When finished with one batch, your computer uploads the result to UC-B and downloads another batch over the internet. Don't worry--it never interferes with your own work. It's the first example of globally shared computer resources on a huge scale. There are over 1.4 million people involved, and 110,000 years of computer time logged. At the SETI@Home site, you can also find all kinds of statistics about these users and computers worldwide.

Note: The above rankings are based on statistics from SETI on November 7, 1999. For statistical reasons, I excluded countries (territories) with fewer than 100 SETI users and with fewer than 1,500 processed batches. There are 88 countries (out of 224 reporting) included in this ranking.

Highest computer ownership is the percentage of SETI users in the country’s population. It should probably be labeled more accurately as "highest computer ownership by open-minded people with internet access." It seems that other factors, such as cold weather and languages, affect the ranking as much as industrialization. For example, Japan, the second largest economy, ranks 40th in this category. The bottom of the list is mainly composed of countries using non-Western languages--Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Egypt, China, etc.

Lowest computer utilization reflects the most time an average user spends on running the SETI program, because SETI runs mainly as a screen saver or in the background. It may also suggest that these countries have the most curious minds. Hollywood should probably market their sci-fi movies, such as Contact, in these countries vigorously.

One country worth commenting on is Vietnam. Vietnam gained entry to the ranking for the first time with 184 SETI users. On average, each user spends nearly 3,300 computer hours on SETI, compared to 835 hours for users in the U.S. That's four and a half months of continuous computer time, doing nothing but running SETI! Computer education is definitely in need there. Game promoters may also find Vietnam (as well as Estonia, Lithuania, etc.) to be their best new market.