Earlier today Slashdot linked to an article about whether distributed rendering for CGI movies, such as the hilarious Shrek 2, makes any sense (Rendering Shrek@Home?). The article that sparked the /. discussion was on Download Aborted!: Can I Help to Render Shrek 3?.

For a number of technical reasons, this is probably not a very viable idea (see the comments on /. and the original piece for the reasons why). However, on BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow has transformed the original concept into a much better one: SHREK@HOME: blue-sky proposal for the future of film production:

Ultimately, the largest expense in an Internet marketplace where anything is available always anywhere is marketing: the more choice, the more expensive influencing choice becomes.

So a social SHREK@HOME could engage its audience not just for their cycles, but for their evangelism. We see glimmers of that in some machinima projects, like Red v Blue or in Flash-shorts like Homestar Runner, a clubbish sense of ownership by its fans that turn them into relentless marketers of the net-art. [emphasis in original]

As they say, read the whole thing.