I just heard, on NPR, about a country wide contest which took place on December 5th. The Pentagon placed 10 huge, red balloons in different locations around the US and challenged people to find them. A team from MIT won $40,000 after a 9 hour nationwide search.
At the end of October, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), announced it was going to celebrate 40 years of the internet with a competition called the DARPA Network Challenge.
Peter Lee, the director of the Darpa office that designed the project, said the hunt would help the Pentagon learn how to mobilise large numbers of people.
“People ask about the search for Osama bin Laden, but that was really not the point of this particular effort,”.
“For us, there is not such a focus on finding people who are trying not to be found. There is also the question of when you need to mobilise a large force, such as when you need to find ten backhoe operators if there is the collapse of a building.”
“We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless
dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.” — E. Merrill Root
