1. Defining technology

Before considering the value of athletic performance however, I will start with a brief discussion of the term ‘technology’. The standard definition is ‘the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes’Footnote ⁵ with most dictionaries giving a more narrow definition focusing upon the human use of material objects, such as tools and machines. Broader definitions include methods of organising and the use of systems or techniques. Its etymology stems from the Greek word meaning ‘systematic treatment’ with ‘techne’ referring to a skill or craft and ‘logia’ referring to the discourse or study of.Footnote ⁶ However, the definition that best encompasses the broad scope that technology covers is:

This type of definition resonates with Heidegger's ‘technological attitude’ in that it highlights the uniquely human way that we perceive and categorise the world.Footnote ⁸ The human condition enables a reflection upon the past and a projection into possible futures. We are able to imagine what might have been and what might be. For Heidegger, this attitude enforces our instrumental conception of the world and can be considered as a mode of existence.Footnote ⁹ It is the way that we navigate through the world; overcoming barriers by identifying solutions through manipulating our environment. In essence, it is an approach that conceptualises a problem, for instance, ‘how I can hit the ball further?’ and then transfers the knowledge we hold about specific aspects of the world, in this case, knowledge about the properties of materials, in order to provide a solution.

This technological attitude can also be seen to provide a basis for Kurzweil's arguments concerning technological advancement. Kurzweil argues that technology develops at an exponential rate. This is most effectively demonstrated in Moore's Law whereby the number of transistors that can fit on a computer chip doubles every two years. This leads to the exponential growth in computing power and explains why the average mobile phone is now more powerful than the computers that enabled men to reach the moon.Footnote ¹⁰ This law seems to have held relatively well since the development of transistors in the early twentieth century but Kurzweil goes further in applying it to technological innovation throughout human evolution. Kurzweil argues that the mistake most of us make when considering the development of technology, is to view it in a linear rather than exponential way.

The question then is, if Kurzweil's thesis is correct and this inductive premise holds true for the near future, how will it affect sport, athletic endeavour and the values we place upon it? Sport is in essence, a technological enterprise. It is an evolution from play and recreation because it imposes arbitrary rules that limit the means to reach an arbitrary end. Bernard Suits’ definition of a game-playing, within which sport is contained, is,

The goal here might be to reach a finish line (which incidentally might be the same as the starting line), or to put a ball in a net; and the rules and means might dictate that this is done by following a designated track or by passing the ball in a particular way to a team-mate. But above all, it requires a particular attitude that accepts these rules (and the subsequent means) in order to allow the game to exist at all. If one does not hold this lusory attitude then one could quite easily reach the goal more efficiently, i.e. cutting across the infield of a track in athletics, or getting a ladder and carrying the ball up to the net in basketball. This is why sport is so peculiar, and so peculiarly human; we deliberately put obstacles in our way to make an activity more difficult to achieve. To return to our earlier definition of technology, it is the way in which we seek to overcome obstacles and solve problems that are placed in our path, despite the fact that the obstacles are ones of our own making. It is by design an inefficient activity. The paradox concerning technology is that this desire to solve problems is then used to make a necessarily inefficient activity more efficient.

2. Technology and the idea of progress

At an elite level, today even the most prosaic athletic sport – that of running for instance – is a highly technological affair, as Pam Sailor's demonstrates in her paper ‘More than a pair of running shoes’.Footnote ¹³ The account given of Paula Radcliffe as she prepares to race is highly reminiscent of Haraway's cyborg:

Despite technological innovation, sport is a fairly conservative sphere though increasingly driven by what Robert Nisbet calls the ‘great idea of progress’.Footnote ¹⁵ This is based upon the desire for perfection and the drive to eradicate problems and achieve ultimate control over our environment. Technology allows us both to overcome perceived limitations and difficulties, and (we believe) enables us to measure this progress against previous attempts in an exact and objective way. This is seen none more clearly than in the sport record. In the case of sports measured by time, we are now able to calculate performances to a tenth of a thousand of a second.

This focus on quantifiable performance has been the subject of a detailed critique by philosophers such as Sigmund Loland. Loland argues that the notion of ever-continuing quantifiable performance and the value we place upon it highlights fallacious reasoning. He says,

This application of technological know-how has shaved nearly a tenth off the men's 100m sprint record in less than 100 years. Women have improved by over 20%. In swimming, the progression has been even more marked, with most disciplines showing a 20 – 25% improvement for both men and women, with the women's 100m and 200m freestyle showing a 35% improvement in less than a century. Similar progression has been seen in other linearly measured sports of jumping and throwing.

Improvements in technique, skill and athleticism have also been seen in both aesthetic sports and team games. The level of technical difficulty has increased in gymnastics and diving, balls are hit harder in hockey, kicked further in rugby, and with more precision and spin in football. Much of this change has occurred alongside developments in technology. The increased power and speed in hockey has been brought about to a large extent with changes in playing surface (from grass to water based synthetic turf) and lighter, rounder sticks. Gymnasts and divers are able to perfect their moves with improved safety harnesses and assisted by three-dimensional video analysis.

Improvements in these types of aesthetic sports and complex games are not too problematic from a logical perspective. Changes in technology result in changes in the game itself. In most cases, improvements in technology have enabled a greater aesthetic pleasure, particularly for the sporting spectator. The modern game of hockey is very different to the game of the 1970s; no longer are players hacking at balls stuck in a grass divet. However, the logical and conceptual problems that come with our expectation for ever-improving progress, is manifested in linear sports that involve measuring and quantifying progress via the standard measurements of distance, weight and time. In order to demonstrate improvements in quantifiably measurable performance, technology will inevitably begin to make a more marked influence on our physical being. As Loland points out,

3. Genetic technology in sport

For Loland, the real concern is with technologies that have a direct effect on our biological make-up. Perhaps the application of genetic technology is where we will really see, what can be called, the ‘post-human’ athlete. There are already areas of genetic research which could have a marked effect upon sporting performance including the ability to increase muscle mass, and the ability to increase oxygen uptake. Experiments conducted on mice and monkeys, for instance, have utilised the follistatin gene to block myostatin, a protein that inhibits muscle growth. The effect of which is that the muscular stature of these animals is significantly increased. This is the case even without high intensity exercise. If these results are replicated in human subjects it would affect how, and how much, athletes developed muscle. One needs to be cautious however, in concluding the effects upon sporting performance. Even in activities that depend primarily on strength, muscle mass needs to be balanced with surrounding tissue, such as ligaments, tendons, cartilage and bones. Simply adding a particular gene that increases muscle mass isn't necessarily going to lead to better performances, and may well have the unintended consequence of reducing performance through more frequent injury.

Another application of genetic technology that might have an equally significant effect upon sport is by affecting the use of oxygen in the blood stream. Athletes that carry a greater amount of red blood cells can use oxygen more efficiently and can work harder for longer. Many athletes already take advantage of high-altitude training or oxygen chambers (or indeed blood dopingFootnote ¹⁸) in order to ‘artificially’ force the body to use oxygen more effectively. This process has been replicated through gene transfer, whereby genetically modified mice have shown significantly enhanced endurance capabilities.Footnote ¹⁹ Again, although this technology could have discernible effects on sporting performance, particularly in long-distance or endurance events, it may result in unintended consequences. As shown in the world of elite cycling in the second half of the twentieth century, increasing the red blood cell count places additional (and excessive) demand on the heart.

Nevertheless, despite these two areas where genetic technologies may have a potential application to sport, speculation needs to be restrained. The concern that we would see genetically modified athletes first appeared in the late 1990's and early 2000's. This was at the height of publicity on the human genome project when scientists, policy makers and ethicists first met to discuss how to deal with this prospect. The solution, it was decided, was to treat genetic technology as a form of doping, alongside steroid use, THG, amphetamines, and blood doping and therefore it would come under the jurisdiction of the World Anti–Doping Agency (WADA).Footnote ²⁰ Despite fears that genetically modified (‘Frankenstein’Footnote ²¹) athletes would be competing at the Sydney, Greece, and Beijing Olympics, there is no evidence to suggest that this has yet become a reality and speculation about these types of athletes seems to have died down.

4. Prosthetic technology in sport

The more pressing and likely technology to affect linear-type sports such as athletics is the development of synthetic technologies, particularly in the area of prosthetics. Oscar Pistorius, the South African ‘blade runner’, is currently the best known amputee athlete who has competed in able-bodied events. Pistorius's disputes with athletics authorities over his eligibility to compete in able-bodied competitions highlights the conceptual problems about the value and meaning of athletic performance, and focuses particularly on notions of ‘fairness’ and ‘performance enhancement’. The question surrounding Pistorius is whether his specially designed prosthetic legs (‘Cheetahs’) provide him with an unfair advantage over other athletes. The notion of unfair advantage is a difficult one to assess but in this case, the authorities wished to establish whether these prosthetic limbs were akin to wearing jet-powered roller skates, for example. Since the 200m running race is a test of the competitors’ ability to run, the conceptual problem is concerned with the definition of ‘running’; and moreover whether this includes the use of prosthesis.

In order to answer this question, Pistorius was subjected to tests that measured a range of movements that were deemed inherent to running, including forces, energy consumption and wind resistance. The IAAF's (International Association of Athletics Federations) initial conclusion was that Pistorius's prosthetic limbs did constitute an unfair advantage over abled-bodied competitors for the reason that the biomechanical differences meant that his ‘Cheetahs’ produced more recoil spring and less drag than ‘natural human’ legs, so the wearer expends less energy than an athlete with ‘natural’ legs. Since the IAAF's rules of running at the time had nothing to say about prosthetic limbs, they were amended to prohibit, ‘any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides a user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device’, a category which subsequently included Pistorius's prosthetics.Footnote ²² This judgement was subsequently overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on the grounds that insufficient variables had been tested. Indeed, the CAS questioned the validity of the testing procedure since,

It was concluded that although the recoil spring from his prosthetics gave him an advantage over latter stages of the race this was offset by the fact that Pistorius was required to expend more energy in the initial acceleration stages and when running a bend.

As noted by the CAS, the fact that ‘at least some IAAF officials had determined that they did not want Mr Pistorius to be acknowledged as eligible to compete in international IAAF-sanctioned events, regardless of the results that properly conducted scientific studies might demonstrate’Footnote ²⁴ indicates the strong resistance the authorities have towards the use of prosthetic technology and the impact it might have upon sport. Despite the ban being overturned, the IAAF continued to press South Africa not to select Pistorius for the 4×400 relay but this time changed their argument from one of fairness to one of harm. They maintained that it could risk the safety of both Oscar and other athletes if he ran in the main pack since his running style differed to other athletes and his prosthetics could cause an accident. Subsequently, Pistorius was initially prevented from running in the 2011 World Championships, despite being selected for the relay team, due to health and safety concerns. Again, the IAAF later rescinded their view and Pistorius was allowed to compete in the London 2012 Olympics.

As has been considered in greater detail by authors such as Jones,Footnote ²⁵ Van Hilvoorde & Landeweerd,Footnote ²⁶ EdwardsFootnote ²⁷ and Lenk,Footnote ²⁸ there are several arguments that are raised here from both ethical and conceptual standpoints. That the IAAF has appealed to many of these arguments is indication of their conservative attitude and their desire to preserve a particular purist conception of athletics which hides problematic cases such as Oscar Pistorius and Caster Semenya.Footnote ²⁹ Arguably if a competitor doesn't fit the conception of the ‘normal, natural’ human athlete (and for Semenya, this must be a ‘natural feminine’ athlete) then they are accused of possessing an unfair advantage. In the case of Pistorius, this was his prosthetic blades, with Semenya, it was her masculine appearance.

It is not in dispute that prosthetic technologies are performance enhancing, since they allow the athlete to compete at all. This highlights the problem with assessing what constitutes unfair performance enhancement and raises different questions about the value of sport and what we really wish to test. If we value equality of opportunity then, to use a sporting metaphor, how much should we ‘level the playing field’? Do we compensate for inequalities in physical ability? If Pistorius should be compensated for the misfortune he received as a child in suffering dual amputation of the legs then should others too be compensated for poor rolls of the dice of life, such as having ‘poor’ genes, being born in an impoverished country, having no access to facilities or coaches, or being generally uncoordinated, ill-motivated and unambitious?

5. Therapy, enhancement and societal norms

The problems faced by the sporting authorities regarding fairness in performance enhancement will undoubtedly increase if Kurzweil's prediction is correct and as technology is further embedded into our daily lives and our physical being. It may be that it becomes the norm in society to replace biological parts with more reliable synthetic ones, and not simply for therapeutic reasons. Indeed, these cases illustrate how the distinction between therapy and enhancement is conceptually problematic. For instance, baseball pitchers have received elbow surgery to replace damaged tendons and in some cases this has resulted in a stronger throwing action than was the case prior to the injury. This has led other athletes (and often parents of aspiring athletes) to request the surgery without any medical necessity.Footnote ³⁰ Similarly, the cost and effectiveness of laser eye surgery has become affordable to much of the general population and many top sports players have reportedly received it, with the most high profile example, professional golfer, Tiger Woods. As these technological enhancements become a societal norm, it raises difficult questions for the sporting authorities as to which performance enhancements are acceptable and which are not. Furthermore, it will be more difficult to prohibit technology that becomes an intrinsic part of the body than technology that is external to the body which can be easily removed or separated, such as the LZR swimming costume. It is not clear how the authorities will deal with cases such as an archer or shooter who has had her eyesight enhanced through surgery. They will need to assess whether it constitutes an unfair advantage over other competitors who have not received such surgery. If the authorities, as in the parallel case of testosterone levels in female athletes, determine that the eyesight is beyond that of ‘normal’ human levels, and ban these athletes from competing, then this will undoubtedly prove controversial. Moreover, the authorities might find that they are increasingly re-evaluating these levels as this technology becomes more endemic in society. This difficulty in assessing what is within the range for the abilities of a ‘normal’ human might become increasingly pronounced if access to technology is not equitable (as is currently the case) and the gap between the ‘normal’ athlete of the richer nations and the ‘normal’ athlete of the poorer ones continues to grow.

Ultimately, the concern over performance enhancing technologies stems from questions about the value of sporting performance. There is a real desire to test the athlete not the sport scientist, engineer or pharmacist. Yet, this begs the question as to what is the athlete that we wish to test, and how is it possible to separate the ‘natural human’ from the technology. As Haraway noted decades previously, technology is so deeply embedded into our very being it has become conceptually impossible to set it apart from the modern man. Performance enhancement in sport cannot wholly be rejected since it runs alongside the notion of progress. Arguably, it is our tendency to hold a technological attitude which forms the basis for our tacit expectation that progress is both valuable and inevitable. In sport, one of the clearest measurements of this progress is through quantifiable and measurable performance exemplified in linear sports that are based upon time, weight and distance.

However, an analysis of the effect of particular technologies upon sport demonstrates that sports governing bodies will be faced, and with an increasingly greater frequency, with questions about the fundamental values of athletic performance, particularly at the elite level. If we accept a definition of sport as the ‘voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles through physical skill’Footnote ³¹ it is apparent that it must contain inefficiency at its core. Therefore, the inherent paradox is that it ultimately runs against the technological attitude and the notion of progress.