Third proposing speech
Ladies and gentlemen thank you for following this debate and taking time to read us today. This is the last proposing speech so I will try to sum up the different ideas that came up until now and to pick up the most interesting point to remember about this very interesting motion.
The main clash point appeared really early in the debate, at the very beginning of the introducing speeches. It is an argument about the definition of one of the major words of the motion, which is “slave”. According to the opposers there can be no link at all between dependence and slavery. […]
by AL
Ladies and gentlemen thank you for following this debate and taking time to read us today. This is the last proposing speech so I will try to sum up the different ideas that came up until now and to pick up the most interesting point to remember about this very interesting motion.
The main clash point appeared really early in the debate, at the very beginning of the introducing speeches. It is an argument about the definition of one of the major words of the motion, which is “slave”. According to the opposers there can be no link at all between dependence and slavery. […]
by AL
Third opposing speech
Ladies and gentlemen, my partners proved you that only fearful or irresponsible people can state that we have become slaves to technology. I would like to sum up this debate and to add some final arguments to convince you.
The main point of the proposing team was that technology has spread everywhere, and that we don’t know how to live without it. PV already answered that our reliance on technology doesn’t mean we are slaves to it. I would add that the proposer’s argument would infer we are slaves to food for example: we don’t know how to live without it, and hey, look at all obese people, how food made them its slaves! […]
by RM
Ladies and gentlemen, my partners proved you that only fearful or irresponsible people can state that we have become slaves to technology. I would like to sum up this debate and to add some final arguments to convince you.
The main point of the proposing team was that technology has spread everywhere, and that we don’t know how to live without it. PV already answered that our reliance on technology doesn’t mean we are slaves to it. I would add that the proposer’s argument would infer we are slaves to food for example: we don’t know how to live without it, and hey, look at all obese people, how food made them its slaves! […]
by RM
Third proposing speech
Ladies and gentlemen thank you for following this debate and taking time to read us today. This is the last proposing speech so I will try to sum up the different ideas that came up until now and to pick up the most interesting point to remember about this very interesting motion.
The main clash point appeared really early in the debate, at the very beginning of the introducing speeches. It is an argument about the definition of one of the major words of the motion, which is “slave”. According to the opposers there can be no link at all between dependence and slavery. But the definition you gave for slavery seems very limited to me; indeed you said a slave was, I quote, “a person who is treated as a property forced to work”, whereas to me a slave is someone who, indeed is forced to work for someone or something, but it doesn’t need a notion of property. So in my point of view, dependence, when it comes to a certain point can easily lead to slavery. And both sides agree on the fact that we are nowadays unable to live without technology. That is why we can say we are slave to technology.
We actually have to work to keep the technology in running order at every single moment. Let’s illustrate this and imagine what would happen if mankind stopped the maintenance of nuclear power plants. At best there is no accident and catastrophe, but any little change in the usual conditions would make it unable to produce electricity properly and without it what would be the human world like? You wouldn’t be able to work because elevators leading to your office wouldn’t bring you up to the twentieth floor; you wouldn’t be able to eat because you live in a building with no cheminee and no wood at your disposal and your stove wouldn’t work; and these are only a few basic examples.
Ladies and gentlemen thank you for following this debate and taking time to read us today. This is the last proposing speech so I will try to sum up the different ideas that came up until now and to pick up the most interesting point to remember about this very interesting motion.
The main clash point appeared really early in the debate, at the very beginning of the introducing speeches. It is an argument about the definition of one of the major words of the motion, which is “slave”. According to the opposers there can be no link at all between dependence and slavery. But the definition you gave for slavery seems very limited to me; indeed you said a slave was, I quote, “a person who is treated as a property forced to work”, whereas to me a slave is someone who, indeed is forced to work for someone or something, but it doesn’t need a notion of property. So in my point of view, dependence, when it comes to a certain point can easily lead to slavery. And both sides agree on the fact that we are nowadays unable to live without technology. That is why we can say we are slave to technology.
We actually have to work to keep the technology in running order at every single moment. Let’s illustrate this and imagine what would happen if mankind stopped the maintenance of nuclear power plants. At best there is no accident and catastrophe, but any little change in the usual conditions would make it unable to produce electricity properly and without it what would be the human world like? You wouldn’t be able to work because elevators leading to your office wouldn’t bring you up to the twentieth floor; you wouldn’t be able to eat because you live in a building with no cheminee and no wood at your disposal and your stove wouldn’t work; and these are only a few basic examples.
So in a way we are slaves of the technology because we can’t live without it.
Another issue that was discussed by both sides was the question of mastering the technology. According to the opposition it is impossible to say men are slaves of the technology because they control it. But as my partner said in the rebuttal speech this not true. Indeed different recent examples have shown sometimes technology can lead to unexpected consequences, such as global warming or lethal pills. And so since we don’t fully master technology, the former argument is not valuable at all. And at this point I would like to draw your attention to a part of the motion that wasn’t really discussed in the precedent speeches and which is the fact our slavery to technology is new. Indeed we used to control the technology we were using, or at least we believed we did and as I have just shown it is not anymore the case today.
Finally the issue of the freedom to choose whether or not to use technology was discussed as well. In theory it is, as the opposing team said, possible to choose when we want to use technology and when we want to turn it off. But in practice this is not true, a really simple example may be the mobile phones; nowadays you can maybe turn off your phone for a few days of vacation, but if you want to keep in business and involved in the real economic world, your have to turn it back on. That makes us more than dependent on technology and as we have explained formerly that leads us to a form of slavery.
To conclude I would just ask you to look all around you, wherever you are, and to realize how much technology is everywhere, how much we need it, and how many things we are ready to do to make it work. Who actually wouldn’t be ready to a few sacrifices in order to be able to access the Internet or just plug his phone? And this makes us slaves of technology! Thanks for reading and vote for us!
AL
Third opposing speech
Ladies and gentlemen, my partners proved you that only fearful or irresponsible people can state that we have become slaves to technology. I would like to sum up this debate and to add some final arguments to convince you.
Another issue that was discussed by both sides was the question of mastering the technology. According to the opposition it is impossible to say men are slaves of the technology because they control it. But as my partner said in the rebuttal speech this not true. Indeed different recent examples have shown sometimes technology can lead to unexpected consequences, such as global warming or lethal pills. And so since we don’t fully master technology, the former argument is not valuable at all. And at this point I would like to draw your attention to a part of the motion that wasn’t really discussed in the precedent speeches and which is the fact our slavery to technology is new. Indeed we used to control the technology we were using, or at least we believed we did and as I have just shown it is not anymore the case today.
Finally the issue of the freedom to choose whether or not to use technology was discussed as well. In theory it is, as the opposing team said, possible to choose when we want to use technology and when we want to turn it off. But in practice this is not true, a really simple example may be the mobile phones; nowadays you can maybe turn off your phone for a few days of vacation, but if you want to keep in business and involved in the real economic world, your have to turn it back on. That makes us more than dependent on technology and as we have explained formerly that leads us to a form of slavery.
To conclude I would just ask you to look all around you, wherever you are, and to realize how much technology is everywhere, how much we need it, and how many things we are ready to do to make it work. Who actually wouldn’t be ready to a few sacrifices in order to be able to access the Internet or just plug his phone? And this makes us slaves of technology! Thanks for reading and vote for us!
AL
Third opposing speech
Ladies and gentlemen, my partners proved you that only fearful or irresponsible people can state that we have become slaves to technology. I would like to sum up this debate and to add some final arguments to convince you.
The main point of the proposing team was that technology has spread everywhere, and that we don’t know how to live without it. PV already answered that our reliance on technology doesn’t mean we are slaves to it. I would add that the proposer’s argument would infer we are slaves to food for example: we don’t know how to live without it, and hey, look at all obese people, how food made them its slaves!
The second proposer has listed all the problems that have occurred because of technology. First of all, the consequences don’t mean that technology is using us as our slaves. Of course it is sometimes getting out of control, but the fact we did not manage to think about it properly does not allow us to consider it as a manipulative demon. When a car accident occurs, you blame either the driver or the car manufacturer, not the car itself.
Besides, when you look at everything technology has brought to us, it seems to me that we kept it fairly under control. I would not go back to eras when life expectancy was 30 years because of global warming! My point here is not that technology is good, but rather that we have mastered its consequences enough to make it work in our interest.
I would now like to go further and show you how technology has helped us to gain more freedom. The Internet has made the power of individuals bigger than ever. We can express ourselves directly and address the whole world. Its role has been crucial in the Arab spring, when demonstrators used Facebook and Twitter to get organized against dictators. Thus technology is not only making our lives more convenient, it also has an ability to emancipate.
In this debate, we heard a lot about how dependent on technology we are. We should not forget that this reliability was created by us to avoid being dependent on our condition too much. For example, we used to depend on the weather for our food. Even though the food industry is now dependent on technology, it is mastering technology much more than we used to master the weather. In the video posted by MP, Robert Harris talks about how a disaster it would be for food distribution in Britain if technology failed. He is right, but at the same time forty percent of Indian produce perishes because the main distributors are grocery stores which do not monitor the distribution on a national scale, and this national monitoring has been enabled by technology. (source)
I could argue the same for medicine. Of course sometimes we make mistakes using technology and it has dramatic consequences. But we cannot live being the slaves of the diseases we can get. Technology helps us overcome this former state when we were just observing our health ; it empowers us. To sum things up, we have chosen to diminish our global dependency by using technology. I insist on the fact that we chose technology, because it increases our overall freedom.
So, thank you for reading me and vote for us!
RM
It seems that the opposition hasn't understood the core point of the debate which is not technology is good/bad for the society, are we slaves yes or not?
ReplyDeleteSlaves mean a lack of freedom as it was said in the proposing speeches but you don't say anything about freedom, you just say why technology is good for us which ends in a no-debate rather than an exchange.
pls can u sht up
DeleteOn the contrary, we keep talking about how technology increases our freedom and how we have it under control. The good and bad consequences of technology have to be taken into account to assess these points. The proposing team did it either, and I don't blame them for it.
ReplyDelete"You don't say anything about freedom" : I wonder how you managed to make such a comment after reading my speech. Just read the last paragraph and come back...