Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!DARPA announces a $40,000 red-balloon Network Challenge

In order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has issued a Network Challenge. The first person or team to correctly locate ten large red balloons scattered across the United States will win $40,000.

“It is fitting to announce this competition on the anniversary of the day that the first message was sent over the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet,” said DARPA director Dr. Regina Dugan at a conference celebrating the anniversary yesterday. “In the 40 years since this breakthrough,” continued Dugan, “the Internet has become an integral part of society and the global economy. The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems.”

Lewis Page writes that it would seem that DARPA expects this challenge to be won by social networking as much as by electronics, with the agency saying that the competition “will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.”

The ten 8-foot red weather balloons will be moored in locations “visible from nearby roadways” across the continental United States during the daylight hours of 5 December only. The first registered participant to give correct latitudes and longitudes of all ten will pocket the prize money (note that you can identify the locations of the balloons to within one arc-minute: you can be a bit more than a mile off and still qualify).

Competitors can be of any age or nationality, but cannot be U.S. government employees or their families. The winner can be a foreigner, but “a U.S. taxpayer identification number (for example, a social security number)” is necessary to receive the cash.