I’m
going to talk about the notion of « Idea of Progress » and illustrate my
point with one aspect of this theme: scientific breakthroughs. Progress is the idea that the world is becoming
increasingly better so we can wonder: to
what extent do scientific breakthroughs illustrate the notion of progress?
First I’d like to mention their impact on societies and on development. Then I
will talk about their seamy side.
First
of all, some
people created the Internet which has social impacts It changed the way of
communication thanks to the social networks. You use them to speak,
share something with people who live away from you for instance.
The
Internet has also an impact on the economy. We studied a document about online
shopping which is a better way of doing your shopping as it provides services
that supermarket does not provide. You can have yours goods delivered at home.
Consumers associations can give you some advice.
Then
the Internet has also made things evolve; in developing countries, basic
welfare is not enough, people generally need access to the Internet. We studied
a document which shows that Internet helps famers, rural artists and craftsmen
to check the going prices and reach a global market for their products.
In the medical field, scientists
can select embryos and eliminate those carrying diseases like the Down syndrome or the Cystic Fibrosis. It
makes babies avoid a life that their parents do not want them to bear.
Scientists like Marie Curie discovered radioactivity
and this discovery is used to supply big cities with the electricity.
But
these breakthroughs have downsides.
Radioactivity was used to make atomic bombs during the Second World War
with the Manhattan project. The bombs killed lots of people like inhabitants of
Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Scientists think that they can control births and deaths whereas it’s
supposed to be something natural. There are the dangers of eugenics and selective
breeding and all those manipulations raise ethical issues. Scientists should
not have the power to decide who can survive and who should die.
On
the Net all data circulating is not reliable all the time: there are extremist
websites, viruses, spam, criminal networks, etc…
There
are also dangerous people on the Internet. Children are easy preys when it
comes to meeting people online. On a photo, we studied; we see that virtual
relationship can be altogether different from reality.
On
the Internet, there are hackers. They know how to spy on secret, personal and
highly sensitive data which may harm people, especially as the Net has unlimited
memory.
The internet
has made some people hooked on the internet, especially teenagers. We studied a
comic strip on which a young couple only live and communicate through the
internet because of the social networks. The drawer underlines the paradox
between the web connection and the word disconnection.
To
conclude the Internet and scientific breakthroughs are new discoveries which
seems to lead the word to progress but for several years, people has been
discovering seamy sides that should force people to be more cautious. In fact
scientific discoveries are a double-edged sword.
We
can draw a parallel between the Internet and the notion Spaces and Exchanges.
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[Ces articles sont écrits par des étudiants, en cas d'erreurs, n'hésitez pas à laisser un commentaire dans la zone ci-dessous. Merci]