Many of you are quite familiar with the power of computers. They can record music, balance checkbooks, play games with you, process and print your words, and open a whole encyclopedia before your eyes. It's not a sweeping statement to say that computers have made our lives different. It's hard to envision a life before the age of computers.

If a single computer can change your life, why not connect several of them? Over the past two decades, networks of computers have even further changed the way businesses operate and the way the government functions. From digital library card catalogs to the ThinkQuest Internet site you're at now, networks have been another great technological advancement.

Distributed computing is the next step in computer progress, where computers are not only networked, but also smartly distribute their workload across each computer so that they stay busy and don't squander the electrical energy they feed on. This setup rivals even the fastest commercial supercomputers built by companies like IBM or Cray. When you combine the concept of distributed computing with the tens of millions of computers connected to the Internet, you've got the fastest computer on Earth.