Staring tomorrow morning (12/5), the Pentagon’s research agency DARPA invite people across the US to start hunting for 10 weather balloons for a $40,000 prize to the first person who correctly reports the GPS coordinates of all ten balloons.
The 2.5-metre-diameter tethered balloons will be aloft during the daytime only. DARPA wants to test how well people can collaborate online as a lesson on how available Internet-based distributed social research techniques can be employed to solve tasks. How crowd sourcing can help to locate people instead of just TV news bulletins or Amber Alerts.
Social groups could form online, non-profits could rally constituents as a fundraiser instead of cleaning up trash along the freeway, an activity for widely dispersed family clans, all could help put eyeballs on the problem, confirm sightings, eliminate false leads, and have some fun sighting cupcake balloons to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of Al Gore’s invention of the Internet.
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MIT team wins $40K (9 hrs) to find all ten balloons. See the map and details.
https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/default.aspx