CAIRO – Testing the far-reaching impact of social networking sites, the Pentagon has organized a contest to hunt for ten red balloons, in an effort to revolutionise ways of searching for missing people or tracking down terror suspects, reported The Times on Monday, December 7.
“The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems,” Regina Dugan, director of Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said in a statement.
The Challenge offers a $400,000 prize to the first person who locate ten big, red balloons launched across the country.
The aim is to test the use of word-of-mouth over social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
“People ask about the search for Osama bin Laden,” said Peter Lee, director of DARPA’s Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO).
“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.”
DARPA is the government agency that developed many of the technologies that became integral to the Internet.
The Network Challenge is one of a series of recent DARPA-sponsored challenges, which have included a $2 million prize for the builders of a robot car.
Algorithms
Using social networks, a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has made it to the prize.
“There were some people who thought it would take five minutes and some others who thought it would not be solved,” DARPA spokesman Johanna Jones said.
The team used sophisticated algorithms to locate the 8-foot, red balloons.
It also offered a vast network of spotters cash for information or even for signing up a friend who turned out to have correct information.
Under the system, named “recursive incentives”, everyone involved in tracking down a balloon shared a cash prize.
The spotter of the balloon received $2,000; the person who invited the finder into the network received $1,000; the one who invited the inviter got $500, and so on.
“We can envisage deploying this system to find missing children or stopping terrorist attacks,” said Riley Crane, a Society of Science fellow at MIT’s renowned Media Lab.
DARPA will study the results to assess how social networking can solve large-scale problems that require fast solutions.
It also plans to interview teams in order to understand the strategies they used to build networks and collect information.
“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,” Lee, the TCTO director, said.
IslamOnline
“The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems,” Regina Dugan, director of Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said in a statement.
The Challenge offers a $400,000 prize to the first person who locate ten big, red balloons launched across the country.
The aim is to test the use of word-of-mouth over social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
“People ask about the search for Osama bin Laden,” said Peter Lee, director of DARPA’s Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO).
“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.”
DARPA is the government agency that developed many of the technologies that became integral to the Internet.
The Network Challenge is one of a series of recent DARPA-sponsored challenges, which have included a $2 million prize for the builders of a robot car.
Algorithms
Using social networks, a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has made it to the prize.
“There were some people who thought it would take five minutes and some others who thought it would not be solved,” DARPA spokesman Johanna Jones said.
The team used sophisticated algorithms to locate the 8-foot, red balloons.
It also offered a vast network of spotters cash for information or even for signing up a friend who turned out to have correct information.
Under the system, named “recursive incentives”, everyone involved in tracking down a balloon shared a cash prize.
The spotter of the balloon received $2,000; the person who invited the finder into the network received $1,000; the one who invited the inviter got $500, and so on.
“We can envisage deploying this system to find missing children or stopping terrorist attacks,” said Riley Crane, a Society of Science fellow at MIT’s renowned Media Lab.
DARPA will study the results to assess how social networking can solve large-scale problems that require fast solutions.
It also plans to interview teams in order to understand the strategies they used to build networks and collect information.
“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,” Lee, the TCTO director, said.
IslamOnline
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