Authentic Performance in Daredevil Sports
In the press coverage of the record-breaking jump of Felix Baumgartner it was noted that the record being broken was set in 1960 by Joe Kittinger, who worked closely with Baumgartner in his recent jump (cf. Skydiver Felix Baumgartner breaks sound barrier and Why Baumgartner's record dive almost didn't happen).
It could be argued that technology has changed so significantly from 1960 to 2012 that the feat accomplished by Joe Kittinger in that different technological milieu and indeed different epistemic context is a record that remains unbroken today.
For the historical purist, one would break the record by employing precisely the same technology that Joe Kittinger used for his 1960 jump -- except that Felix Baumgartner's skydive jump was presented as a test of the newest technologies.
I would not be surprised, however, if someone, some day, sought to reconstruct the original Kittinger jump, or even to repeat Baumgarnter's feat under more challenging circumstances, perhaps employing even fewer technological resources.
It is not unheard of, in the search for authentic adventure, to seek more difficult ways to do the same feat previously accomplished with a greater number of resources, as climbers now seek to summit mountains without the use of bottled oxygen as a more rigorous test of their mountaineering skills.
A generalization of the principle implicit in historically informed performance ethics would yield historically informed daredevil sports such as historically informed skydiving, historically informed mountaineering, historically informed extreme skiing and so forth.
