POST 4 : THE IDEA OF PROGRESS: QUANTITY vs. QUALITY

QUALITY : Yumi the robotic conductor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1XdaCH-04A :

Robot conductor steals the show from Italy's top tenor, posted by Mint , 13 sept 2017

  Yumi is a robotic orchestral conductor. At the first sigh, these words don't match together but ABB (a swiss company specialised in technology of energy and automation)  prooves us the opposite.Without stands, this robot has learnt arm movments of Andrea Colombini, the conductor of The Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra. It makes his gestures according to the piece that the orchestra is playing.  Thanks to the elasticity of its arms  Yumi has the excat mobility as a human. Howerver, as the violonist Brad Repp says in the video there is no place for improvisation.  Indeed this video shows us a technological progress in the field of art that is paradoxical. A person has a his/her own sensibility and transmits it in doing art. This person is able to improvise, to adapt him/herselves at people, situations, changes... Besides, an orchestral conductor bring something of himself when he is playing a piece. It's always different, always a different emotion. To me, Yumi is a great step forward in robotic but we lose the quality of art to be precisely human.


QUANTITY : Women in politics, Source : Inter-Parlementary Union press reports, by Scott Bell in 2008 

This document is a diagram by Scott Bell that shows the percentage of women elected to lower house in september 2008 in eleven different coutries. It is from Inter-Parlamentary Union press reports. This diagram is quite interesting because we can see that it's not necessary developed countries that have the higher percentage of the women elected to lower house. For instance Rwanda has 55 percent whereas France has only 18,2 percent. It's true that the number of women in politics has increased since last years but we can't deny that our occidental societies are late on this side. Obviously, in terms of quantity of women in responsibility jobs we have definitely to progress. Globalized gender discrimination has to stop. Thus, with more women in politic, political  world would be more balanced.