Transcending “Cultures” — Creating a Shared Understanding between Computer Science and Sport

Historically, computer science and sport as scientific disciplines represented different “cultures” with their own worlds for investigation, their own approaches, and their own methodologies. Creating a shared understanding between these disciplines has the potential to benefit both of these “cultures” and to serve as a source for new possibilities enriching both fields. 1 The Two (or Many) Cultures C.P. Snow has identified in his book [Snow, 1993] two cultures (in his case: the literary intellectuals and the natural scientists) “who had almost ceased to communicate at all.” He further claimed that “there exists a profound mutual suspicion and incomprehension, which in turn has damaging consequences for the prospects of applying technology to the alleviation of the world’s problems” and “there seems to be no place where the cultures can meet.” For the purpose of this article, I intentionally do not attempt to define the concept of a “culture” precisely, but use it primarily to differentiate between computer science and sport as two different cultures. Over the years in our research center, we have experienced and brought together many different kinds of cultures such as people from academia and from industry, software designers and software users, and students and researchers from different countries around the world. Beyond these uses the concept is also used to characterize different approaches to work, education, and learning [Bruner, 1996]. In a world of increasing specialization where the Renaissance scholar is a person of the past, the organizers are to be congratulated for defining the objectives of this symposium as “conceived for all those who are interested in an exchange of experiences and ideas regarding the use of computer science in support of the development of theory and practice in sport.” I strongly believe that the differences between cultures should not only be seen as an obstacle, as a limitation, or a source of incomprehensibility, but as a foundation for new insights, possibilities, and creativity. In many situations having different viewpoints helps one discover alternatives and uncover tacit aspects of interesting problems to cope with.