I still remember hearing and myself promoting the concept of "idle computing capacity" in the 1990s (because of the idea that computers would consume the same resources whether or not they were actively running jobs).

https://hbr.org/2001/03/harnessing-the-power-of-idle-compute...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed.net

For a while I was in charge of the EFF Cooperating Computing Award. When it was announced, the announcement said

> However, the computer industry produces millions of new computers each year, which sit idle much of the time, running screen savers or waiting for the user to do something. EFF is encouraging people to pool their computing power over the Internet, to work together to share this massive resource.

That was in the 1990s. :-)

It's funny to think of just how inaccurate this became for subsequent CPU and chipset architecture, I guess because of convergent trends in customers wanting to save power for ecological, financial, and mobile device battery life reasons.