Progress? Yes, But Towards What?

Original photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

During my short time on this earth, I’ve heard all kinds of changes being labeled as “progress.” The internet, social media… and more recently, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation (self-driving cars, home robots, etc.).

Not a day goes by without seeing someone on social media praising these technologies as inevitable parts of our future, insisting that we should embrace them wholeheartedly or be met with timed obsolescence.

Each time I come across these posts — stripped of nuance — the same questions run through my mind: Why is this person so convinced that this is progress? In what specific way is it progress?

What Is Progress?

The Meaning of the Word

After summarizing definitions I found online, progress can take two forms:

• A qualitative advancement: an improvement.Example: We’ve made progress in cooking compared to last month.
• A quantitative advancement: an increase in a desirable metric or a decrease in an undesirable one.Example: The employment rate has been improving year after year in this region.

How to Recognize Progress

For something to be considered progress, three key elements must be present:

1. An innovation — A new technology, a new possibility, a new technique…
2. A point of reference — Without something to compare against, it’s impossible to tell if there has been any movement.
3. A goal — The most important element, and sadly, the one often overlooked. Without a clearly defined objective, can we really say whether we’ve moved forward or backward? All we know is that something has changed — but in which direction?

Questioning Progress

Here are some of the issues I see with hastily calling something “progress”:

• No innovation is entirely good or bad. Every new development has side effects.
  A simple example: Social media connects people across great distances, but it has also fueled polarization, misinformation, and digital addiction.
• This label is often applied too soon. We need time to observe and gain perspective before making such a claim.
• Once something is called progress, people are more likely to accept it without questioning it. This last point is why politicians and marketers frequently use the term to make us unconsciously accept things we might otherwise resist — if only we took the time to think critically.
• Progress is not one dimentional. Once an innovation emerges, we do have agency as a society, to walk the path it proposes or to reject it and choose an alternative route.

Whenever something is presented to me as progress, I ask myself:

• In what way does this benefit society as a whole?
• Who stands to gain from this progress?
• What is the cost of this progress, and who will bear it?
• Who will regulate this progress if it is misused?
• Which other societal goals will be positively or negatively impacted?
• How will we determine if this so-called progress has caused more harm than good?
• If I imagine a world deeply influenced by this change, would I one day be proud to tell my child, my niece, or a close friend that I contributed to shaping that society?

I don’t believe we need to answer all these questions immediately. What matters is developing the awareness to avoid being swept away by blind enthusiasm just because the word “progress” is being thrown around.

I realize this might make me sound like someone resistant to change, but that’s far from the case. I believe that change and death are the only two certainties in life. I make an effort to embrace change, but I also believe it’s possible to do so while maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism and critical thinking, because not all changes are a progress. Moreover there isn’t only one possible futur. There are many, and we can choose the one we want to live in.

What do you think?