I was struck by the same thought recently. In a class we were briefly introduced to Grid computing. I don't know much about Grid computing, this was just a very brief intro. But the picture I formed in my mind was amusing. It's supposed to be the new, up and coming thing. All I could think of at the time were old scifi movie scenes of huge computer rooms with huge systems and many companies calling in at the same time.

I know it makes sense and in today's world Grid computing is not the old "huge system" we used to see in the movies, but as Grey Fox says, it does seem that we're going round in circles. We started with a central computer area that many companies shared, and now we're talking about going back to the exact same configuration. Granted that new configuration has huge improvements over the old.