You may have heard about that DARPA balloon challenge, where the first team to identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 moored weather balloons across the continental U.S. wins $40,000?

DARPA is holding its Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet. The competition is meant to explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.

Well, as of Saturday, the balloons are up in the air.

Now, here’s the real deal - DARPA’s payout of $40,000 is distorting the experiment in a what-is-seen-as-a-confusing-by-some-citizens way.

Really?

Confusing?

Clearly, this is the goal - encouraging secretiveness and deception rather than cooperation.  THAT is the experiment.

DARPA wants to understand social netowrks and how they will be used as a collective force with the common man - in studying this, they will actually  discourage people from using the power of social media to find the balloons, instead re-engeneering the information flows to find out what doesn’t work.

What better to know how a toy works than to break it first, right?

In the formal sense - here is what I am saying: Non-rational factors affect the determination of public policy. Points of vulnerability to the influence of non-rational factors are identified in the policy-forming process and in the policy-implementing process. In this case, the DARPA Red Balloon Experiment suggests that a normative model for a public policy applied to virtual worlds or digital communication channels can be dealt with in a rational manner.

In line with domestic public policy - policies that have been used for over 60 years in the US - here’s what you should expect:

Disinformation
All large players - even DARPA themselves - will be engaged in mis- and disinformation not to throw people off track [as is being reported] but to see how false information is mitigated [negated or reinforced] within social media channels.

Deception
Again, the goal here is to disrupt the common good of social media - how and when would you, as a networked citizen, sell your ‘friends’ out?  Formally, what is the economic rent and elasticity of ’social friendships’?

Introduction of Incentives
DARPA will test the power of incentives, introduced into public policy in the 30’s, and how they will create socioeconomic classes within social networks - does a non-friend deserve loyalty because he pays more?  Who are the ‘real’ friends and how to they communicate?

Smart.  Very smart.

This is a great experiment - Edward Bernays would be happy - almost as good as the Anonymous vs. Scientology experiment …

… wait a minute …

OK - now I get it

UPDATE:

See - told ya so ….