INFO 202 Fall 08 Blog

For you sports fans, here is an article that reviews the instant replay in
the professional tennis world.  In the highest levels of tennis in grass
and hard court tournaments, these days a machine called Hawk-Eye makes the
close “in or out” decisions instead of a human umpire.  The machine uses
video footage of the shot from many angles and then creates a 3-D
simulation of the ball as it approaches and bounces off the ground.  The
computer then decides if this simulation represents an “in” or an “out”.

In the context of our Information Organization and Retrieval course, the
first question I had about the Hawk-Eye machine was: how is its definition
of “in or out” different from the the human umpire’s definition?  And what
about the stadium or TV viewer’s or player’s definition?  At the end of
the article, it describes this kind of situation and gives an example of a
controversy in this year’s Wimbledon final between Nadal and Federrer.

The technology used in Hawk-Eye also reminds me of the use of video and
digital photography in the MyLifeBits reading.  In the case of MyLifeBits,
instead of the instantaneous capture of Hawk-Eye, you are trusting a
computer with long term information capture and retrieval of your everyday
activities and to assign relevance and meaning.  There are bound to be
moments of conflict between the user perception and the computer’s maybe
too perfect representation of the facts.  How are these conflicts going to
be resolved?

I hope these questions will be answered in lectures:2.  Issues and Contexts
5.  Concepts and Categories
15. Personal Information Management
or others

P.S.
Speaking of controversy, did you see Michael Phelps’ 100 fly swim at the
Bejing Olympics last month?  You need to see the finish from several
camera angles to be convinced he won.  At least I think he won.  Here is
the link to his swim on www.nbcolympics.com so you can decide for
yourself:
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/modules/searchable/resourcedata/2211/60/video.html

Article Citation: “Hey, Robot Ref! Are You Blind?
Should the sports world replace human umpires with computers?”
Farhad Manjoo, September 2, 2008, www.slate.com
Link to article: http://www.slate.com/id/2199136/