ISSUE 88 技术不仅仅影响而且实际上是决定了社会传统和道德规范

TOPIC: ISSUE88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."

WORDS: 455 TIME: 01:00:00 DATE: 2011-4-16 0:30:51

The development of technologies is a main power that pushes the improvement of the society. Does technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics? In response to this issue, we need to analyze the proposition comprehensively and systematically. In a sense, I agree insofar as technology influences the social customs and ethics, however, to say technology determines social customs and ethics is not objective.

First and foremost, we can see how profoundly science and technology have changed our lives as we review history. In agriculture, with the introduction of mechanizations and various technologies to promote the production of produce, the burdens of the struggle for survival were lessened. In industry, with so many technology innovations, such as the steam engine, which inaugurate the industrial revolution, people are freed from much burdensome labor.

Tele-communication tools such as telephone, fax and internet, which have increasing replaced "paper letters", have become the major means of communicating. For instance, before the 20th century, the notion that women should stay at home, nurturing children, and caring for elders was so taken as an assumption that there was significant resistance to any tentative attempts to change it. However, technology made a change in this thinking possible. This unreasonable conviction was completely changed after the industrial revolution. As a result, many women now begin resplendent careers in factories, companies, governments and the like. The role of women in society is indispensable. The ethics of human is also influenced by the technology. For instance, as the development of gene technology and the Internet, some new method of crime such as clone and hackers in the Internet appeared in our life and come up with new challenges to our ethics, which is a mark of the influence of the technology on the human ethics.

Despite the merits of the speaker's claim, however, I disagree with the statement that technologies determine social customs and ethics in virtue of the factors in two respects. For one thing, the social customs is influenced by a lot of factors which are more than technology. For another, there should be some rules that can limit the ethics of human. If we let the new technology determine the change of ethics, the result is terrible for the reason that some technologies such as clone and nuclear energy may lead to catastrophe to our life.

From the analysis made above, I commit to the optimal approach that we need to seek a balance and take an all-side consideration. Although technologies influence greatly social customs and ethics, it is not objective to say they determine all the above things. There are many factors that determine the change of social customs and ethics, which promise the healthy development of them.