Competition Against Numbers
June 3rd, 2005 | Published in Quotes, Culture
One of the most significant elements in modern sport is the fact that an abstract interest in record-making has become one of its main preoccupations. To cut the fifth of a second off the time of running a race, to swim the English channel twenty minutes faster than another swimmer, to stay up in the air an hour longer than one’s rival did—these interests come into the competition and turn it from a purely human contest to one in which the real opponent is the previous record: time takes the place of a visible rival.
—Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1934), p. 306