A new DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) contest is using balloons to test our social-networking skills, The DARPA Network Challenge will award $40,000 to the first person who can identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 red weather balloons positioned at different parts of the sky across the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads. DARPA is holding its Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet.
The Social network element comes in to play as it is make more sense to collaborate in order to win this prize as the site says : “The competition is meant to explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.” The contest started on the Saturday the 5th of Decembers 2009 and was due to end on the 14th of December; however a team from MIT has won the competition.
What I would like to have access to, is data that the winning team and all the other unsuccessful teams used to collaborate including the platforms used in order to win.
I shall leave you with this slightly sarcastic statement “It is not about taking part, it is about winning”
What I would also like to see is a European version of this competition, with the balloons spread throughout the Continent of Europe.
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