I remember watching “Total Recall” when I was a young boy, and I remember the hologram, when Arnold Schwarzenegger projected a 3D image of himself to a different place using this device. While I was in class we watched a video where this guy does just that, I was amazed. First of all, I did not know what the video was about, so when this guy walks onto the stage when he is 14,000 miles away from it I was shocked. I almost had to leave my seat because I did not think it was real. Then about halfway through the video I started thinking about how much money a technology like this could save business people who have to travel for meetings and to give seminars. I have been reading a book by Robert Kiyosaki called “Rich Dad’s Prophecy” and there is a part when Robert is writing about the future, he was saying that in the information age that changes will be invisible. People had to travel by boat first and then by plane in the present, in the future they will use a technology such as this and they will not have to leave their home base. This will save time and money for everyone and not require people to have to take days off recuperating after a business trip. I was so excited about this that I showed it to my girlfriend and then we started talking more about it. Imagine what movies or computer games could be like. Business could have meetings just like in the movie “Resident Evil”, where the whole board is not actually there. Politicians could give speeches to every place at once and be as effective as if they were there in person, this would also reduce the risk of assassination. The world’s best teachers could teach classes to and from anywhere in the world. People of different cultures could meet almost in person and learn about each other, further flattening the world. The future is already here; we just don’t know it yet.
Distributed computing is a method of using many computers processor resources together over a network to bring about power that is similar to, or greater than, the power of a conventional super computer. In class we learned about the SETI@home project, which uses peoples computers to search for extraterrestrial life. This was the first time that I had heard of the concept of using people’s home computers in this manner, although I have read about Google’s “cloud computing” data center which uses a concept similar to distributed computing.
Being business minded, I suddenly had a spark go off in my mind, I thought if organizations need my processor then they have to pay me for it, I thought that this would be a great way to earn a little passive income, enough to pay for my coffee habit. I thought that there would be a ton of places capitalizing on this so I Googled it. Sure enough there were many results so I started going through my results and quickly realized that none of them were paying for this service. I also noticed that most of the information that I found was pretty old, from 2001, and that the new stuff was all by volunteer only. I emailed a few places and they all told me that they would pay me if I had 25 or more computers. Since I am a business minded individual, I was not easily discouraged, I searched various combinations of ‘distributed computed’ and ‘earn money’ together. I found a website that seemed promising called ‘ubero.com’ but could not register due to problems with their website. I eventually decided to donate my processing power to a good cause…
I ended up choosing a site called ‘Gstock.com’ they use my processing power to analyze the stock market and decide when the best time is to buy and sell selected stocks. I receive an email every time the status of a stock in my portfolio changes from buy to sell. In the end I hope to make a little bit of money with this system although it is not really passive income, the earning potential is endless. The fact that none of the other sites were paying now seems like a blessing in disguise.
When I was a kid I used to play a game with no name. This game was kind of like “hide and seek” mixed with “good guys versus bad guys”. My brother, our friends, and I used to split up into two groups and go to the desert. Then one group would be the “bad guys” and go and hide while the other group would wait for about 5 minutes and then go to find the first group. We would always don our favorite weapons which consisted of one or more of the following; a stick, some small rocks or little desert fruits, and of course the rope. If the “good guys” found the “bad guys” then they would capture them and put them in the area designated the prison. If a “bad guy” found the prison then they could free the rest of the captured “bad guys”. Some times it was okay to switch teams but traitors were never really trusted. Thinking about this game now, since I have studied sociology, has really highlighted the sociological implications of what this game actually taught me.
Children learn their “proper” role, what society expects, while playing games like this. This game taught me about the importance of teamwork and how to use it. Being the oldest brother, I also got to learn a lot about leadership. Since I grew up in the harsh Arizona desert, playing outside in the middle of the day, automatically taught me various survival skills. I knew which plants you could eat and what you could not eat I knew the importance of water and had a canteen which really kept me alive. Most importantly, I learned the difference between men and women because there was never a girl playing this game, only boys were allowed, therefore there was a distinction from men and women. When I was growing up if all the guys were playing and one guy would have stayed to play with the girls, everyone else would wonder, “What is wrong with that guy”. This game really taught me what society expects a man to do all around. This game has brought out a lot of the qualities in me that I never would have had otherwise because I would have not developed them. Next time you see little children playing children’s games like the one I told you about, don’t think about how childish it is, think about the skills those kids are gaining as a result of the game.
