The Hunt for Red Balloons
Photo Source: CNN
To mark the 40th anniversary of the ARPNET, the precursor of the Internet, the Defense Research Project Agency (DARPA) announced a challenge. The first person or team to find all 10 red balloons randomly placed across the United States would win $40,000. The balloons would be set up on December 5th for 7 hours, with the winning party being the first to plot the locations of all ten balloons correctly. What was the reason for this DARPA competition? The DARPA Challenge was to study the power and influence of the Internet and to analyze the ability to organize, gather and verify information quickly through social networking and other Internet applications. Think of the competition as a large scale version of the children’s game telephone, but with $40,000 at stake.
Well, the competition occurred this past weekend. The winners from MIT took just nine hours to plot all the balloons correctly. An impressive feat when you look at the locations where the balloons were placed. So what was the secret to MIT’s success? MIT started its own website for the competition and used the prize money as a cash incentive to get the public involved. “We’re giving $2000 per balloon to the first person to send us the correct coordinates, but that’s not all – we’re also giving $1000 to the person who invited them. Then we’re giving $500 to whoever invited the inviter, and so on.”
While it will take months for DARPA to sift through the strengths and weaknesses of the competing teams, one thing is quite clear at the competiton’s completion. Technology might be continually evolving, but the power of money to motivate is a constant throughout human history.