Idea of progress : How does modern technology affect today’s society? Has it only positive effects?

IDEA OF PROGRESS

        I’m going to present the notion “idea of progress”, which can be defined as the question of moving on and evolving, making the world a better place by the contribution of an improvement, a technical, scientific or social advance. To illustrate this notion, I decided to focus on the new technologies that have marked the modern world and have taken an essential part in people’s day-to-day lives. Therefore, I would like to talk about Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, whose inventions particularly affect our daily life. How does modern technology affect today’s society? Has it only positive effects?

I. Steve Jobs, Apple

         Technology can, firstly, be seen as a great progress, since it allowed for instance to enhance communication, to amplifie research, or to increase the productivity of almost every industry in the world. Therefore, I decided to focus on Steve Jobs and Apple’s revolutionary products, such as iPhone or Macintosh, since they may now be seen as dictating the evolution of modern technology. In his speech at Stanford University, in 2005, Steve Jobs presented his career and how he went from rags-to-riches by innovating in his garage the first Apple’s computer, in 1976, which lead him to success and fortune. The vertiginous upward mobility of this man and his company may symbolise the rise of the new technologies. The article from the Daily Nation, about Steve Jobs, in October 2011, shows him as a visionary who changed the world. Indeed, he made computers, and more generally technology, easy to use, intuitive and thus, accessible to everyday consumers. Therefore, nowadays, Apple’s products are part of our daily life and surely, it has facilitated in a way people’s life.

II. Jeff Bezos, Amazon

        However, the evolution of modern technology has also many disadvantages and, I’d like to focus on a second part, on some of those disadvantages by presenting Amazon, and online shopping, another innovation allowed by the evolution of technology. Amazon is an american multinational technology company, founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and known as the largest online market. This company was initially only an online bookshop, but, as illustrated in the documentary “Amazon Revolution: The Jeff Bezos Story!”, its ambition now extends much further than that. The main advantages of this company are that it allowed customers to have a large range of products and to be able to buy anything at any time and any place. Therefore, online shopping can be considered as a progress. But the documentary raised a great disadvantage of online shopping. Indeed, Amazon, but also the others online shopping, are slowly breaking down the competition, and may destroy local services and stores, and therefore the communication between customers and sellers. This raised another significant disadvantage of the evolution of technology. Even though it may, on the one hand, allow to communicate more easily with the people who are fare from us, it can also lead, on the other hand, to a lack of communication with the one who are next to us, making us unable to share moments with people around us.

To conclude, in my opinion, the invention of the technological tools, Internet, and all the new means of communication which result from it, may be considered as a huge progress since it makes communication, shopping, or research for example easier for the everyday consumers. However, it may cause new social problems and may have some negative effects.

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