View From the Editor: Computers versus Humans - a battle as large as the Olympics? - September 2004  

Alas dear readers, the Athens 2004 Olympic Games are now behind us and S&T has finally turned off its television set, logged off from athens2004.com, thrown away its empty biscuit wrappers, relegated its sheepskin slippers to its winter box and returned to a much less frenzied world. (That's if you can call catching up with two weeks-plus work 'less frenzied').
Because S&T is based in the UK, we were able to sample Olympic interactive TV fayre courtesy of domestic public service broadcaster, the BBC, as did over 7.95m other UK viewers. We thought it was all grand, snazzy and terribly glam until German visitors to the luxurious S&T penthouse offices (honest) remarked that only giving consumers a choice of different sports to watch at the same time, or effectively, channels within channels, was not truly interactive as such. "Not much to click on is there?" they argued while prodding the red button feverishly as we wrestled them for the remote control. (We do like to show visitors to the S&T offices a good time).
This led to a heated debate on what the definition of interactivity is and then degenerated into bickering over whether Germany is a better sporting nation than the UK. The fact Germany won more medals in the 2004 Olympics than the UK put paid to that, but we will always have, *pause to clear throat dramatically*,

Source: EMPICS

Copyright fascism, 'allegedly'

Less happy (says S&T, making an ingenious segway to the next point), is one S&T reader who was slightly miffed after reading last month's View From the Editor. No the reader wasn't cross to have missed out on the darts in Blackpool, but rather, felt moved to comment on the IOC's policy towards protecting its trademarks in the digital world. Referring to August's View From the Editor as "disturbing, funny, and a poignant story of ultimate Ludditeness", (and thus giving S&T the seed of an idea for a Hollywood screenplay), the reader opined: "Are these people [the IOC] serious? What makes this bunch of copyright fascists think they're about to stop a wrestling fan from Kazakhstan posting material on his website considered to be 'in contravention of copyright'? Are they going to start trawling Kaza to spot videos of the 100m breaststroke finals being swapped around? Or become the Big Brother of MMS?"
While S&T would of course never itself refer to the IOC as "copyright fascists" and would like to point out that the views expressed in this newsletter are not those of S&T unless stated, and especially when they might evoke the wrath of libel lawyers, (we were watching the other TV channel at the time/in the launderette/visiting Aunt Mabel in Cirencester/etc), we are pleased that S&T stirs some of our readers into putting pen to paper, or in this instance, finger to keypad. We are always happy to hear your views, especially if they say nice or controversial things.
So, back to the reader disgruntled with the IOC, who felt moved to add: "I'm really stunned by the increasing effort in sport to copyright what we see. Stunned by the futility of the exercise. They'd really like to see a gadget that erases your camera, no, your brain, when you walk out the turnstile." (Our Hollywood script is gathering momentum at a pace. We are going to get Rutger Hauer to play Jacques Rogge.)
The irate reader concluded: "Technology advances increases the freedom of information to travel, not the other way round. Peer to peer sharing has shown the way, and there's no turning the trend around. Until the IOC and its partners wake up to that reality, their participation in the internet is doomed."

Rutger Hauer

Separated at birth? Jacques Rogge (Source: EMPICS)

Taekwondo goes techno

S&T was utterly thrilled to be invited to the London headquarters of CNN this month to comment upon a new invention for the channel's monthly TV technology show Spark. Sadly, the invention was not an instant Jimmy Choo-shoe making machine, but instead a device that can be worn by taekwondo competitors to measure the force of impact, thereby assisting the judges in making scoring decisions. Not as good as dearly departed British comedian Spike Milligan's "Instant Fish. Just Add Water.", but a potential swimmer nonetheless, S&T was impressed by the device that, if embraced by the IOC, could ultimately transform the way this particular martial art takes place at a major competitive level. In the footage that S&T was asked to comment on (by way of reviewing the new technology), interviewer Kristie Lu Stout asked inventor Ed Chi, a taekwondo black belt and research scientist at Palo Alto Research Center's User Interface Research Group (we bet he never gets refused funding), whether judges might feel a little bit threatened that this technology can replace them. Answers Chi: "In the test matches that we have tried using this technology, the judges have generally accepted the technology fairly well. However, when it gets moved up to higher level kinds of sporting events like the Olympics …. it will probably be different because …. how it interacts with the tournament could potentially create more controversy. So our goal is to understand how the technology interacts with the human element of this, to actually eliminate the controversy rather than creating more of it." The device works "pretty simply" according to Chi, who explains: "It has, what we call a Piezel electric center, and piezel is actually the word in Greek which means to squeeze. And basically the sensor when squeezed or pulled or stretched actually generates electricity. And so from that we can detect that actually force is actually a pretty common technique." (Also see this month's Databox for some taekwondo stats courtesy of fabulous shiny new S&T sponsor, Infostrada Sports).

Source: EMPICS

Rachael Church - Editor

Do you think technology will ever replace judges within sport? Or would you rather just sit at home playing with your red button? If you have any comments or feedback on this article or any of the features in S&T, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please e-mail your comments to editor@sportandtechnology.com.

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