Here in the United States, an office of the Pentagon held an unusual contest earlier this month. Researchers wanted to see how thousands of people around the world could compete and collaborate to solve a problem that was too big for any one individual. The task was to find balloons scattered around the U.S. Competitors posted information and misinformation on Twitter and other social networking sites. Dr. Peter Lee is with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which sponsored the contest.
Dr. LEE: On December 5, we, in 10 public but undisclosed locations in the continental U.S., hoisted big red eight-foot wide weather balloons, about 50 to 100 feet in the air. And we challenged the world to find them. And the first person to report the locations – latitude and longitude of all 10 – would win a $40,000 prize.
[ARI] SHAPIRO: What was the point of this?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. LEE: There were several reasons we did this. I think the most fundamental is we wanted to create the conditions that would allow researchers to understand something more about how information flows on the Internet and on social networks. But we also wanted to create an adversarial situation.
Caught this one yesterday via podcast on the morning run–fascinating. Read or listen to it all.