By hosting the games, Beijing is doing what Washington once excelled at: turning technical progress into cultural spectacle
On a humid Beijing track last month, the sprint to the future began. The athletes were not human; they were robots.
Triumphs were matched by mishaps: colliding, collapsing robots echoed earlier failures, when aeroplanes sputtered or self-driving cars stalled. Progress rarely begins with perfection.
Competitions accelerate development because they break the neat boundaries of labs. Rules had to be invented from scratch. It may seem trivial, but it marks the beginning of institutionalisation. Aviation only scaled up once regulators and standards gave it order. The internet only matured when governance bodies like ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) defined its protocols.
Your personal data will be processed and information from your device (cookies, unique identifiers, and other device data) may be stored by, accessed by and shared with 89 TCF vendor(s) and 20 ad partner(s), or used specifically by this site or app.
