The idea of progress

The notion I am going to deal with is the idea of progress. To begin with, I would like to give a
definition of the notion. Progress is steady evolution of the world towards a better stage in terms
of science, technologies, art and equality of life. In short, progress can be defined as any kind of
an improvement or development. It can’t be denied that the development in technology, science
and medicine are definitely improving our lives. Nowadays, technologies, for example, are
omnipresent in our life and thanks to advances in science and medicine, the quality of life has
become better.
In relation to the notion I have chosen to talk about genetic engineering and robots as two
important manifestations of scientific progress.

The first document I will cite is entitled “From Gattaca to Los Angeles”. It is a CBS News Report
about the embryo screening procedure which was used to identify embryos that carried serious
often fatal genetic diseases. The report shows that this procedure is now used to help couples
choose the sex of their baby and its features. This technique is called Pre implantation genetic
Diagnosis (PGD). I find this report shocking because it shows that science has no limits. I have
also read an article published in ‘’USA today’’ in 2010 . It is about a girl called Molly Nash who
had been saved by her brother Adam.
She had a rare illness and she was destined to die before the age of 7. So, her parents decided to
turn to PGD. Thanks to PGD, Adam was an ideal bone marrow donor for his sister and hence they
were able to cure Molly. She was the first child cured through PGD.

The second document that illustrates the notion is entitled “Man vs Machine”. It is an article taken
from The Huffington Post that was published on February 11 th 2011. It is about a gigantic
computer called Watson that participates in the famous game TV Show “Jeopardy” and beating
two chess champions. Watson victory’s was considered as fantastic breakthrough because nobody
expected a machine to outwit humans. At the time of its invention, it could only do simple
calculations of mathematics. Then it quickly evolved, beating champions of chess, until becoming
Watson, an unmatched TV player. The invention of Watson 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,
it can’t “decide to create”, so creativity is a pure human skill. Also, it cannot feel neither pride nor
empathy, or even fear. But Watson is not just a "trivia whiz", it is “changing the way people think
about artificial intelligence”. In short, regardless of the shortcomings of Watson, it remains a
testament to the fact that advances in technology are just boundless. This demonstrates the
boundlessness of progress in the field of technology.

To conclude we can say that progress is positive and has brought great advancements to the
standard of living but it has also come along with drawbacks which can destroy humanity.
As far as I am concerned, progress is unstoppable with its pros and cons and we need it to improve
our daily lives but we have to know how and when to make use of it .