I was browsing my own archives, and came across this post from Dec. 17th, 2004:

A random idea I had the other day: create a distributed client system like SETI, where the processing time is being donated to third world or developing countries where processing power is hard to get. I dont know what the data sets would be, nor how it would all be setup, but its an idea. – Random Idea: distributed computing for the third world

I still think it’s a pretty good idea.