As noted on the GridCafe website: "The LCG project, which was launched in 2002, has a mission to integrate thousands of computers worldwide into a global computing resource. This technological tour-de-force will rely on novel Grid software, called middleware, and will also benefit from new hardware developments from the IT industry.

"The challenge facing the LCG project is more than just the large amount of data that the physicists must store. The LHC will require around 100 000 of today's PCs to analyse that data!

"Behind the numbers, however, is a new philosophy. The data and processing power should be available to the thousands of scientists involved in LHC experiments in a completely seamless fashion, independent of their location. The LCG project has been rapidly gearing up for this challenge, with more than 50 computer scientists and engineers from partner centres around the world joining the effort over the past year. The first version of the LCG, called LCG-1, is now up and running on a restricted number of sites, and with limited functionality. Over the next few years, however, the plan is for LCG to grow rapidly in size and complexity, absorbing new Grid technologies and integrating many more sites."

As explained on CERN's GridCafe website: "Whereas the Web is a service for sharing information over the Internet, the Grid is a service for sharing computer power and data storage capacity over the Internet. The Grid goes well beyond simple communication between computers, and aims ultimately to turn the global network of computers into one vast computational resource." This dream of pooling the world's computing power harkens back to an idea proposed some years ago to have such resources available "on tap" as a utility like water or electricity. If this global computing system becomes a reality, it will no doubt constitute a revolution for Net governance.