Notion Anglais Idea of Progress: science fiction and new technologies

The notion I am going to deal with is « The idea of progress ». To begin with, the idea of progress can be defined as an improvement, a development or a change. It can be a technical, scientific or social advance which contributes to making the world a better place. To illustrate my notion, I will talk about the science fiction. So we may wonder what the link between sci-fi and new technologies is. We will see first what is exactly science fiction, then today’s possibilities thanks to sci-fi and finally the ethical issue.

1. First of all, I will try to give a good definition of what science fiction is.

• Sci-fi is the literature of the human species and suggests questions like “what if?”. It explores possibilities of technologies which could be created in the future. It is called sometimes the “literature of ideas”.
• We can’t confound Sci-fi with fantasy because it’s two different types of literature. Fantasy uses magical and unreal things whereas Sci-fi doesn’t. In sci-fi, everything is or could be real, while in fantasy, there is a magical part. For example, Star wars is Sci-fi because it uses some new technologies which don’t exist yet in our world; Harry Potter deals with fantasy because there is a part of magic.
• A good science fiction needs to explore the human condition. It imagines strange challenges and opportunities to develop the human nature. It presents characters very similar to human beings to compare and question ourselves about our condition.

1. Secondly, inventions are now possible thanks to Sci-fi.

• Some old Sci-fi presented some breakthroughs or invention which is now created. For example, in his book “from the earth to the moon”, Jules Verne relates the trip into the space and on the moon, one century later, America send 3 men to the moon with Neil Armstrong. This fact shows that impossible things in people’s mind are now able to be created thanks to technologies.
• On the contrary, most of inventions evoked in Sci-fi remain impossible to create such as the invisibility cloak in Harry Potter, it is impossible to make things or people disappear. Also the time machine in the movie “back to the future” is impossible because nobody can travel into the time.

1. Finally, new technologies raise ethical issues

• History is full of progress and evolution that have allowed the world to be what it is today. Technologies like artificial intelligence present many advantages for society to make our conditions of life better. For example, AI is a big step in medical advancement because science is now able to fix out diseases and to succeed important surgeries that doctors couldn’t fix in the past. It permits to treat and to diagnose better the patients.
• There are some reasons to be afraid of progress especially in the robotic field. Indeed robots and machines become more and more intelligent. In other words, they could get out of control. We saw in the audio document that thanks to AI, new military robots are weapons programmed to kill without human control. They have the ability to make decisions themselves.

Conclusion : Sci-fi gives ideas to new technologies because it shows a world with a lot of future technologies and aspects but it raises a new question: should we fear our technologies?

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