Humans: The Ultimate Innovators?

For many years, we humans have prided ourselves on our accomplishments as innovators. Why shouldn't we? With inventions like the telescope, electricity, the telephone, and antibiotics, among others, we've surely done well for ourselves. And this innovation continues to happen today. Every two years, the memory capacity of the average computer doubles. From 1980 to 2004, the average horsepower for a car increased from 100 to 181. These trends are mirrored in many other industries as well.

Yet there's one aspect of society that I notice a lack of such innovation: sports. True, the technology increases every year as we get lighter and faster swimsuits and more precise tennis rackets, but when's the last time you heard of a new sport being invented, even in the minor leagues? The great tradition behind today's popular sports and the difficulty in spreading and marketing a new sport prevent humans from trying to do so. When humans started building the first roadways, however, did they quit because of the tremendous work required to connect every major city in the United States? Not at all. As humans, we are incapable of quitting and we should show that in our innovation of new sports games.

If this is to happen, it must first happen at the high school and college levels. Major leagues will never create a new sport unless there is readily available talent to keep large audiences entertained. Thus, if high schools and colleges market new sports to train young men and women, these same individuals can refine their techniques and the best and most experienced can play the new sport as a profession. For instance, if colleges create competitions within their school with rewards for the students that submit the best sports ideas, dozens of new college sports across the nation can be created. These sports can grow from intramural to club and all the way up to intercollegiate, but only if high schools and colleges choose to take the first step.

I leave you with a video I found of a sport called bossaball. It looks incredibly awesome and I'd love to try and play it.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess humans find the need to innovate when the system is imperfect - if it's not broke, don't fix it, right? Maybe that's why our sports haven't really changed concept-wise.

I guess the major leagues are also being scared of losing their customers, or diluting the attention too much. For example, lacrosse has been around for a while, and granted - I don't make too much of an attempt to watch it, but I can't really recall the last time I heard of the Major League "Playoffs", "World Series", "Super Bowl" or "World Cup" of Lacrosse going on.

Maybe it's a similar phenomenon as to what's observed in Eurasia and the Indian Subcontinent? Most of the skilled athletes go to either Soccer (for Eurasia) or Cricket (for Indian subcontinent), so while you'd have the great potential for an amazing baseball (not even looking towards bossaball) games going on in Pakistan vs. India, you don't see that because the people want to see the great Cricket matches that go on.

It's all about money, like you said, but it gets pretty complex at the major league level. Before bossaball gets big, I would assume we'd see a major league of Ultimate Frisbee or Lacrosse first, for instance.

Anonymous said...

Innovations necessitate integration. If you invent something and no one uses it, then it fails to be an innovation. Why does technology innovate faster and often than sports? Most technologies today require adoption and integration on an individual level. New cellphone lines or new computers require only one person to start using it. It becomes another innovation when many individual people start using it. On the other hand, with a lot of sports, you need a partner or a team. New sports are harder to adopt because it requires group level integration. Getting a group together to do something new is harder than getting one person to do something new.

Anonymous said...

Technology, like sports, needs more than one person. Apple's Iphone would be no where if Steve Jobs was the only person to use it. It would fail to be an innovation because no one would know about it but him and his close family. I agree with your point on sports, that they are harder to adopt because they require group level intergration, but I also feel the same way about technology. Personally, I feel that innovation serves both for the same reason, money.

Post a Comment

Related Posts with Thumbnails