In two weeks time scientists in Geneva will throw the switch on the biggest development in global communication since Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the internet, scrawled "www" on a blackboard in 1989. They will announce that 10 laboratories around the world, including one near Didcot in Oxfordshire, can now talk to each other through their computers."
In the age of high-speed digital communication this may not seem revolutionary. But this small step for computer kind marks the launch of a new technological concept - the next generation of the web. It is called the grid, and scientists say that before long it will change everything we do - from scientific research to business to tackling fires to booking holidays, and even to the way we watch and craft movies. Under the grid, the power of your machine - all those gigabytes, RAM and gigahertz - will become irrelevant. No matter how primitive and cheap your computer, you will have access to more power than currently exists in the Pentagon ... begging the question is Google God?
