Question

What role does technology play in modern sport? Give an example of a modern sport that relies on technology and speculate on the historical beginnings of that particular sport before such technology.

Answer 1

Technology is the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. The use of technology in sports is growing rapidly. In football, for instance, new devices are used for different reasons such as to help referees in decision-making and to quantify the athletes' performance during a game, thus helping the coach to set the training program and the game strategy.

Advances in technology have had a profound impact on sport including:

• Analysis of sport performance and enabling coaches to greatly improve the quality of feedback to players/athletes
• Increase accuracy in time measurements of sport performance
• Enabling referees, umpires and sport officials to make better decisions on rule infringements
• Improvements in the design of sport equipment and apparel
• Providing spectators with better viewing of sport performance

Example of a modern sport that relies on technology:

Sports like tennis, cricket, rugby and volleyball, depends on Hawk-Eye Technology. Hawk-Eye Technology has been in use since 2006 in tennis and is more accurate than a judges eye. Benefits of this technology: Hawk-Eye technology helps to take an error-free decision in cricket, lawn tennis, rugby league, football, and baseball.

Hawk-Eye uses six or more computer-linked television cameras situated around the court. The computer reads in the video in real time, and tracks the path of the ball on each camera. These six separate views are then combined together to produce an accurate 3D representation of the path of the ball.

Before the invention and implementation of this technology, the work of the technological system was done manually by humans but there was less accuracy in the detailing of the work.