Humans Need Not Apply by Jerry Kaplan

Author:Jerry Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

9. The Fix Is In

It’s Super Bowl LIX (2025). The Seattle Seahawks take to the field, having won the coin toss. Their new rookie starter approaches the ball and gives it a powerful boot. To everyone’s amazement, the ball flies perfectly through the air and crosses dead center at the opposing team’s goalposts, for the first ever kickoff field goal in NFL history.1 The crowd goes wild! After two more downs, the Seahawks regain possession of the ball on the fifty-yard line. Instead of the usual scrimmage to run the ball down the field, they attempt another field goal. The ball sails perfectly through the goalposts once again. Three points! And again. And again. The crowd grows restless, because the game isn’t proceeding quite as expected. After scoring thirty consecutive field goals without throwing so much as a single pass, the Seahawks take the trophy as the crowd boos them off the field.

Everyone knows that something’s gone terribly wrong, but they’re not quite sure what. Theories abound that the Seahawks’ new kicker has somehow been genetically enhanced; that Jesus has finally returned and he lives in Seattle; that the whole event is some sort of freak statistical accident due to global warming.

It soon emerges the team has fielded the first ever lightweight place-kicking intelligent shoe. It meets all the existing NFL regulations, but it guides the kicker’s foot to exactly the optimal position. Freed from having to aim, the player simply swings his leg as hard as he can, and all that energy drives the ball 50 percent further than normal to precisely where it is supposed to go.

A loud and shrill public debate ensues, and people fall into four highly opinionated camps. The conservatives believe in the sanctity of the current rules and regulations. They have worked just fine ever since they can remember and are perfect just as they are. If the teams want to innovate, we shouldn’t interfere with their inventive spirit. As long as it’s literally a level playing field, and all teams are permitted to develop similar technologies, things are as they should be. If a team can’t afford to develop its own intelligent shoe, that’s just survival of the fittest, so it’s just tough luck.

In fact, conservatives are suspicious that most or all of the rule changes since the NFL was founded in 1920 have only made things worse. They tout several Washington sports-analysis think-tank studies underwritten by a murky network of wealthy ex-players seeking to protect their respective world records from being surpassed due to any changing of the rules. A well-funded public relations campaign by the nonprofit Americans for Freedom of Footwear promotes the slogan “Kick the bureaucrats, not the innovators” in TV ads showing teams stumbling around the field in leg irons. They stage formal “Foot Ball” fund-raisers across the country for affluent donors.

The liberals are focused on fairness. They don’t want to prevent progress, but they also don’t want to see some teams get an enduring advantage while others perpetually fall further behind.

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