The Idea Of Progress

        The Idea Of Progress

Introduction

The notion I'm going to introduce you and deal with is the notion of progress. To begin with, let me define what progress is: it's a theory that different advances in technology, science and social organization can produce an improvement in the human conditions. During this presentation, I will focus on the technological advances, in healthcare especially, and the place that technology took in our lifes for almost 50 years now.

1. Progress in healthcare.

→ The future of healthcare : According to some of the best doctors of the world like Daniel Kraft, healthcare will be radically changed in a few years. There is a lot of applications that will see the day soon such as:

• Implants that will release a drug dose whenever required.
• 3D printers to print pills/tablets tailored for the patient from home.
• Drugs delivery made by drones in remote areas or conflict zones.
• Also, virtual reality is part of it too with for example burned victims being virtually transported to a snow-coated moutain top as a pain therapy.

As you can see, patients will soon be able to cure their disease by themselves (after a first visit to an hospital indeed) without needing to come to a clinic once a month. But that stirs up some questions.

→ Are we losing human contact? : With the possibility to cure ourself from home, how will we see other people? I think that this is not a solution, we need that human contact otherwise we'll fall into depression being alone all the time, especially for aged people.

→ How far are we going to go? : Of course our life expectancy will be increased by a huge amount but isn't that the heart of the problem? If we can be cured from all the diseases, will we ever die? So, we're going towards immortality and so on, towards an overcrowded Earth; which will be in fact the end of the Humanity. Our planet wouldn't have enough ressources for everyone, plus we cannot fully apreciate an eternal life; where would be the pleasure if we can report everything to tomorrow and if we don't have a limited time to do such things as travelling the world and fall in love with someone.

        II)        The place of technology in society, in our lifes.

You surely noticed it, technology took a big place in our society for nearly 50 years. But since the 2000s, technological advances have become more and more innovative and widespread all around the world. For example:

• The advances in mobile technology with Apple and Android (Samsung especially).
• The transformation of the Internet as Google, Wikipedia, Youtube and social networks are now essential in our lifes. Like, how many times a day do you go on the web to check your Facebook notifications or on Youtube to hear a song or watch a video ? Personnaly, I use to go a lot on Youtube to listen to plenty of songs.
• Finally, we cannot miss the evolution of the gaming experience and the improvement of game consoles. They are getting more and more sophisticated to recognize our movements, hear our voice, and now virtual reality is improving faster than ever with such things as Oculus Rift or Sony Playstation VR.

All this sounds pretty awesome isn't it ? But again, is that a real improvement? I mean, before when we wanted to have fun, we were going outside playing football with friends; now kids have fun playing FIFA inside on a screen. Let's take a personnal example: when my little cousin and my little brother play together, most of the time they play at video games instead of going in the garden. Times have changed a lot and AI took a really big place in our lifes. Could we live today without technology? Probably not as a lot of people cannot live a day without their phones or without checking social networks. So that may look incredible but isn't the film Matrix becoming reality? A world where AI took control of humanity and where we are born in a virtual world with only one purpose, feeding the machines.

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