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本帖最后由 秋尽江南 于 2010-7-20 14:59 编辑
NO. 68 Technologies not only influence butactually determing social customs and ethics.
In the past centuries, social customs have changed greatly accompanying with rapid technology development. I fundamentally agree that technologies have such a great impact on social customs that the former even determines the latter, while ethics are influenced by the turbulent changes of technologies implicitly.
Whatever else may be said, most peoplewould agree that technologies have influenced social customs in all dimensions.Consider the way people communicate. Technology has improved the efficiency ofcommunication by allowing immediate responses and offering people a broader circle of acquaintance, thus knitting the earth together. Before telephone was invented,people could only contact with each other by mail or paying a visit, which was inefficient and limited by geographical location. While telephone could help one keep in touch with only a small group of people, computer and Internetenable him/her to reach out to every corner of the world. Through submarine optical fiber cables, now people are used to chatting online and making friends within social networking systems (ie. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, to name justa few). The most impressive example may goes cyber-dating. Men and women post their personal information on websites, contact online, and try to find their life-long partners. Technology reforms the traditional way of marriage. In a not dissimilar way, movies, television, and now YouTube offer us a wide varietyof choices to entertain ourselves; bicycle, car, plane are transforming the wayof travelling. Though technologies are scold of increasing life complexity andpsychological displacement, we cannot deny the great convenience and efficiency they bring.
When it comes to ethics, they are underchallenges from technologies while they are not influenced and determined soexplicitly as social customs are. For example, in the case of medical technology, vital ethical issues must be addressed. Genetic engineering makes it possible for parents to select the gender of their child, or even “design” a child as the parents like. However, is it justifiable to select the gender ofchild? Would it be ethical for people with fertility problems to decide whichfertilized embryos get implanted and discard the rest as being the"wrong" gender? Old ethics alone cannot answer questions above. Similarly,other technologies such as nuclear power and chemical plants, can directly threaten human life. Whether a scientsit should research and develop suchtechnologies or not is worth questioning. Technologies take old ethical questions and amplify their importance. Taking the possible negative effects into account, we need new standards of safety evaluation for radical researchand protections from military or terrorist misuse and abuse. A more thorough assessment of the potential impact of new technologies is in need before they are put into operation. By applying such a assessment, ethics will influenceand regulate the development of technologies in turn.
Technologies can be both a blessing and acurse. To avoid the negative parts, social customs and ethics have to evolve along with technologies to meet the increasing complexity of technologies and make sure that the innovations benefit all sectors of society. |
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