Technology to the aid of sports VIEWPOINT
Sometime ago, I was wandering around Dhakuria Lake, Kolkata, when I bumped into an old school friend. He was walking his threeyear-old cocker spaniel and seven-year-old grandson. Both of us were on the phone. We grinned and made silent “call me” gestures, swirling respective fingers around invisible dials.
That gesture is universal to those above a certain age. It is incomprehensible to those below that age. The kid obviously thought the two dadus had gone crazy since he’s never seen a rotary phone dial.
Conversely, I grew up believing that only lunatics chatted to themselves. Despite the fact that I use hands-free headphones myself, I have a conditioned reflex. I instinctively edge away from people who appear to be talking to themselves.
Technology changes behaviour in many ways. Some of those changes are so dramatic that entire swathes of cultural conditioning go out the window. For example, consider the impact of technology on literature.
Many of us were much around in the 1980s. In fact, some of us even voted in that dim-distant era before EVMs. That was also before cell phones and the Net. Any work of detective fiction (it could be a novel or a movie) set in the 1980s now feels quaint in much the same way that a Sherlock Holmes story is quaint.
Velcro and zippers have altered the way we dress and pack. Post-its, ball-pens and fridge magnets altered household/ office management and then Siri, Cortana and Google Now altered it even more. Plastic has helped drive many of us painlessly into bankruptcy. The combination of GPS and Machine Translation has made travelling to strange places with unknown languages much less of an adventure.
One of the largest areas of change is recreational activity. Porn has seen an amateur explosion which has changed the industry’s anatomy. Technology has also changed other popular games. Like many other gamers, I have driven stolen vehicles on the streets of Chernobyl. Quizzing, or playing scrabble versus Google would be considered ludicrous. Chess became a different game when engines started playing it perfectly. Go is headed in the same direction and poker is close to getting there as well.
The changes in physical sports are utterly incredible as well. It is true that humans have got bigger, stronger and also smarter about training for the citius, altius, fortius thing. But their equipment and environment have also improved in almost magical ways.
Take football, for instance. People often argue about the relative skills of two Argentine geniuses. Lionel Messi wears water-resistant boots that weigh 200 g (each). Diego Maradona wore boots that weighed 300 g and his boots doubled in weight if he played in a downpour. The modern soccer ball is also waterresistant and doesn’t deform easily.
It is not even possible to compare tennis players across eras anymore. The modern composite racket resembles the wooden rackets of the 1980s about as closely as the modern F-35 Lightning fighter resembles the P-47 Thunderbolt of World War II vintage. Not to mention improvements in tennis balls, shoes and drop-in courts. Ditto for hockey, cricket, javelin throwing, swimming — in every case the technology has changed things in ways where comparison to prior eras is impossible.
The recent DRS controversy made me cogitate about the utility of inducting more technology. Many historical sporting controversies have arisen because definitive decisions are taken by fallible humans. Did Geoff Hurst really score a kosher World Cup winning goal in 1966? Was Bradman caught at 28, and reprieved, going onto make 187, in his first test innings after WWII? How often was McEnroe justified in his epic rants?
Similar questions are often settled by neutral technology nowadays. That takes a lot of bitterness out of sporting equations. To my mind, it’s sensible to be able to revert obvious errors. Steven Smith was breaking the law when he looked to the dressing room for help (and he was out of course). But the law’s an ass. The third umpire should be empowered to come in, using technology, without the need for review, anytime a DRStype situation arises.