Starting from your reading of 1984
You have already read Keith’s complete 1984 Use of Video in Sport paper.
Its final chapter is strikingly short. Keith said that any vision of video’s future was in danger of becoming dated quickly. He noted three possibilities: video might be used more for training; improving equipment might address poor resolution; and combinations of microcomputers and video discs might create interactive forms of video.
He immediately placed limits around those possibilities. Then, rather than asking another direct learner question, he returned to the coach: “the use that you make of coaching techniques” is what counts. Landers owns the final formulation Keith cited about the coach facilitating learning; Keith used it to end with coaching purpose rather than technological prediction.
Three possibilities from 1984
Choose one of Keith’s three possibilities to carry into this encounter:
- More use of video for training.
- Better equipment and improved resolution.
- Interactive combinations of computers and video.
Complete these sentences before reading on:
- This possibility could help learning if …
- It would not count as progress if …
- The coach would still need to decide …
Do not try to judge whether Keith’s forecast was correct. Use the possibility to notice how Clyde Street keeps returning from what technology might make possible to what people might responsibly do with it.
The springboard
A new capability can be impressive and still fail to deserve a place in practice. It may solve the wrong problem, improve a measure nobody needs, make an existing activity faster without improving learning, or quietly transfer judgement from a practitioner to a system.
The absence of direct questions in Keith’s final chapter does not remove responsibility. It concentrates it. The reader has travelled through use, investigation, learning and evaluation. The future now depends on what the practitioner carries forward from that learning.
Question to carry
Which possibilities are worth pursuing—and what would make them worth pursuing?
This is an educational question built from Keith’s 1984 ending; it is not a question he wrote. At each Clyde Street stop, notice:
- what possibility becomes visible;
- which person, purpose or value gives it direction;
- what remains uncertain or limited;
- and which decision cannot be settled by the technology itself.
This selected route is not a record of Keith steadily predicting the next technology. The posts arise from disrupted travel, a national futures project, architecture, an AlphaGo match and a reading journey through intelligence augmentation. Read together for learning, they show several ways of meeting possibility without surrendering judgement to it.
Technology begins with the learning environment
2010 — Coaches as Technologists
In Coaches as Technologists, volcanic ash prevented Keith travelling to Doha. He responded by reconstructing his planned presentation as a public, asynchronous post. The interruption is ordinary contingency, not proof that disruption is beneficial, but it made his argument practical: digital media allowed the conversation to travel when he could not.
Keith worked with Alan Januszewski and Michael Molenda’s Association for Educational Communications and Technology definition of educational technology: facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources. He applied that broad formulation to coaching. Coaches’ voices, the organisation of training, commercial analysis systems, free resources and technologies coaches help develop can all be part of the learning environment. Katie Buckley’s research on coaches’ voice use, Randers and colleagues’ comparison of tracking systems, Leigh Blackall’s open-learning work and Ian White’s stereoscopic-video paper remain the work of those contributors; Keith placed them together to widen what counted as technology in coaching.
The tracking-system example also preserves a warning. Different systems detected a similar decline in performance but reported substantially different absolute distances. A technology can reveal a useful pattern while still limiting comparison.
What this makes visible: The future is not only the arrival of new equipment. It is also how coaches organise environments, combine resources and adapt tools to support learning.
Think: If a new digital tool entered your coaching or analysis environment tomorrow, what should it improve—and what existing human practice should it avoid weakening?
A future can be approached from both directions
2011 — The Future of Australian Sport
In The Future of Australian Sport, Keith recorded his contribution to an Australian Sports Commission and CSIRO research project. He described two ways of thinking: looking forward to 2040 and looking back from 2040 to the present.
His contribution did not reduce the future to sport technology. He introduced declinism, the intrinsic and social value of play, links among families, schools and communities, population ageing, climate risk and the difficulty of sustaining policy beyond a short political cycle. The demographic and climate evidence belongs to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and CSIRO; Keith’s move was to place those changed conditions inside the question of what kind of sporting future was desirable.
Looking forward asks what might happen. Looking back from a desired future asks what would have needed to happen before it. Neither approach guarantees a correct forecast. Together they make present choices more visible.
What this makes visible: A future worth pursuing must be described in human and social terms, not only as a list of technical capabilities.
Think: Imagine a worthwhile sport-analysis environment in ten years. What would coaches, athletes and analysts be better able to do—and what decision made now would help create that condition?
Possibility needs imagination before specification
2015 — Got It
In Got It, Keith moved from René Redzepi’s vision for Noma to architect Patrick Bradley’s transformation of shipping containers into a rural home. Patrick’s view that architecture should improve human lives and emotions prompted Keith to reflect on a vision of coaching in 2024.
Keith did not specify the equipment that future coaching should contain. He hoped it would have been nourished by people with wonder about the world and a willingness to pursue what imagination makes possible. The visions and designs remain René Redzepi’s and Patrick Bradley’s; Keith used the encounter to consider the spirit in which a coaching future might be made.
This is aspiration, not evidence that wonder produces effective coaching. It nevertheless interrupts a narrow technology forecast. Before asking what a future system will do, the practitioner can ask what kind of experience, relationship and professional life it should help create.
What this makes visible: Possibility has a direction only when people decide what is worth making possible.
Think: Describe one future improvement in analysis without naming a product or technical feature. What would become better for the people involved?
Prediction must leave room for initiative
2016 — Analysing Performance: Hearing Other Voices
In Analysing Performance: Hearing Other Voices, David Ormerod’s account of Lee Sedol’s fourth game against AlphaGo sent Keith into two questions: how a story of performance was accounted for and shared, and what place tactical understanding and personal initiative had in an age of analytics.
Keith followed David’s layered account of Lee’s changed strategy and move 78, described by commentators as rare and decisive. He then placed this encounter beside tennis prediction research, constraints-led learning conversations and an exchange about breaking a grammatical rule in writing. These contributions remain owned by David Ormerod, An Younggil, Xinyu Wei and colleagues, Sporticus, the myfastestmile participants, Joanna Nadin and the other named voices.
Keith did not conclude that human creativity defeated artificial intelligence. His postscript also recorded Demis Hassabis’s observation that AlphaGo produced unprecedented moves of its own. The more careful learning is that prediction and analysis can coexist with surprise, initiative and action that was not the most expected.
What this makes visible: A useful analytical future should help people recognise possibilities without turning the most probable action into the only legitimate action.
Think: If a system recommends the most likely successful action, when should a performer follow it—and when should the learning environment preserve space to depart from it?
Augmentation makes the relationship explicit
2020 — Intelligence Augmentation
In Intelligence Augmentation, Keith brought a historical literature into sport data-science pedagogy and practice. Xiao-Li Meng’s account of data science as a human-created, computer-intensive ecosystem leads into Vannevar Bush, Ross Ashby, J. C. R. Licklider, Douglas Engelbart and later writing about augmented analytics.
The externally owned formulations differ, but the route repeatedly places machines in relation to human purposes. Licklider’s proposed partnership leaves people setting goals, forming hypotheses, determining criteria and evaluating; machines undertake routinisable preparatory work. Engelbart treats augmentation as increasing a person’s capacity to comprehend a complex situation and develop a solution suited to their needs.
Keith connected this literature to sport. He argued for clarity about the relationship between human and artificial intelligence, for pedagogy as data science became normal in sport, and for innovative practice that could be shared. He did not offer a completed allocation of every task between person and machine.
What this makes visible: The practical question is not simply whether a machine can perform a task. It is how the combined system changes human understanding, action and responsibility.
Think: In one analysis task, which work could reasonably be routinised—and which goals, criteria, evaluation or consequential decision should remain visibly owned by people?
What changed across the journey?
Read for learning, the selected encounters do not replace Keith’s three 1984 possibilities with a newer list. They make the act of taking a possibility forward more demanding:
- Technology widens: from equipment to voices, methods, environments, resources and systems.
- The future gains a direction: not only what might happen, but what human and social condition is worth working towards.
- Imagination gains a responsibility: possibility must improve something that matters to people.
- Prediction meets initiative: the probable action must not silently become the only action a performer is permitted to take.
- Augmentation names a relationship: machines may extend capability, while people still have to own purposes, criteria, evaluation and consequence.
These are connections made for this learning encounter. Keith did not present the five posts as stages in a method, and chronology alone does not show a planned progression.
The questions left active are therefore not “What technology comes next?” They are:
- What worthwhile possibility are we trying to create?
- Whose learning, practice or participation might improve?
- What human capability should the technology extend?
- What could be narrowed, displaced or lost?
- What evidence would justify pursuing, testing, holding or stopping it?
- Who owns the consequential judgement?
Decide: what should be taken forward?
For each proposal, mark PURSUE, TEST FIRST, HOLD or STOP.
- PURSUE: the purpose, safeguards and available evidence justify beginning or extending the use at an appropriate scale, with its effects kept under review.
- TEST FIRST: the possibility is worthwhile enough to investigate, but a consequential assumption must be examined in a bounded trial before wider use.
- HOLD: the purpose, conditions or evidence are not yet clear enough even to design a useful and responsible trial.
- STOP: the likely harm, displacement or mismatch outweighs the proposed learning return.
There is no answer pattern to discover. Judge the proposed use, not whether the technology sounds impressive.
- Proposal A: Use an automated system to produce additional analysis after every training session, although nobody has identified which decisions the additional outputs should support.
- Proposal B: Automate routine event tagging, then use the released analyst time for one coach–athlete conversation about a consequential uncertainty.
- Proposal C: Adopt a tracking system because it produces precise distance measures, although comparison with another system shows substantially different absolute values and the discrepancy remains unresolved.
- Proposal D: Use a predictive model to show likely options while explicitly preserving room for performers to identify and try a less probable alternative.
- Proposal E: Delay purchasing a new system and first investigate whether the current difficulty arises from the question, relationship or learning environment rather than the available technology.
Choose the proposal that produced the most disagreement. Share:
- the category you chose and why;
- the learning or practical return you valued—or found absent;
- one assumption, limit or likely consequence that shaped your decision;
- the evidence that would make you change your position;
- and who should own the final judgement.
The linked Clyde Street posts are available if you want to inspect the fuller context or test the account presented here. They are invitations to travel further, not prerequisites for taking part.
Test it against a real possibility
Choose one proposed tool or change in an analytical setting. It may involve video, a dashboard, automated coding, prediction or a change in how people work together.
Write a short possibility brief:
- Practical concern: What problem or learning opportunity are we trying to address?
- Human return: What should someone become better able to notice, understand, decide or do?
- Augmentation: Which human capability might the change extend?
- Boundary: What could it hide, narrow, displace or make harder to challenge?
- Evidence: What bounded trial or observation would help us judge its value?
- Ownership: Who will decide whether to pursue, test first, hold or stop it?
- Decision: What is the smallest responsible next move?
Return to the three sentences you completed at the beginning. Has the Clyde Street journey confirmed, qualified or changed your view of the 1984 possibility?
Take the journey forward
Complete the four sentences. Name at least one Clyde Street encounter in your response.
- In 1984, Keith left the coach with the possibility that …
- Across the selected Clyde Street encounters, I saw that possibility become more demanding when …
- By the end of Clyde Street, practitioners still need to judge …
- My decision is to pursue, test, hold or stop … because …
The learning return is not a prediction of the next technology. It is a question to carry into practice:
Which possibilities are worth pursuing—and what would make them worth pursuing?
Source note
The linked Clyde Street posts are the substantive historical sources. External intellectual ownership remains with the people and organisations named within each stop. Keith’s contribution lay in the encounters, connections, questions and practical translations he made; the sequence, carrying question and learner activities here are an educational translation, not a curriculum authored by Keith.
Sources followed
1984 starting source
Keith Lyons, Use of Video in Sport, Resource Pack 9, National Coaching Foundation, Chapter 5, paragraphs 5.1–5.2.
Clyde Street sources
Keith Lyons, “Coaches as Technologists” — 10/04/18
Keith Lyons, “The Future Of Australian Sport” — 11/12/01
Keith Lyons, “Got It” — 15/04/16
Keith Lyons, “Analysing Performance Hearing Other Voices” — 16/03/20
Keith Lyons, “Intelligence Augmentation” — 20/01/17