NETWORK CHALLENGE: DARPA tests the big red balloons that will be used in its network challenge.
Image: © DARPA
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Tweets and status updates have been buzzing for weeks about DARPA's Network Challenge, even though the event does not officially kick off until 10 A.M. Eastern time Saturday when hundreds of technophiles will compete in an effort to be the first to track down the locations of 10 large red weather balloons positioned across the U.S. throughout the day (pdf).
Commemorating the 40th anniversary of ARPANET (the Internet's predecessor), the event has already met one of its main goals in demonstrating the effectiveness of social networking. Groups have sprung up on Facebook and Twitter to share news of the challenge and recruit team members for more efficient geographic coverage, and there is a wiki where game-day strategies are being discussed.
Saturday marks exactly four decades since DARPA's predecessor, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), connected four computer network nodes for the first time. This doubled the size of the fledgling ARPANET, which would later grow into today's Internet.
DARPA's Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO) created the Network Challenge to acknowledge this important moment in Internet history as well as to provide a test bed for better understanding the dynamics of social networking. The agency will award a $40,000 cash prize to the first entrant (an individual or a team) that submits the latitude and longitude of all 10 balloons. The balloons will be lofted 30.5 meters into the air at locations that DARPA says will be visible from nearby roadways; agency representatives will be present at each locale.
As of Tuesday, 300 teams had registered to compete and submit balloon coordinates to the TCTO.
The nature of the challenge provides some sense of how far the Internet has come, considering the resources that would have been required to compete in the same event in 1969. Back then, participants would have needed an affinity for navigation to be able to compute a balloon's coordinates, and they would have had to rely on long-distance phone calls, most likely from public phones if they were reporting in from the field, to register their findings with DARPA, says Peter Lee, TCTO director. Today's portable GPS units, phones and computers as well as Web-based mapping software remove a lot of barriers, he says, adding: "That contrast is really remarkable."
The way people are networked socially via the Web today, they can be part of a team without necessarily leaving their homes or even living in the U.S. Some people might even do the legwork and then offer to give (or sell) information to participants, Lee says. "We want to understand the effect of trust in social networks," and the prize money offered is one element of the competition meant to test that trust, he adds.
"This is not just a commemoration of 40 years since ARPANET, it's also a science project," Lee says, adding that his office plans to interview winners to find out how they approached the challenge and what was (and was not) successful.
Just one of the many fascinating aspects of the Internet's birth was the remarkable farsightedness of the people developing the systems, protocols and networking technology to make it all work. "There were technical decisions in terms of routing and packet switching that really looked ahead at scaling up," Lee says. "Who knows why they did this, but it turned out to be genius."
The same year that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, the new ARPANET was used for the first time in a demonstration to show how people working from different locations could collaborate on the same document, notes Lee, who joined DARPA in August for a two-year stint, taking a leave of absence as head of Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science Department. "Zoom ahead 40 years," he adds, "and you can hardly find anyone who hasn't been touched by, and whose life hasn't been improved by the Internet."
See what we're tweeting about
13 Comments
Add CommentLooking for a team to join? We will donate all proceeds to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. We are using a Facebook Group to communicate with the team. Email 40kforLAF@gmail.com if you see a red balloon tomorrow. Here is a link to the Group on Facebook http://bit.ly/79noxa
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have a strong team (I Spy a Red Balloon) that is giving all of the prize money to charity (Red Cross). If you see a red balloon in the sky on Dec. 5th, let us know at:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ispyaredballoon.com/
or at facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=201028633372
or
text: (262) I-SPY-SPY (262-477-9779)
The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team has created an interesting experiment that after signing up, allows you to measure in real-time the impact that you have on spreading information to your peers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore info here: http://balloon.mit.edu/bloggers/
I’ve established a team of my own, called Team DeciNena. We will win because we have the wittiest name. ;) And we are the best organized and have some of the best technology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd we are 100% “cupcake-free”.
We are offering to share the prize money not just with actual finders, but all active participants who are out looking on B-Day.
http://decinena.com
DARPA is exploiting an old human feature : ego and winning. The fact that a military research hub wants to evaluate social networks to "locate" should be a hint in itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis may have the make up of a game but is in fact an evaluation of social networking as a military intelligence tool.
Dupes.
Quite right mikecimerian, and the research results will help aid insurrections within totalitarian regimes, ie: Iran and Belarus. It will also aid in defense planning should American soil ever be invaded.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPredictive models and social engineering; so who decides and on what premisses? It is the nature of totalitarism to encompass it's population within a mass paradigm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I witness here is a scheme to detect surges in correlated data and derive equations from observed non-linear phenomena .
The step from reaction to preemption is in process. Every contribution to social modelization under the auspices of the military is like begging for rape.
Mike, I understand your worry, but consider the context. First of all, this test merely represents a natural maturing of the military capabilities the internet was specifically created to make possible. It was envisioned as a decentralized communications network that could withstand centralized attack from the Soviets. Now, instead of 10 balloons, imagine 10 terrorists, one with a nuclear suitcase bomb. The defense department would be negligent in its duty to not fully utilize the technology they helped create to keep this country safe. Second, the constitution still applies. The military is still a civilian run institution comprised of a home grown volunteer army. That's not to say it could never become a tool of fascist authoritarianism, but it would take far more than this simple contest to bring an end American liberty. Should we be watching? Of course we should. This is America. We should always watching for those who would rob us of our freedoms. But I'm not hearing alarm bells just yet. Warrentless wire-taping on the other hand, is a much greater and more imminent threat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJoining a team is a tricky proposition -- will you join the one with the right information? How much of the prize will you have to share? Why not take a shot at winning it all for yourself: http://www.openredballoon.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read a differerent article, on this contest, 2 days ago and a ran a 5 min mental sim and I ran it again ... then I slept on it and ran it once more. Same exact outcome, every time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this.. There is only one way for this can end well for all and it does not involve teams and clever strategies. ... simply ...
Each balloon is worth $4k. When I find one, I will tell the world exactly where and declare my favorite charity.
The community should see and decide, before launch, that dickering and scheming are pointless.
If each balloon found is immediately reported, to the world, along with the finder's charity of choice, then the last person to find the last balloon will act as executor of the wishes of the other finders, like a "will and testament".
I declare that if I find one, that I will report it, to the public domain, and I charge the last person, who finds the 10th balloon, to give MY $4k to The American Red Cross.
=Alvin Smith=
(It is just plain and simple logic ... not really any science).
I read the new book "Wired for Thought" which compares the Internet to the brain. It's publication by Harvard coincided with the 40th anniversary and it seems a perfect and natural evolution. The book's author (Jeffrey Stibel) spends two chapters on the value of social networks both in the brain and on the Internet. DARPA is on the right path!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOkay, this is just a game, it's not some plot to take over the world. Seriously, they just want to see how complex systems work, as they have applications everywhere. I don't see anything sinister here, but then again it is always possible that this is another plot by the Bilderburg group to take over the Internet starting with Facebook so that they can blah blah blah. Occam's Razor, when faced with equivalent evidence the simpler answer is usually right. Light-hearted competition to see how something works or plot to take over the nation? Think about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrue, this is just a game. A game in topology. Like drawing vectors in relation to a hockey puck and plotting the game on a 3D graph.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMotivation for target acquisition. Money and instant 15 mins of fame to crank the apparatus.
We are far from RSA's long encryption challenges where cooperation was a requirement in order to obtain success.
This is divisible and pits communities against one another for competition sake. Op force dynamics?
Is it this simple? The process is incremental ... frogs and pots.