I'm 59, raised in upstate New York...been to Paraguay S.A. (Chaco) for awhile before settling in Arizona. Seti has allowed me to setup a Lan with three computers at first, now I'm just down to two. I have always used my computers 24/7 so it seems "normal" to me.
Seti may not find anything "out there" BUT it sure has started a distributed computing idea which will continue for many years.
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.