What is BOINC? I need help explaining to my friends/family
So, I was recently talking to a family member about having attended the BOINC workshop in Chicago. Right off the bat they asked the big questions: BOINC? BOINC what? What’s a BOINC?
I answered as best I could, but ultimately I realized that “it’s a middleware system that networks everyone’s computers together to form a supercomputer that anyone can use. SETI uses it.” was seriously insufficient, particularly when it came to keeping the attention of this science loving technically illiterate individual -- let alone driving their desire to learn more or participate.
I’ve spent some time thinking about it and I have a few different answers now, but even they feel limited. I’ll share a few ideas if the discussion gets going.
So yeah, I'm curious what everyone else thinks:
What is BOINC?
It's a screensaver that runs while you aren't using your computer and works in the background to do things like search for signals from aliens and find a cure for cancer.
Hardly complete or 100% accurate but for a simple description for the average person to understand it's a pretty good start. If they ask questions you can provide more details.
Imagine an anthill, if you are the size of an ant, the hill and the nest that made it is like a city, pretty big! There is a queen ant that co-ordinates all the workers, but they all also act independently, by collective effort large amounts of earth can be moved and structures built, by tiny ants.
BOINC allows someone to create a project like the queen in the ant-hill does, this co-ordinator breaks a big computational problem into ant sized parts, and sends them out to individuals to be completed and returned. With enough ants, its amazing how much research can be completed. Because the ants volunteer their computing power, it makes BOINC a very cheap for scientific problems, that could not normally be funded.
Middleware is a great answer if you are talking to a software engineer but its like trying to explain "what is light" or "what is time". If your audience doesn't have previous exposure to the technical background details it may be better to describe what is it's effect or how is it useful.
My angle would probably be:
There is a network of people who contribute to research by volunteering some of their PC's spare computing power to solve massively difficult problems. BOINC is the backbone of that network, it's the system that links research projects with volunteers.
(You can exchange PC with phone, tablet, laptop or any other applicable device)
If that raises interest I might explain how a big problem is broken up into little parcels of work and sent out to millions of volunteers, also, when the results are combined the network of volunteers can outperform a supercomputer.
You could start by explaining how the internet was initially created by academic and government institutions for research purposes, and now BOINC is just another layer that gives researchers that ability to leverage the computing power of a much wider group of machines. Back to the basics?
BOINC is a screensaver like software on your computer which helps scientists compute problems while you're not using your computer, and in return you can earn a crypto currency call Gridcoin.