Part 29 (1/2)
Gentlemen, place your bets!
The investment in sports, as in the stock market, is supposed to return profit Successful sportspeople need not testify to how high their own return is That this return also rity is part of the cynical equation that the public enthusiastically validates When players are traded and contracts are signed, the money they earn, disproportionate as it seeit, to the number of people atch them, so money from a team's victory or an athlete's record In soal or prohibited, it is by far the strongest sector of the econo forms, however One is the direct bet: this horse, this player, this tea its ownuseless, is not a new institution People were challenged by the odds down through history But once the structural change that entailed , task distribution, and almost instant access to any event in the world was in place, the experience of betting totally took over that of co All our unfulfilled desires and drives are now embodied by those we choose to represent us, and for whose victory we not only root, but also invest in
There is an ideal stake-the successful player-and a ures is an extension of literate expectations It embodies the naive assued bodies unite in a balanced personality of high integrity The reason this model failed over and over need not be restated here But the point needs to be made that the ideal stake and the trivial stake are not independent This introduces to competition an element of obscurity in the form of er represents this eleest indirect bet istable of Olyns preceding figures into the billions Within the general shi+ft fro to service economy characteristic of the civilization of illiteracy, sport beco the printed word as the dominantof competitions as they happen
In the past, ere satisfied with the iame and can retrieve each moment of any event More broadband, and soon ill download the running athlete directly onto our monitors For a price, of course
People consume sports They are able to fly to the Olympics, wherever the best bid takes them (Barcelona, Atlanta, or Sydney), even able to pay for forty-fiveup with the very best trainers Facts in the world of sports, as much as in the rest of our activities, are less ie The authority and self-discipline, on which physical education was built, are replaced by the freedo many sports events, and by an attitude of perence whichthe whole world as a sports show
Sports are used to further e of the events they sponsor, the world's largest companies compete with feminism, equal opportunity, AIDS, and various disabilities for the attention and dollars of the audience Sponsorshi+p is a highly selective experience Nevertheless, it frequently contradicts the slogans it sets before the public These are important because the indirect bet on sports takes into consideration the huge market of entertainments it will address
Product endorse, and public relations are theplaces its bets No less than 500,000 brands were traded in Atlanta Only to keep track of the the integrity of the Olyhts of official sponsors,” but also ”detecting atte” Every square inch on the body of a tennis player or a track and field athlete can be rented And is The better the her the endorsement contract The minute detail picked up by the camera allows us to see the nao on the socks, a sponsor colucose or ames It seems that the co those who buy the space available on cyclists' ware, football players'
unifor off one another When the Canon co actor a tennis player who did not ames, the bet continued on the waves, on the screens, on the videotapes, and on any other iinable display
Marshall McLuhan plays year after year in the Superbowl The world indeed becoe Moreover, the world has almost decided that the outcome is less important than the new commercials, the new thirty-second dra us all how much ht bring But the e is actually lost Here McLuhan was still soe, as we are used to riting or reading a text The e is the sneaker, or whatever will take over, for its own short turn in the glory of consued, between New York and Zambia, Paris and the tribes in the Brazilian rain forests, Frankfurt and the starving populations of Africa or Asia, there will be a trade in the original and itssheer e are equalled in their persuasive power only by the entertain for the world's hungriest only in order to add onecraze to their torment
In these and in other characteristics mentioned, the unnatural aspect of sports takes over their original, natural coh the sports experience is falling into itself, is iets we use at ho bodies Noe still bicycle, ski, climb stairs, and row in the privacy of our rooes of the very feho still do the real thing, but for reasons less and less connected with excellence Soon ill swim in the pools and ski on the slopes of virtual reality So their perfor one of the ames of the future
Science and Philosophy-More Questions Than Answers
Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still TS Elliot, Burnt Norton
In some of the most advanced fields of scientific inquiry, research results are exchanged as soon as they becoishcycles involved in the review process prior to academic publication do not come into the picture On Web sites dedicated to research, the review process consists of acknowledging, challenging, and furthering breakthrough hypotheses It is carried out by real peers, not by the geriatric or opportunistic hierarchies that have the publishi+ng process in their firh the coes, data, and sie, already available in forically tested
Of course, there are many issues connected to the new dynamics of science, not the least of which is intellectual property and integrity A totally new experience in research and knowledge disse place The majority of the researchers involved know that previous matics of the civilization of literacy, will not provide answers As beautiful as the science ey of industrial society is, it will not, not even accidentally, contribute to the scientific progress in nanotechnology, in bioinformatics, in fluid dynamics, and in other frontier domains researched today Gene expression and protein syntheses arecenturies-the total of the years contributed by researchers to the advance that science has produced in the past Add to these acco list ofthat hu itself in the civilization of illiteracy
The list to follow is telling of the shi+ft fro to the industrial operations of , to a level of ato The saraphite or diamonds, sand or silicon for chips The list represents a reality of enormous consequence, confir series of discoveries
Life on Mars, , ato, nano-structural materials with unprecedented properties, quantum devices, advances in neuro- headlines, soon to be replaced by newer andissues of science and philosophy, I do not intend to offer a catalogue of current research, but to put the subject in a dynaer of presenting science especially as the agent of change, as though its own ive humankind its direction and purpose
Rationality, reason, and the scale of things
The dyna is not independent of the underlying structure of the pragmatics that leads to the civilization of illiteracy Both involve rationality, which connects human practical experiences to consistent inferences (soical conclusion) and to the ability to predict events (in nature or society), even to influence and control them Rationality is connected to efficiency insofar as it is applied in the selection of oals; or it serves as an instru to a selected course of action In short, rationality is goal oriented Reason, in turn, is value oriented; it guides practical experiences of human self-constitution in the direction of appropriateness
Rationality and reason are interconditioned Right and wrong, good and bad, are the axes along which hura that they constituted under the guise of literacy
The process through which human rationality and reason beco and tortuous