Et si le progrès nous laissait plus de place ?

What if progress gave us more space?

Imagine a tool that gives you an hour back in your day. What would you like to use it for? To create, to learn, to walk, to meet someone? Your answer might say more about the progress you desire than the power of the tool itself.

A new development often invites us to look at what it can do: go faster, produce more, solve a previously intractable problem.

These possibilities deserve our curiosity. But they open up another question: what place do we want them to have in our lives?

Start with what matters

Let's take a simple situation: you're preparing a personal project. A tool helps you organize your ideas and gives you more time to complete it. In this case, its speed serves a specific desire.

Now imagine that every minute gained is immediately filled with a new task. The result is different: your day becomes denser, without necessarily allowing more room for what matters to you.

These are two scenarios, not a general rule. However, they allow us to establish a useful criterion: what specifically does this innovation improve, and for whom?

The answer can be modest: a more accessible process, less arduous work, time to understand, or the pleasure of making something oneself.

Progress is not only measured by what a tool accelerates, but also by what it allows us to rediscover.

With AI, preserve a place for judgment

Delegating a task can be a choice. Maintaining control over another can be just as much of one.

You might want help classifying your notes, while still wanting to write a letter yourself. You might ask for ideas for a drawing, then seek your own style. The key is to know what you expect from the tool and what you want to continue doing yourself.

This reflection goes beyond individual preferences. The UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, adopted in 2021, notably includes human responsibility, fairness, and system oversight among its principles. It proposes a framework for collective choices; it does not demonstrate that all uses of AI are beneficial.

Our choices also depend on the accessible tools, their design, and the rules set by companies and institutions. The responsibility for progress therefore does not rest solely with the user.

Also consider what a tool mobilizes

A digital service relies on equipment and energy. The Energy and AI report from the International Energy Agency examines both the electricity needs of data centers and the potential uses of AI in the energy sector.

Evaluating an innovation thus requires looking at its usefulness, but also the resources needed, its lifespan, and what happens to it when it is no longer used.

Reading diagram

  1. Tool
  2. Use
  3. Mobilized resources
  4. End of life

Nature can fuel this research. Scientists have, for example, experimented with a printed circuit board substrate derived from lignocellulose nanofibrils. This is an experimental demonstrator, not proof that an entire device would be compostable.

This type of exploration interests us at ARBOR3S: observing living things, understanding a technical possibility, and questioning what it could change—without assuming that a natural origin alone guarantees a better environmental footprint.

Three questions for looking ahead

This Journal opens with three questions:

  1. What does this new development allow us to do that truly matters?
  2. What do we want to preserve by adopting it?
  3. What resources and consequences need to be considered?

The next articles will explore concrete encounters between nature and technology, starting with materials derived from trees. With evidence, limitations, and room for your questions.

And you, what task would you like to delegate to gain time—and what would you do with it?

ARBOR3S — Science. Spirit. Style.

Giving form to the idea

At ARBOR3S, the encounter between nature, technology, and creation extends to objects where roots meet circuits.

Discover ARBOR3S creations

Sources and further reading
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