88"Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."
Living in such a complex and amazing era of information explosion caused by technology development, we can not deny the technologies such as long distance communication or space science have influenced on our life intensively. However, is it true as the speaker asserted that technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics? As far as I am concerned, though I should still contend that technology can not determine our own customs and ethics, I agree with the speaker on the extent of technology's noticeable influencing effect on them.
On one hand, it is easy for us to find out influences of technology at a glance at our own lives. Mass media and the telecommunications have developed at a tremendous pace over the past decade, Electronic mail has become nearly an exclusive form of communication for some people, satellites and an increasingly wired worldwide community allow for video conferencing and instantaneous communication all over the globe. New tech-oriented life has been appreciated and adopted by people. Due to the new inventions, now majority of People are no longer insist the old style of life. For example, the telephone and new traveling approach have changed people's view on traveling and communication. Thus view on the structure of a family has changed since apart is no longer a big problem, and cross-race marriage, which once was considered as wired in people's old ethic standard, is becoming more and more frequently nowadays. Besides, through the cross-culture communication, people can understand alien customs and ethics better than before. In the past, some ethics and social customs advocate hostile attitude towards other cultures for the sake of unfamiliarity, but thanks to the globalization, such conservative ethics are becoming less popular in some parts of the world.
One the other hand, while underlining the great power of technology, many people overlook the power of ourselves. Ultimately, all the technologies are invented or developed by human beings. The aim of technology is to improve the living condition of humans rather than decide the living styles. Customs and ethics, as parts of living styles, are not decided by technology, but decided by people’s choice. The technologies change rapidly, but the customs and ethics change slowly yet peacefully because people should think prudently when make such a decision. In other word, it is the people themselves who decide whether change their customs, or when to change them, not the technologies.
In addition, it is through the interaction between technology and human mind that the customs and ethics can have some meaningful changes. People should not abandon their right to decide their own life styles. If people stop thinking carefully, it is possible that changes on customs may damage the old values people relied upon. And at the same time, fails to provide a good new ethics or standard for them to follow. The so called “Lost Generation” is a example of the failure.
To sum up, technologies are influential factors for social reformation that affect all ranks. Hence it can also inevitably influences customs and ethics. Nevertheless, technologies can not decide the changing of them since people should be the master of themselves. It should be pointed clearly that only through careful thinking by people, the changing on customs and ethics can have a good result.