Progrès social et technologique (en anglais)

Progress is a term that covers a multitude of issues whether they be social or technological, artistic or domestic. But perhaps the interpretation which preoccupies us the most is the progress in technology which has revolutionalised our everyday lives. We are confronted with these changes on a daily basis and have perhaps witnessed more changes in the last 20 years than our ancestors did in over 200!

It is fair to say that every aspect of our lives is affected by technology. Let us consider then, the way in which it affects the average person on the street. In a first instance regarding the domestic sphere and home life followed by the ever increasing resources available for education and learning, before finally assessing the changes in personal relationships and communication.

So, our home lives and the time shared between housework and leisure is perhaps one of the most noteworthy changes in our everyday lives. We studied a document from The Guardian in class that explained how domestic appliances have changed the way we spend our time. In fact, I think it is safe to say that in the last 50 years we have significantly reduced the time spent doing chores thanks to labour-saving devices such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines. Indeed we have much more time available for professional and leisure activities. Taking this idea further and towards another aspect of progress, these devices have also changed the role of women in society. They have more time available to do other, more enjoyable things than housework! You would think, logically, that this would include spending time with their friends and families but often this is not the case.

Moving on then, to our personal lives, technology has fundamentally changed our relationships and the way we communicate with others. More and more people tend to send a text message rather than pick up the phone to call a friend. We can keep up to date with old and new friends on their facebook or twitter pages rather than actually meeting up to talk face to face. Indeed, the increasing use of technology is reducing the instances of contact with others: we are spending more time with our virtual relationships than real-life ones. Of course the danger with this is we never know how much truth there is in the information we read about people. Privacy and information exchanged on the internet is indeed a burning issue at the moment. Many people put details and information onto blogs or other websites without thinking about who will be able to read them. Blogs that replace diaries and online chat rooms that replace cafés open up our lives up to the rest of the world in a very worrying way.

Another major concern then is the access to information presented by technological progress. A high school student for instance who no more than 20 years ago would have researched papers in a library and no doubt reached for an encyclopedia or a dictionary as a means of reference material can now access all this information at the touch of a button from almost any location. The amount of information available is nothing short of overwhelming. In fact, research no longer consists in finding the information but instead in sorting through it. With the quantity of information available on the internet it is often difficult to judge how reliable it is. In March 2012, a French teacher was in the news describing how he tricked his students into showing how little they knew about

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