutting down the computer. Computer use? Like what they say about your brain: about 10%. The only time your computer is actually working hard is when playing that demanding online game. Now how about using the remaining 90% for the good of humanity? And this is where the World Community Grid (WCG) by IBM steps in.

The WCG offered volunteers the possibility to (in)directly aid in scientific research by ‘lending’ some of their computer’s calculating space to research projects. All you do is download a programme that will run in the background, uses processor cycles that are currently not being used. It runs a simulation, packs up the data afterwards and sends it back. Next simulation. Since its start, the WCG has used thousands of years of calculating space, saying that they’ve done “the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of years of research in less than a decade” (1). The projects the WCG runs range from looking for HIV medicines to improving the efficiency of solar cells to the search for low-costs water filtering systems.

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