CORE 105-
Future of Technology Policy
Spring 2020
Back to the course’s schedule of assignments
Week 5 – Tech-Ins – Sports & Entertainment and Government
This week we hand the course over to you. Our first student teams will host panels on “Technology Policy In….” – sports and entertainment and government. The teams have prepared readings and videos for us to complete before class. In class each team will serve as a panel to introduce some of the important policy questions of their issues and facilitate a Q&A / discussion period with the class. It’s important that you do the readings etc before class. Let’s consider these technologies not only as useful or entertaining, but also the policy questions that might be associated with them
Team 1 – Tech-In Sports and Entertainment
We begin with two articles introducing some of the questions that arise from doping
https://www.sportsmedtoday.com/doping-va-119.htm
https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/06/us/performance-enhancing-drugs-in-sports-fast-facts/index.html
Continuing in the sports health area, we look at articles that consider the pros and cons of heart rate monitors
Benefits: https://sondasports.com/en/training-tips/why-heart-rate-monitoring-is-so-important-in-sports/
https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/bs-sp-loyola-maryland-heart-monitor-20180906-story.html
Negatives of heart rate monitors: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2016/mar/09/keep-your-ticker-up-the-truth-about-heart-rate-monitors
Video: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/are-consumer-heart-rate-monitors-accurate/
The articles and videos above are about athletes’s health – the next ones are about in-game technology – in this case, video assistant referees in soccer
https://soccer.nbcsports.com/2020/02/04/var-survey-mixed-verdict-on-video-technology/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/0/var-premier-league-explained-does-work-decisions-can-changed/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCasaHQz2a8
Finally, we expand to entertainment more broadly (although also applicable to sports) – the questions of virtual and augmented reality
Virtual Reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PxI7LHU_mA
Augmented Reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY_m5s3b8C8 (Laser Projection Smartphone)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/ Article about the negative effects technology may cause in entertainment
Team 2 – Tech-In Government
The policy questions of technology in government are all around us, especially here in Washington. Your classmates offer us the following to consider:
We begin by looking at competing views of some of the technology in an “ordinary” passport:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102056426
Opinions on the opposite side: https://privacyinternational.org/blog/1271/open-letter-un-agency-dangers-biometric-passport-standard
Next we look at the increasing incidence and importance of government surveillance – and some of the policy questions we should be asking at home and abroad
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/china-surveillance/552203/
Next we ask a related question – the use of facial recognition – something that private companies and government agencies are using more
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/technology/facial-recognition-police.html
Finally, in some ways bringing together the questions from above, considering the costs and benefits of governments using biotechnology.
