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Reflecting on the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge

Published:01 April 2011Publication History
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Abstract

Finding 10 balloons across the U.S. illustrates how the Internet has changed the way we solve highly distributed problems.

References

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  1. Reflecting on the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge

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                Ruay-Shiung Chang

                The Internet was born in 1969, the year Neil Armstrong first landed on the Moon. On the Internet's 40th anniversary, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) posed a challenge. They deployed ten red weather balloons in ten undisclosed locations across the continental US. The first team to correctly identify the locations of all ten would win a $40,000 prize. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) won in less than nine hours; runners-up found fewer than ten balloons. This article describes the methods-crowdsourcing and social media-used by those teams. It highlights how, in this Web 2.0 Internet world, we discover, report, analyze, and utilize information, often in the blink of an eye. Jeff Howe coined the term "crowdsourcing" in 2006. Usually, when you have a problem, you can outsource it to an expert or a suitable company for solutions. Crowdsourcing means that you outsource a problem to the Internet. The collective wisdom of a vast number of Internet users (nearly two billion) may make solving the problem easier. Another trend in the technology world is the popularity of social networks. The rise of Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter reveal the possibility of using the moods and/or thoughts of a crowd. The red balloon challenge aimed to test the limits of information discovery and dissemination on the Internet. The fact that the MIT team discovered the ten balloons in under nine hours demonstrates social networking's great potential for solving these types of problems. Online Computing Reviews Service

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                  cover image Communications of the ACM
                  Communications of the ACM  Volume 54, Issue 4
                  April 2011
                  139 pages
                  ISSN:0001-0782
                  EISSN:1557-7317
                  DOI:10.1145/1924421
                  Issue’s Table of Contents

                  Copyright © 2011 ACM

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                  New York, NY, United States

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                  • Published: 1 April 2011

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