King of the Hunt

King of the Hunt

King of the Hunt

By Amy Bruckman

Scavenger hunts are on the "in" list again. Grown adults, reliving their childhoods, stay up odd hours, gather in groups, exploring weird places. But this time, they're not looking for plastic lizards or left-handed scissors – they're scrounging for information on the Net.

Since September 1992, Rick Gates has been organizing the Internet Hunt. At midnight on or around the first of each month, Gates, a 37-year-old graduate student and computer teacher at the University of Arizona in Tucson, posts a list of questions to the Net signaling the start of a new Hunt. Two to three dozen teams of people usually partici-pate in each Hunt.

The questions are not the sort of thing you're likely to know off the top of your head. One recent Hunt asked users to discover:

1. Which member of the US House sponsored legislation during 1993 seeking to regulate the manufacture and sale of hollow-point ammunition? What state and district does the member represent?

2. What are Wired's Seven Wonders of the World?

(No fair getting out a copy of Issue 1.6! In the Hunt, you've got to explain how you found these answers by searching on the Net!)

3. How many grams of fat are contained in 100 grams of human breast milk?

Perhaps the most intriguing Hunt took place in June 1993. Gates says, "I was on a boat ride on the Chicago River with some speakers at a conference on Rural Datafication. I was mentioning to Ross Stapleton (who works for the CIA) that I'd really love to do a Hunt consisting of the single task: 'Here's an e-mail address ... find out everything you can about this person.' I was quite blown away when Ross volunteered to be that person. I remember asking, 'Gee Ross, considering your employer, are you sure that's prudent?' However, Ross, who's known for his thoughtful debate on issues of privacy and government information, didn't back down. We ended up with one of the more creative Hunts. It was fun to see the Hunters' reactions when they discovered his employer!"

Hunters also discovered Stapleton's home address and phone number, the names of his parents, the fact that he's engaged, his fiancee's name and email address, his educational background, the fact that he lectures part time at Georgetown University, the two newspapers he subscribes to, and two organizations of which he is a member. All of this information was found on the Internet. Most of the more personal details were found by searching public archives of mailing lists Stapleton likes to post to. (Hunters get credit not for getting the right answers, but for describing how the answers can be found on the network.)

Is there anything more to the Hunt than just a game? Gates thinks so. "The thing that surprises me the most is that although the Hunt is successful as a game to allow Net users to test their skills, far and away the most popular use of the Hunt is as a serious [Internet] training tool, particularly for individuals."

For information about the Hunt check out


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