Darpa, the blue-sky agency whose most successful pipe-dreams have turned into the Internet and GPS navigation, among others, has in recent years turned to civilians for help in catalyzing new innovations. First was the Grand Challenge for driverless car design. Then came the Network Challenge that sent the socially-networked searching for red weather balloons. Calls to crowdsource spy drones and combat vehicles quickly followed. Today, Darpa announced their latest mission for the mob.
And what could be sexier or more cutting-edge than autonomous cars or fast-paced social networking? Paper. Lots and lots of paper. The agency’s “Shredder Challenge” is looking for “computer scientists, puzzle enthusiasts and anyone else who likes solving complex problems,” to compete for a tidy $50,000 by reconstructing five shredded documents. Anyone can register and download the documents online — they’re each on different topics and have been shredded using myriad strategies, just to keep things interesting — after which they’ll have six weeks to submit their solutions, along with a series of answers to questions about the contents of each file. via Wired
Photo: Darpa
