Tomorrow’s World Cup

The Futurology department at World Cup College is coordinating a multidisciplinary exercise to cultivate a vision of how the World Cup will be organized towards the end of this century.

It is only in relatively recent years that human beings have realised that they are situated on a small branch of the evolutionary tree and that they share a common ancestor with all other animals. There is significant genetic overlap between types of animal with humans sharing a large amount of DNA with other Earth-dwelling creatures, particularly primates. Humans do not therefore inhabit a niche of existence that transcends animal existence; it is illegitimate to conceive of humans as inhabiting a milieu which is separable from the natural world.

As this idea becomes more entrenched throughout the 21st century, and the biological overlap between types of species gains further acceptance, it will no longer be possible to exclude other animals from events which had previously been exclusively human. Therefore WCC predicts that future World Cups will have to allow for the participation of animals. This will raise a number of practical and ethical issues. For example, it may be discriminatory to rule out the participation of water-based species such as dolphins. Pitches will therefore have to be covered in sufficient water to enable water-based animals to swim, but which still allows land-based creatures to run. Accommodating animals on the same pitch that traditionally hold some antipathy towards each other may also prove difficult, e.g cats and dogs.

Further to the acceptance of other animals on the field of play, developments in technology may also mean that the breadth of participation needs to be widened. Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics will eventually lead us to redefine the parameters of what constitutes global citizenship. Intelligent machines may therefore need to be accorded additional rights as they acquire mental abilities which are commensurable with those of mammalian species. Participants in future World Cups may therefore include sophisticated machinery such as kitchen white goods which can talk. Ethical issues will again require scrutiny: the possibility of the machines rising up in rebellion against their former masters and destroying/enslaving humanity must be reviewed. However, the inclusion of toasters and squirrels on the field in future World Cups is likely to be a positive development as the game continues to broaden its sphere of influence though the 2000s.