It's about empowerment

More technology will only improve decision-making © AFP

Humans v Machines. The greatest mythical battle of our times - one that cuts across cultures and continents - is the one we wage against technology. Much of science fiction is based on it: machines we create with the best intent take us over; and sometimes even change the conception of what it means to be human. Through our history - especially the last two centuries - almost every major technological advance has met with resistance. Ovens, it was once said, would take the charm out of cooking; industrial machinery would cause unemployment; in vitro fertilisation would subvert nature.

This fear of technology is linked to our natural fear of the unknown. For much of our history and pre-history, that unknown was nature. In prehistoric times, it was not merely practical but necessary to be wary of the natural world; more than just a conditioned response, that wariness became an instinct of our species - anything unfathomable had the potential to threaten our existence. In the last two centuries, of course, science has made nature known to us, but one great unknown has been replaced by another: technology. We react to machines today almost as our ancestors reacted to magic. At a rational level, we understand that there is solid science behind it; at an instinctive level, especially if the technology does something that we do, but does it better, we feel threatened.

Technology also has ideological enemies. Left-wing and liberal ideologies of the 20th century, that are still fashionable, draw upon the Rousseau-inspired myth of the Noble Savage for sustenance. The belief goes thus: man in his natural state, without technology and the conventions of modernity, lived a perfect, peaceful life, and our ideal should be to return to it. It is tempting to believe in the Noble Savage, and all utopian visions incorporate some version of it, but anthropologists, archaeologists and historians have, in recent decades, debunked it completely. Primitive societies were far more violent - in terms of the percentage of people killed in conflicts - and had far higher infant mortality rates and much lower life expectancies. In short, the notion that life without technology and modernity is a better life, in any respect, is just plain false.

Luddites over the last few decades have resisted technology at every move, for differently articulated reasons. But at every step, reason has won over, and once technology has been embraced, it has improved the living quality of humans. Household technology has been directly responsible for the emancipation of women - women's liberation would have been impossible if cooking in the 20th century was as time-consuming as in the 19th. In the 19th, in fact, the abolition of slavery was enabled by the fact that machines replaced much of the lowly manual labour required in farms and homes. And technology at an industrial level, instead of taking away jobs by replacing manual work, has raised production, which has boosted economies and created more jobs, while improving the standard of living for all. (An empirical illustration of this came in the 20th century, when the Soviet bloc resisted consumer technology as the Western world embraced it; the disparities between Western and Eastern Europe say it all.)

So what does all this have to do with cricket? Well, echoes of those age-old arguments against technology are heard in cricketing circles today, based around the issue of umpiring and technology, sparked off largely by Hawk-Eye, the technology for determining lbw decisions. Now, there are two kinds of arguments possible against technology: one, that the technology is not accurate enough, and that there are scientific flaws in the way it works; two, that whether or not it works is irrelevant, cricket benefits from having the human touch that an umpire gives it. Any argument that falls in the first category demands scrutiny, and must be taken seriously; any that falls in the second is based on a basic error of perception.

The error is that the whole debate is too often framed as technology v Humans. That is wrong. The correct way to see it is as Technology for Humans. Technology is there to help humans become more efficient at what they do. It is unfair, in the case of Hawk-Eye, to judge umpires with a technology that we do not make available for their use. (I personally believe that Hawk-Eye is more accurate, in every instance, than an umpire can be. Independent tests have found it so, and no objection has yet been made which points out any flaw in the science behind it.)

Another typical argument is that the charm of cricket comes from the element of uncertainty, and that human error is a part of that charm. I disagree. Cricket gets its charm not from human error but from human excellence. When a quality spinner is continually frustrated by batsmen who keep padding up to him and getting the benefit of the inevitable doubt, a doubt that technology can reduce, if not remove, that excellence is compromised. When a batsman like Sachin Tendulkar is wrongly given out time and again on his tours to Australia, to ludicrous errors that the use of technology would eliminate, that excellence is compromised. Technology reduces error and does justice to the excellence that is the soul of the game. Cricket can only benefit from it.