Anglais : idea of progress

The notion I’m going to deal with is the idea of progress. To start with, I’d like to give a definition of progress. The idea of progress can be defined as an improvement, a development or a change; a technological, scientific or social advance which contributes to making the world a better place. But the progress doesn’t have only bright sides. I would like to illustrate this notion through the theme of new technology and more precisely the dependence it creates. We may wonder to what extent new technology changed our social behaviour and the way we communicate.

In class we worked on several documents related to this theme. The first one is a cartoon on wich we can see a teenager surrounded by electronic devices (such as an iPod, a PSP or a cell phone). He is bound by earphones and looks mesmerized by the devices. We can clearly understand that the teenager is a tech-addict, and all these new technology has a bad effect on him. (1:05)

The second document is a commercial, which shows three different scenes. The common trait between all the scenes is that in each of them we can see a character who is tech-addicted. These characters are all facing a situation where they can’t use their devices no more. They are overreacting, and act in ridiculous, misplaced and shameful ways. That’s what makes those scenes funny, but over all, it makes us think about how we would have react if we were in there place.

The third document is an audio document. It deals with the bad behaviour developed by smartphone users. The reporter says that the smartphones are not to blame because the problem comes from our habits. Indeed some people are constantly checking their e-mails, facebook, twitter or the news and it becomes a compulsion. Finally she gives us some advices to cope with the bad habits we could have.

The fourth document is an article extracted from The Sunday Times, released on July the 7th in 2013. It’s about a “Reboot camp for geek”. A camp which is targeting high-flyers but also white collar workers who spend a lot of time in front of their screen every day. They are cut from the rest of the world for a few days and are not allowed to use any devices. Even if these camps are very popular, they don’t seem to have long-lasting effects because most of the people who get back from those camp restart using electronic devices very quickly.

The last document is a poem called “Look up” written by Gary Turk. In this poem, Gary Turk warns us against our obsession and excessive use of social networks. He says that most of the time, online friends are not real friends, they are just acquaintances. That’s why we should step away from our screens and take care of the people around us, our relatives and friends.

In conclusion, we can notice that the link between all these documents is that they deals with tech-addiction.