I work with IT all the time, but I regularly don't need all of the capacity of the system I am using, so for the last decade or two, I've been putting those wasted cycles to good use.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
My personal belief is that the universe contains such a wide variety of environments that the likelihood of our encounterring extra-terestrial intelligence with a similar form/outlook as ourselves is pretty close to nil.
Our closest 'intelligent alien neighbors' may well be sub-atomic or pan-galactic in form. One life-forms cities could well be anothers cancer. Perhaps ours. Our success in meeting an co-operating with such life and intelligence will depend first and foremost as our ability to recognize it.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
