Virtual riding and real sweat
Posted January 16th, 2006 in Future
Smartmobs files it under technologies of co-operation, and the CS Monitor describes it as a future where we will turn our living rooms into the Tour de France and physically compete against one another in a virtual world.
Americans own more than 50 million treadmills, Stairmasters, stationary bikes, and other home gym equipment. Let’s be honest: Many have become little more than expensive laundry racks. But that could change with new technology that connects them to the Internet, allowing people to compete with others from their dens. In some cases, whole new sports are being created with what were once viewed as merely fitness devices.
How many sports that we now take for granted will still be around in a hundred years if these online trends continue to develop? Some like cycling have so far survived the test of time and probably will long into the future - others like Foxy boxing and Fight Club probably won’t……but then again.
Taking it further, I’m envisioning my virtual team of nine riders competing against twenty other teams in the latest online TdF route announced by the ASO - team leaders, sprinters climbers etc. - my best nine against yours. A whole new world of stars and water carriers developed for our fitness and entertainment. It’s not such a stretch to imagine something like this for cycling, the sport already shares many of the preconditions (the way peletons work together for example) needed for this kind of interactivity and already is a technology of co-operation.
I like the idea of a world where sporting community exists not only in the meat space of a local field or race track, but across artificial boundaries of state and mind, however strange it may appear now.
Reality is what you make it.
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