La présence de la technologie dans notre société (en anglais)

I’m going to talk about the idea of progress and to start, I’d like to give a definition of this theme. So, the idea of progress, what is it ? It’s the theory according to which advances in technology, science, and social organization inevitably produce an improvment in the human condition.

To illustrate the notion, I’ve chosen two documents. The first one is a text from the BBC News which explains how new technologies are important in today’s world. And the second one is another text from the magazine Newsweek which explains, with the intervention of a professor of the Instute of Technology, how young people have become addicted to computers devices, especially their mobile phones.

To summarize briefly the first text, we learn that Indiana is the latest US state which will not require its schoolchildren to learn to write on paper and this causes some disagreements between people. Two views are possible :

Firstly, it’s the parents, the teacher and some psychologists who find that knowing how to write on paper is essential.

Secondly, it’s the state that doesn’t speak of the handwritting on its databases of learning.

So we can see that there’s a relationship between this problem and the idea of progress : Indeed, the state thinks that with new technologies, it’s more important to know how to write quickly on a keyboard than know how to write with a pen.

And this preference made by the state is justified by the second document that shows the gradual implantation of IT tools in everyday life.

In this second document, Sherry Turkle, a professor of the MIT, says that « we’re using inanimate objects to convince ourselves that even when we’re alone, we feel together ». She criticizes the teenagers who are addicts and who have no social life.

I have the feeling that we’re not addicts but it’s right that we use a lot the new technologies like smart phones, computers with skipe for example… But we are much criticized and people don’t understand that today, now, it’s a new world, a new world with new major technologies which are in constant evolution.

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