IT, Olympic Games, and the Silver Generation

What would the Olympic Games be without Information Technology (IT)? Not just because we can sit in front of a digital screen and replay our favourite finals, or check immediately on Wikipedia how many people live in Jamaica. The way in which IT enables one to measure and compute tiny portions of time and space has allowed some sports to survive and even flourish.

It would be hard to understand what fencing or the 100 metres would look like, if we were unable to analyse fractions of a second as significant magnitudes, or if inches could not be magnified into huge gaps. IT permeates sport, from initial training through performance to final enjoyment; so, even those activities that seem IT-free, from golf to sailing, are deeply indebted to the information revolution.

Indeed, some sports have embraced IT with gusto, if some initial reluctance. Wimbledon is now more interesting and fairer because we can all witness whether the ball really failed to touch the white line, and take that into account officially as well. The 2008 final was one of the most beautiful ever played also because Federer and Nadal knew there was an objective system of evaluation in place. Fair-computing helps fair-play and has replaced McEnroe’s shouting.

And yet, despite the obvious advantages brought about by IT applications, some other sports, like football, are lagging behind, somewhat suspiciously. During the last World Cup, France was not awarded a perfectly good goal against Korea Republic because the referee and his linesmen failed to see that the ball had passed the line. The controversy prompted an official statement by Markus Siegler, a FIFA spokesperson, who confirmed the impossibility of any reliance on IT because “its introduction depends on a system being developed that is 100 percent reliable”.

This is ignorance, bad faith or a combination of both. Obviously, no IT system will ever be totally reliable. But why trusting even less reliable and more fallible, if not bribable, referees or the “hand of God” when IT could improve the quality of the game so dramatically? The only thing better that a human or a computer is a combination of the two. We should Wimbledise the most popular sport on earth asap.

Of course, IT systems may also be unsafe. We have not heard of any spectacular glitch in the computers of the Olympic Games, nor of any nerdy fan hacking into the Beijing system to improve the results of his heroes. But it is possible, and the reliance on IT is now such that a small fraction of a digit could make the difference between a silver and a bronze medal (recall the two Jamaican athletes, both running the Olympic Women's 100m Final in exactly 10.98). So it may happen one day. After all, this year there was already some unconfirmed news that hackers had managed to change the headlines of the official Chinese Olympic website into orange, the symbolic colour of the human rights abuses in China (http://www.thecolororange.net/uk/page211).

The shortcomings of IT should not be an argument against its adoption in games and competitions. Indeed, as we push the limits of what human bodies and skills may achieve, we may wish to be increasingly precise about the differences between athletes and the results they obtain. My bet is that, in the close future, five-digit measures will seem obvious. And this leads me to a final remark, not about computable figures but about irreversible numbers: age.

The Olympic Games were a young nation’s invention. They were meant to celebrate youth, physical abilities and healthiness, fair-play, psychological and mental qualities. In the long run, they were inevitably found to be inadequate to acknowledge achievements amid human limits and diversities. Women do not compete with Men. We now have the Paralympic Games, the Special Olympics, and Singapore will host the first Youth Olympic Games in 2010, featuring athletes between the ages of 14 and 18. Other games, though not officially recognised by the IOC, include the Gay Games. Only one category seems to be missing and, in terms of size of the population affected, it is the classic elephant in the room: the Silver Games, for people over 65. In a fast-aging world, where obesity is a plague, and National Health Services devour fundings, the Silver Games could provide a great incentive to keep fit and healthy and a lesson that sport can be a mature game. After all, many sports have different leagues for more senior participants. Anyone from the IOC reading this blog?

The Method of Levels of Abstraction

This article (which explains the methodology that I have employed in most of my recent research), is forthcoming in Minds and Machines.

To read the preprint, you may click on the title of this blog.

Here is the abstract:

The use of “levels of abstraction” in philosophical analysis (levelism) has recently come under attack. In this paper, I argue that a refined version of epistemological levelism should be retained as a fundamental method, called the method of levels of abstraction.

After a brief introduction, in section “Some Definitions and Preliminary Examples” the nature and applicability of the epistemological method of levels of abstraction is clarified. In section “A Classic Application of the Method of Abstraction”, the philosophical fruitfulness of the new method is shown by using Kant’s classic discussion of the “antinomies of pure reason” as an example. In section “The Philosophy of the Method of Abstraction”, the method is further specified and supported by distinguishing it from three other forms of “levelism”: (i) levels of organisation; (ii) levels of explanation and (iii) conceptual schemes. In that context, the problems of relativism and antirealism are also briefly addressed.

The conclusion discusses some of the work that lies ahead, two potential limitations of the method and some results that have already been obtained by applying the method to some long-standing philosophical problems.

Notes sur la structure informationnelle de la photographie

if you read French Patrick Peccatte has posted an interesting article about the Philosophy of Information and and photography theory on his blog:
http://blog.tuquoque.com/post/2008/08/05/Notes-sur-la-structure-informationnelle-de-la-photographie

A sequence of three books or the aesthetics of the reading lists

As anyone acquainted with film editing or the order in which food and wine should be served knows too well, how you put together words, sounds or pictures is essential to the overall meaning of the whole. Sometimes, syntax is everything. After all, all the colours are already in the rainbow, all the sounds already silently vibrate in the chord of a violin, and all the words may be found in the OED. It is how you put them together that makes the difference.

With this proviso, it is easy to see that the order in which we read macro-blocks of words - also known as books - makes a difference and sometimes a big one in our insights and appreciation. A reading list is not just a list, it is, in film jargon, a sequence, and as such it acquires a sense of its own.

The book-sequence that I have in mind in this blog may seem rather peculiar, but then, sometimes, it is the unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated elements that represents the pleasant novelty.

Here it is. It starts with Horton Hears a Who!, a 1954 book by Dr. Seuss. It then continues with Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, a 1884 science fiction novel by Edwin A. Abbott, And it ends with Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death, a 1969 novel by Kurt Vonnegut.

Each book is a gem. All of them are metaphors-against. Each of them is based on a different perspective about the space-time conditions of our lives. From a story on the smallest dimension, to a story of a new dimension in space, to a story on a different dimension in time. Only the sequence is my own.

I won't spoil your pleasure by revealing the plots. So let me add a last comment: one day I'd like to write a piece on the aesthetics of reading lists. Letters (alphabetic order) and numbers (chronological order) are misleading curtains behind which dramatic sequences hide their meaning.

WPE-2008 Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering

Following the first successful Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering at the University of Delft last year, WPE-2008 will be held at The Royal Academy of Engineering, Carlton House Terrace, London, from November 10-12 2008.

This is a multi-disciplinary conference for philosophers, ethicists and engineers interested in the philosophical and ethical issues surrounding engineering and technology. Extended abstracts are now being invited on the following three ‘demes’: Philosophy, Ethics and Reflections from Practitioners.

The deadline for abstracts is August 18 2008.

For the call for papers click on the title.

Further information is online.

For further information, contact Natasha McCarthy on natasha.mccarthy@raeng.org.uk or David Goldberg on deg@uiuc.edu

NA-CAP 2008 Conference

NACAP is a great success this year, don't miss the booklet with the abstracts.

The talks are all very interesting, Bloomington is lovely, Indiana University is great and the steaks are fabolous. Let us hope NACAP 2009 will also be hosted there!

Lively, Google's Second Life

Second Google? The giant is planning to find its space in web-based virtual environments.

Here is a wiki article. You may wish to contribute to improve it.

Unfortunately, expect more fragmentation. They say cats' have seven lives but they (the lives) all belong to them and they (the cats) are the same in all of them. Not so with virtual environments and ourselves. Yet, one day, changing avatars depending on the environment will seem a odd as it would be today to change car depending on the road on which you're driving. One day.