On Monday, the human species was informed of the discovery of a new highest known prime number. No doubt some of you have already prepared and eaten celebratory feasts. The largest-known-prime record is broken every few years by means of a networked-computing project called GIMPS, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. GIMPS is a beautiful holdover from the old internet, a time when humans were setting out to prove the possibilities for collective exploitation of spare computer resources.