Will our love of play save sport from the robots?
A basketball-playing robot named CUE plays basketball during half-time of the women's preliminary round group C basketball match between Australia and Belgium during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama on July 27, 2021. Pic: Aris MESSINIS / AFP
Sport – in some form or other – will continue to be central to modern life for the imaginable future. The question is: what form will it take in the future?
Sport has been changed and changed again by technological innovations. The 19th-century construction of national sporting cultures was made possible only by the invention of the steam engine and the rapid construction of a rail network.
