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posted by mattie_p on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the and-now-for-sports dept.

CoolHand writes:

"Sci-Tech Today talks about the role of technology in the Olympics from a unique perspective:

Every advance in the ever-accelerating juggernaut of sports technology threatens to widen the divide between Olympic haves and have-nots. Well-sponsored teams and rich governments pay top-end scientists and engineers to shape their skis, perfect their skates, tighten their suits, measure their gravitational pull.

I'm no luddite, but this seems to make these sports more about who can afford the best tech, and less about the true spirit of the games: bringing the best athletes from all countries together to compete. How can it be about the athletes, when some of the best athletes may never win due to lack of funding/tech?"

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:45PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:45PM (#1840)

    I'm unimpressed with the handwringing about tech.

    You're taking a living human being and removing them from the academic, art, social, educational, and economic world, basically because a bunch of people think it would be cool to see how fast a dude can run or some other twitching muscle idiocy.

    Given that you're basically sacrificing a human life to create an athlete, worrying about the cost of some pills or whatever just makes the folks doing the worrying look like inhuman monsters. Go back to fighting dogs and roosters, at least you can eat the carcass when the fun's over. Well, technically you could eat the carcass of an Olympic athlete but the meat will likely be tough and stringy, best slow cook for a long time.

    "You've created a monster" "well yeah but all in good fun, see the real problem is the leash is real expensive" "Yeah, but... uh, you created a monster out of a person... icky"

    In some ways gladiatorial combat is more respectable to the humanity of the participants, at least combat is a "useful" skill. Olympic events are more disrespectful of the participants humanity, more like pulling a wing off a bug to see if it can still fly or whatever. Hey you, human being over there, your only worth to humanity is how high you can jump. Icky!

    The worst part is ruining all those lives as a voyeuristic lure such that multinational megacorps can sell people stuff they can't afford and don't want so they can impress people who don't actually care.

    Other than that, yeah I just loves me my Olympics.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:01PM (#1859)

    "You're taking a living human being and removing them from the academic, art, social, educational, and economic world, basically because a bunch of people think it would be cool to see how fast a dude can run or some other twitching muscle idiocy."

    Man, somebody was always picked last for kickball teams.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:11PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:11PM (#1870)

      Oh you bring up a good point, I'm totally cool with social interaction, burn off some stress, general health benefits of exercise. A little hand eye coordination and some sweat never hurt anybody. I don't hate sports at all.

      But its a whole nother thing to rip a person out of the society they used to be a part of, reduce their worth as a human being to a number on a tape measure, finally throw the carcass away and get another when no longer useful to generate a number on a tape measure or pimp some advertising dollars using their bodies. We treat livestock better and they're not even human. Now that's the specific part of "sports" that I'm not a huge fan of.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:53AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:53AM (#2291)

        I did not know that people went to jail for refusing to be athletes.

  • (Score: 1) by krishnoid on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:23PM

    by krishnoid (1156) on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:23PM (#1876)

    Given that you're basically sacrificing a human life to create an athlete

    That's not true -- afterwards they return to normal life [theonion.com].

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by tlezer on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:24PM

    by tlezer (708) on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:24PM (#1877)

    I don't think the athlete is the bad person here. The have a skill(perhaps you don't appreciate it, but others do) and they want to compete. End of story.

    Regarding the tech, I agree only to the extent that the tech is used IN COMPETITION but not all athletes have the same opportunity. That is, if some biathlon athletes are using more accurate guns than others, then it isn't about the individual anymore and dilutes.

    However, for training, I'm all for using any and all tech(well, not banned substances) that is possible to maximize training. Complaining about this is like complaining that one sprinter/runner used stop watch to determine which starting stance was better for them and therefore the race isn't fair anymore. Of course it's fair, but one trained smarter.

    In the end, organized sports should elevate the strong athletes to the levels where they can benefit from the better tech.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 18 2014, @09:55PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 18 2014, @09:55PM (#1954)

      I don't think the athlete is bad either, although I think the net effect on society of the situation is negative. Your first argument was not very convincing, by analogy with a natural born pickpocket, that's a very interesting skill, but if its a net negative to society, eliminate it. Sucks to have a skill thats bad for society.

      WRT training tech we also disagree. There is a ten or so million dollar official Olympic athlete training facility visible from my commute, paid for (in part) of course by my tax dollars. If we drop ten million bucks for training, because we can, or at least we took out the loans and did it anyway, "its only fair" that Somalian athletes get perhaps ten thousand bucks of roids to even up the competition.

      Originally the Olympics was about hanging out together as a culture, then it died out for a couple centuries, then it was reborn into some nationalistic competition where our side of the cold war was all about the individual over collectivism so it somehow warped into individualism worship, now its all about the corporate licensing and advertising and in the background between commercials someone is sweating or something, but whats really important is who's selling the official olympic french fry. I don't think it would be a problem if it evolved yet again and became a team effort, where in a biathlon the athlete, gunsmith, and pharmacological biochemist are all equally important. You want better performance enhancing drugs? Well try fully funding your national university system and creating some STEM jobs not just STEM students/grads and it'll take care of itself, that sounds fair enough.

      Another peculiarity of the games has been the dramatic shift from nationalism to I guess you'd call it geneticism or something. Currently there's a fixation as part of the Olympics with making sure everyone lives up to the peak that genetics allows, which is not historical at all. Fifty years ago if the Jamaicans can't train for the bobsled, well, I guess it just sucks to be a Jamaican bobsled driver. Not the modern "we need to move heaven and earth so everyone gets an equal chance at a participation trophy". Would we really lose anything or change anything if we just said "Can't afford a decent biochemist? No? Well, sucks to be you, guess you're not winning." and moved on with life. We're talking about a trivial medal, not basic health care or some other fundamental human right.

      Thats another mystery, in the USA is long standing policy "Can't afford medical care? Well have a nice death LOL" but if some foreigner can't afford the roids we give to our own guys, we have a handwringing panic attack about how to make it "fair". I'm not very impressed. Someone out there doesn't have health insurance so in a brave show of solidarity I'll not put a bandaid on my paper cut, that'll really change the world.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by koreanbabykilla on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:44AM

      by koreanbabykilla (968) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:44AM (#2051)

      I dont see why you care about banned substances. I say bring on the superhuman athletes. I might even watch some superhumans play some sport a few times. Probably still wouldnt watch a superhuman bowler.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by EnsilZah on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:42PM

    by EnsilZah (918) on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:42PM (#1891)

    Who is this 'you' that's removing them from all these aspects of life?
    Sure they might show some aptitude early in life and they might feel pressure to perform, but you could argue the same about a musician or a mathematician who'd have a slightly different set of tradeoffs.
    Ultimately it's an adult person's own choices and priorities.
    I'd like to think these athletes find a form of personal expression in their chosen field, at least as much as I have in ones I've enjoyed as an amateur.

    With that said, I personally have no interest in watching sports, I have no interest in who wins what, and from what I gather the IOC are a bunch of litigious assholes.
    And these debates about performance-enhancing-whatever seem silly to me, it's just a set of rules that someone made up and anyone who's playing to win will try to reach the limits of.