No. In the heyday of mainframes people would remote in, with a terminal. That's where the terminal protocols many people still use on a daily basis actually come from. Sending text over the wire to display on your terminal screen, you type into a keyboard which transmits your input across the wire to the mainframe which responds with new screen updates.
Using your desktop remotely from a cheaper but more portable device is pretty much the same model (not the same thing, but model) as the way many people interacted with mainframes last century.
