I’ve been fortunate enough to have played a lot of sport since I was child, and now get great pleasure watching my own children’s obvious delight and excitement in physical competition. The sport I gained most from, and which for me puts all the others in the shade in terms of how one tests oneself, was cycle racing. There is none of the knee-jerking friction, joint-jolting energy waste of running, or the bruising exhaustion of a harsh contact sport like rugby. I was reminded of this only recently because after my accident in March, when I was convalescing, I exercised on a Cycleops indoor trainer for weeks. When the time came to get out on my new bike on the road again, (see photo for new bike and note…helmet!) what shocked and actually made me smile, was how you suddenly realize what you are doing is forcing yourself through a wall of air. Inside this doesn’t happen. But outside there is this weight of air pressure you are constantly battling through, which is why it is up to 30% more efficient to ride behind another rider….or car. In terms of testing your own physical ability, there is something extremely pure, about sitting on this incredibly efficient machine, with only a thin piece of rubber between you and the road’s surface, forcing yourself through the air at speed. When you train yourself to do it, and your body can do it well, it is amazingly exhilarating. Lance Armstrong had an expression for those moments, “Look, no chain!” he would yell at his team-mates.

So I was really interested in reading this article, by Bruno Macaes on drugs and sport in the New Atlantis Journal. In it he articulates the reasons why we feel drug use in sport is morally indefensible but goes further into the world of technology and biotechnology. In his piece he argues that,

Chemical or genetic enhancements are a way to influence human action from the outside. Precisely because they are the sort of power to which one will gladly submit, enhancement technologies should be regarded as an interference with our freedom, perhaps beneficial and attractive, but an external power nonetheless. They represent, ironically, the return of a repressed nature.

All of this has helped me clarify in my own mind, why I am so fundamentally uncomfortable with techno-zealots who encourage children to use technology for educational purposes, without ever hesitating to consider the possible consequences, or even having enough wit to realize there may be some. Time and time again, when you look through their rhetoric, the real reason why children and schools are encouraged to use technology is because it makes things easier for them. If using technology makes communicating or understanding easier for a child, I wonder have they really communicated or understood?