I’m going to talk about the idea of progress. First of all I would like to give a definition of this notion : the idea of progress is the theory that the different advances in technology, science, and social organization can produce an improvement in the human condition. That is, people can become happier in terms of quality of life (social progress) through economic development (modernization) and the application of science and technology (scientific progress).
Progress implies change and evolution and throughout history most advances have been positive.
However the rythm of progress seems to have accelerated over the last few decades and the technological breakthrough and scientific developments are causing some people to question this progress. Should we fear progress ?
To answer this question I will present three documents.
The first document I have choosen is an excerpt from “O brave new world” by Aldous Huxley. O brave new world is a dystopian novel which anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleeplearning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that combine profoundly to change society. The extract is about reproductive technology.
The D.H.C (Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning) is talking about the Bokanovsky’s Progress to a group of students. Humans grow in incubators. Before this progress, they only grew one by one in incubator but with a bokanovskyfied egg it’s possible to make 96 humans grow. Later in the excerpt he explains that these 96 persons will be twins and will work on identical machines. There will be millions of identicals twins. In this world the principle of mass production is applied to biology.
To sum up, it’s a totalitarian society where we are all standardized clone with a predestined future you can’t escape because you’re conditioned for it.
It shows us that if we apply the mass productive system to biology it will remove your individual liberty.
It proves too that some kind of social progress should be feared because it’s in the perspective of a better social stability that this progress is established, if we refer to lines 37 to 40 “You really know where you are. For the first time in history.” “Community, Identity, Stability.” “If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved.”
We have already made some progress in biology which has already lead us to wonder.
This second document is the cover of the magazine “Newsweek”. The title says “Girl or Boy ? Now you can choose but should you ? The new science of sex selection” with in the background the picture of two babies, one with a blue nappy other a pink one, so, we can guess it’s a boy and a girl to illustrate the question of sex selection.
Choosing the gender of your child isn’t “dangerous” as the last example but should we ?
We could say in the favor of the gender selection that it would provide a gender balance to families who are made up of a disproportionate number of children of one particular sex. In other countries, where cultural practices and perceptions dictate a preference for producing males, it may help to prevent the prevalence of abortion or infanticide of female babies.
But, while offering a choice may work to balance out families, sex selection, it has been argued, also has the potential to develop a gender imbalance on a much wider scale. There is also a concern that by employing this practise as a society we would be creating a generation of “designer babies” that is, beyond sex selection, once the technology is made readily available, it could result in the production of

babies with preferred physiological characteristics.
The relationship between O brave new world and the cover of the Newsweek is the question of the biology progress. At which point should we begin to be afraid of those biological progress ? How is it possible in O brave new world that people agreed with this kind of society ?
In the last document we will deal with another kind of progress that could be feared. This document is entitled “ three laws of robotics ” written by Isaac Asimov. He wrote the three laws of robotics in a robot story entitled Runaround. These laws are invented to protect humanity from robots. We would see here an application to future technology. Robots and artificial intelligences do not inherently contain or obey the three laws; their human creators must choose to program them in, and devise a means to do so.
Robots already exist that are too simple to undestand when they’re causing pain or injury and know to stop. Many are constructed with physical safeguards such as bumpers, warning beepers, safety cages, or restricted-access zones to prevent accidents. Even the most complex robots currently produced are incapble of understanding and applying tge 3 laws. Significant advances in artificial intelligence would be needed to do so, and even if AI could reach human-level intelligence, the inherent ethical complexity as well as cultural/contextual dependency of the laws prevent them from being a good candidate to formulate robotics designs constraints. However, as the complexity of robots has increased, so has the interest in developing guide lines and safegueards for their operation.
In all three documents, the idea put forward is we should fear progress if it goes too far without being entirely under control and if it does not touch at our individual liberty and safety. It is important that we are aware of the dangers.
We can also relate the document “O brave new world” and “girl or boy ?” to the notion places and forms of power. Indeed the document “girl or boy ?” opens the debate about abortion and infanticide of female babies in India, if it becomes possible it will create a most important disproportion between the number of girls and boys.