Sport and technology have been interconnected
throughout human history. Hunting and gathering
peoples created athletic games that employed the technological kits with which they wrested a living from
the environment and engaged in warfare. Those cultures used atl-atls, spears, bows and arrows, and other
such implements in some of their games and sports.
Many of the original human athletic games employed
familiar tools as basic ingredients in competitions.
(Technologies are not merely inanimate objects; they
are also organizations of human energy designed to
solve problems.)
The technological developments that sparked the
agricultural revolutions that gave rise to the first urban
civilizations also generated new sporting technologies.
Ancient civilizations around the globe constructed
monumental architectural sites for sports. Ancient
Greeks built stadiums, hippodromes, gymnasiums, and
palestras. Greek sports and Greek athletic architecture
spread around the Mediterranean world. In the centuries that followed, Roman coliseums sprouted in the
vast lands that fell under the sway of their empire.
At least 1,500 years ago, Native peoples in the Americas built massive courts with stone walls that served as
the locations for ball games.
In the Dark Ages, monumental architecture devoted
to sports declined markedly in Europe and the Middle
East. However, in medieval and early modern times
Western cultures frequently organized sports around
military technologies. Native American, Asian, and
African cultures also cultivated martial skill through
sports that used weaponry. Skilled artisans produced
“tools”for other elite and folk recreations such as tennis,
golf, and early forms of cricket, baseball, and football.
The Industrial Revolution
The technological dynamism of the Industrial Revolution radically changed the nature of society and sports.
A wide variety of technological advances amplified
athletic games and pastimes. The 19th century brought
such innovations as the process for “vulcanizing” rubber, which altered golf, tennis, and other athletic balls
and their games. New machines such as the bicycle created new sports and recreations. Athletes in industrialized nations became enamored of new and specialized
devices that allowed for greater achievements and
higher standards of play. That dynamic and evolutionary process produced the later “hi-tech” athletic shoe
industry, a multibillion-dollar business selling the notion that technology does indeed enhance sporting
performance.
During the 19th and 20th centuries modern sport
became a central feature in the mass cultures created
by the new technological civilizations. Giant stadiums
sprang up in industrial cities. The selling of sports and
sporting equipment became a big business in which
technological innovations often produced significantly
larger market shares.
The transportation and communication revolutions
that underpinned the Industrial Revolution also transformed the sporting cultures of first European and
North American nations and then those of much of the
rest of the globe. The railroad facilitated the rise of professional baseball and college football in the United
States, engendering rivalries between cities and colleges. Technologies were instrumental in transforming
folk recreations into national pastimes.
The development of national presses in industrialized nations made reading the sports pages a daily
habit for millions of newspaper subscribers. New international media promoted sporting rivalries between
nations. The re-creation of the Olympic Games in 1896,
facilitated by communication and transportation technologies that allowed athletes from around the world to
compete and spectators from around the world to witness the results, created one of the most important
spectacles for modern global technological civilization.
In the 20th century, technological innovations led to
new games, superior performances, and enhanced access by spectators to the burgeoning global sporting
culture. From airplane races to Ultimate Frisbee, new
gadgets spawned new sports. Innovations such as artificial turf, synthetic tracks, artificial climbing walls,
and fiberglass vaulting poles radically changed the
ways in which some games were played and certain
sports were performed.
Modern technological developments also raised
aesthetic and ethical dilemmas for sport. Did aluminum baseball bats produce pleasing sounds? Did
they confer unfair advantages on batters? Did graphite tennis rackets with larger string surfaces distort the
fundamental nature of tennis? Should biomedical advances, from the development of anabolic steroids to
blood-doping techniques designed to enhance the oxygen-carrying capacity of distance runners, be applied
to athletic performances? If better athletes could be
made, should they be made?
In modern industrialized cultures, and particularly
in the United States since the late 19th century, sport itself has been understood as a social technology, one
that can teach cooperation, bring assimilation and
unity, and instill humanity.Whether or not they overestimate the power of sport to change society, many of
the late 19th- and 20th-century promoters of athletics
consider sport the single most significant social technology for shaping modern cultures.
Thus sport itself was transformed into a technological system by the inventors of modern athletic ideas
and institutions. Technology shapes not only the kinds
of athletic games that modern peoples play, not only
the way they play those games, not only the level of
their achievement in those games, but the very meanings and purposes of sport. Sports themselves have become accepted as technologies designed for making
social changes.
—MARK DYRESON