Oral d'anglais: idea of progess

Sujet du devoir

Bonjour ! Je passe mon bac avec le cned et j'aurais besoin qu'on me dise si mon texte pour mon oral est bien ou si il y a une autre méthode à adopter, des changements à faire...

Merci énormément de votre aide !

INTRODUCTION:

I’m going to talk about the notion of progress. To begin with, I would like to give a definition of progress. So, Progress is an evolution, a change towards betterment. It can either be social, technical, or scientific, and contributes towards making the world a better place. These advances are often the subject of concern as to its possible consequences.

In relation with the notion, the subject of my presentation will be technological advances, from fiction to reality. The following question may be raised is:  should we fear progress, or whether should we be reassured by technological advances? To answer this question I will present three documents “Man VS machine”, “O brave world” and finally “From Gattaca to Los Angeles”.

PARTIE 1:

Fist, scientific techniques go farther and farther and sometimes even go beyond fiction. Indeed, in this article of the Huffington Post dating from February 17, 2011, it speaks of a computer called Watson. He participates in a game TV show called "Jeopardy". At the time of his invention, he could only do simple calculations of mathematics. Then he quickly evolved, beating champions of chess, until becoming Watson, a TV player like no other! He is described as a real feat by experts in the field of technology. But there are things that Watson can’t do, unlike humans. For example, he can’t “decide to create” (l.22), this is an essential point since it is dependent on man. He cannot feel either pride (l.35) or empathy, or even fear or adrenaline (l.37). But Watson is not just a "trivia whiz", he's “changing the way people think about artificial intelligence” (l.61). Watson’s victory was hailed as a fantastic breakthrough into the field of artificial intelligence as nobody expected a machine to outwit very cleaver human players.

The fact that computers become smarter can be quite scary… If computers keep getting smarter, there might come a moment when they are capable of competing with human intelligence, and getting beyond our control. From another point of view, if we manage to control this technology, the power available will allow us to progress in so many different fields, and solve many of the world’s problems

 PARTIE 2:

In a second step, we will speak of a text entitled "O brave new world". The story takes place in London’s Hatchery and Conditioning center, in 2495. Unlike the previous text, this one is a fiction, a projection into a probable future. In this scene, the director visits the hatchery to students. Here, human eggs are incubated, then forced to divide and multiply, and finally grow into embryos. Normally, human egg produces one embryo which produces one adult, it’s the “adult-normality”. But with the “Bokanovsky process”, one egg produces eight to ninety-six buds which produce eight to ninety-six adults. Therefore, for the director, progress is being able to create ninety-six humans, so being able to clone human beings. He calls the normal development of the human race "the old viviparous days" (l.25), women’s eggs could accidentally produce twins or even triplets but nothing more. But why want he so many identical individuals? Because they can to work on eighteen identical machines. The doctor concludes that if we could “bokanovskify” indefinitely, the whole problem would be solved. The words “social stability” are repeated three times and it is whatever may disrupt “social stability” that seems to be the problem that the Director is obsessed with. In the context of the 1930’s when the story was written, any political activism (anarchism, socialism, communism…) that threatened to disrupt the prevalent social order was considered a danger by conservatives and traditionalists. By cloning people, he aims to make conformity the norm and solve the problem of nonconformity. The Director’s obsession with order and stability prefigures that of the Nazi and fascist regimes in Europe.

The 1930’s were a time of great social and political turmoil. The fascist and nazi regimes were on the rise and promoted a rigidly enforced social and cultural order based upon these same values. They led to the genocide of millions. Aldous Huxley wished to write a cautionary tale, a warning. By anticipating the politics of eugenics (the science of improving a population by the selection and reproduction of desired traits; the implementation of eugenics to humans led to the Holocaust), he wished to draw people’s attention to the risks of science in the service of authoritarian regimes.

PARTIE 3:

The last document is titled "From Gattaca to Los Angeles". It's an interview between a journalist, a mother and two doctors. This mother has three boys and would love to have a daughter. She turned to a specialized center to choose the sex of her child. Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg defends this practice and believes it is legitimate to leave the choice to families. On the contrary, Dr. Mark Hughes thinks that this method is to be used only for medical purposes. It is a question of the Los Angles Fertility Institutes. It proposes gender selection to couples who want to “balance their families”… This is made possible with the embryo screaming technology called PGD: pre-implantation genetic diagnosis… Not all doctors agree with this type of gene manipulation. Dr Mark Hughes, the man who pioneered the procedure ten years ago, is totally opposed to sex selection. For him, the goal of PDG is to eliminate diseases. For him, gender is not a disease.

While some of the arguments offered by some parents are comprehensible, I believe medical science should focus on curing sickness and relieving suffering. This is no longer medicine but big business open to the select and wealthy few. There are so many orphans waiting to go to good and loving families that it seems irresponsible and even a bit selfish to go for other solutions. Moreover, being able to choose the sex of a child is quite frightening since there could be a real imbalance between women and men, knowing that it many countries, families only want boy, such as in China or in India.

CONCLUSION:

To conclude, we have seen through his documents that we are in a world in constant change and that is constantly progressing. The fact is that the human being always wants to try to go beyond his limits and go beyond the limits of nature. We know thanks to the past of the world in which we live that the human being is capable of the best as well as the worst, and that is why some progress can be frightening, if they come to fall in the wrong hands. In addition, some progress is not necessarily positive. Indeed, some progress can lead to very violent wars, with the use of the atomic mask during the World War II for example. However, progress is what allows us to live longer, to improve our comfort and to be able to learn more about our world. By mastering our inventions, we can exploit the positive side of progress. This is why some people like Aldous Huxley (second document) warn about our inventions which can sometimes go way too far. So I think there is no fear of progress as long as it is controlled by supposed people. I also think that there are things that it is better not to try to invent, at the risk of going beyond the limits and not to control anything anymore, especially if his things are available to all. I am talking about flying cars or the cloning of human beings.

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