There’s a great article on the future of super-computing in Wired (click on the link above).
Money quote:
“Amid the beckoning fantasies of futurism, the purpose of whatever comes next – like that of today’s petapede – will be to serve the ultimate, and still the only general-purpose, petascale computer: the human brain. The brain demonstrates the superiority of the edge over the core: It’s not agglomerated in a few air-conditioned nodes, but dispersed far and wide and interconnected via myriad sensory and media channels. The test of the new global ganglia of computers and cables, worldwide webs of glass and light and air, is how readily they take advantage of unexpected contributions from free human minds, in all their creativity and diversity. Search and you shall find.”
Discoverers and Discoveries 