DARPA:

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways.

Google's Santiago de la Mora:

If you are not found, the rest cannot follow.

Google's Eric Schmidt:

The "smart people on the hill" method no longer works.

Mathew Honan:

Simply put, location changes everything.

Alexander Karp:

We were very naive. We just thought this was a cool idea.

Samantha Power:

There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.

Katie Shilton:

Participatory sensing opens the door to entirely new forms of granular and pervasive data collection. The risks of this sort of data collection are not always self-evident.

Marshall McLuhan:

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left.

Joshua-Michele Ross:

The iPhone does a whole lot more than display information. It is an environmental sensor. Its value lies just as much in sensing information as it does in displaying information.

Libby Purves:

There is a thrill in switching off the mobile, taking the bus to somewhere without CCTV and paying cash for your tea. You and your innocence can spend an afternoon alone together, unseen by officialdom.

A lamentation:

There is no pleasure in the chase anymore.

DARPA Network Challenge