Sport and Technology

The recently concluded FIFA World Cup will be remembered by many where decisions made by referees were increasingly scrutinized - by billions around the world - through the use of technology.

Now most people tend to think that technology is "neutral" (it all depends on how one uses it). Nothing can be further from the truth - if the game of football is any indication. Technology in fact, shapes the structure of human society and its accompanying discourse. Let's examine why:

To take football as an example,

Before television became a universal medium, football games were generally localized. Earlier editions of the World Cup (before the television revolution) were not usually met with the amount of pomp and fanfare of recent ones. Sure, the sport was popular, but the stakes (culturally or economically) weren't high. To take an example, England (whose history of football stretches over a century), decided to opt out of the first three editions of the tournament (1930, 1934 and 1938); football a matter of life and death, nah...

Fast forward to June 2006. The acknowledgment of football being a global game was, in large part, due to the use of satellite television to broadcast football matches all over the world. With the added use of video technology, the entire dynamics (not the rules) of the game have changed.

Previously, a referee makes a mistake (for instance: awarding a penalty kick incorrectly, failing to spot a offside player), such errors were generally confined to limited spheres of discussion; after all, to err is human, as the saying goes...

Today, its a whole new ball game. Expert power no longer lies with the people on the field, but those off it (fans, football pundits, tuxedo-suit officials). Actions made on the field are now open to examination (to the nth degree) off-field. Players and referees are held accountable - blamed or praised - by the verdict of the masses, whose opinions now constitute as "truth". Split-second decisions made in the heat of the moment reverberate in electronic archives long after the game is over.

So what does all these mean? Is the game better off or worse off? I think the answer is probably a mixture of both. The fact of the matter is, as Ellul noted, technique (or technology) is ambivalent and that no matter how it is used, it has of itself a number of positive and negative consequences.

I am sure folks like Wayne Rooney and Zinedine Zidane would agree with me.