It wasn't until recently that this experiment could actually be tried. Now all the monkeys and typewriters we need are on the Internet. So far, a new Hamlet hasn't appeared, but we've just begun. Individually, each of the small computers doesn't have much power. Collectively, they have massive computing power.
Many experts think the future of supercomputing is distributed computing on the Internet.
Over the last year or so, several massive distributed computing efforts have appeared. RSA posted a series of encrypted messages on its web site and offered prizes of several thousand dollars to anyone who could read them. Most other countries have no restrictions on encryption software. The United States classifies strong encryption software as munitions, and controls the export of such software outside the USA and Canada. In fact, some American companies such as Sun and DEC are exporting their strong encryption software from Russia, India and Israel in order to make an end run around American laws.