We investigate computation in the large -- utilizing many CPUs with large amounts of memory, large storage and massive connectivity -- to solve computationally complex problems involving big data, serving large collections of users, in high availability, global settings. Our investigation covers both theoretical techniques and current, applied tools used to scale applications on the desktop and in the cloud. Topics include caching, load balancing, parallel computing and models of computation, redundancy, failover strategies, use of GPUs, and noSQL databases.