【1010G精英组】ISSUE88 B组回收站

weaselUID: 2739489

28日13点

youngstoneUID: 2670818

With the advent of technologies in our daily life, what we believe was true before may be not be true any longer and what we used to do may not appeal to us any more. Social customs and ethics are, with our doubt, influenced by technologies. Actually, there are quite some non-neglected distinction between customs and ethics. We can find many examples in which technologies decide social customs. However, rare conditions are found that social ethics can be decided.

Technologies can influence and even decide customs because of the characteristics of customs. Being easily influenced by outer conditions, social customs develop without the change the development of the society. There are many cases that people would not have the ceremonies and celebrations in the past because the information and communication technologies develop too fast. For example, in ancient times when the communication methods are not as convenient as it is today, people may have get-togethers in their home to talk and communicate with their relatives. Yet many of these get-togethers disappeared because people have a myriad of ways to communicate such as e-mail and chat on line.
Technologies make the impossible in the past possible and machines have taken place much of the work that can be done manually in the past, which leads to the change of roles people play in the society. For example, women always work at home and cannot get access to the core work, largely because women are vulnerable than men and cannot accomplish some dangerous work or some work that entails power. As a result, women’s low status in the society can be attributed to their failure to get access to productive work. But technologies have great impact on the conditions because the advent of all kinds of machines have take place many work that can only be finished manually. Then women’s disadvantages in finishing this kind of work do not exist, and women become more and more important in the society and hundreds of thousands women’s role have transferred from housewives to a person whose ideas can have great influence on others. Then the customs that women are more apt to stay at home have changed.

When it comes to ethics, the conditions are quite different from the social customs. The reasons are as follows. Firstly, social ethics have formed with the process of history development and are in accord with the principles of history development. The formation of ethics has little bearing on the development of technology and as a result, technology will influence but not determine ethics. The ethics are the basic rules and foundations of the society while technologies are only tools used by people to solve their problems or to make their life more convenient and comfortable. That’s why human cloning is forbidden, even with the nowadays’ technologies it is not that difficult. The ethics are something we should always cling to, not determined by any new technologies. Another example is the world’s first artificial life in the US, which leads to ethical discussions and most people believe careful assessment of the probably result of the technologies should be carried out.

Technologies can be either excellent or evil. The advent of technologies influences social customs and ethics to some extent. Though not much, some customs can even be determined by technologies due to the characteristics of customs, which depends on country, culture, time, and religion. The technologies can change the culture and outer circumstances and it is necessary they will determine some of the customs. While ethics concerns moral is a definition of what is right and what is wrong. Technologies, no matter how great impact they have on ethics, are far from determining them.

weaselUID: 2739489

考试太多，草草补了中间的段子，还有最后一个星期

I agree with the speaker’s claim that technology influences our social customs and ethics to some extent, while I maintain suspicion about the overstatement that technology actually determine our customs and ethics. Technology is the outcome of highly developed productivity which has just existed for 200 years while customs and ethics are the outcome of human society which emerges simultaneously with the civilized human society. They coexist, integrate and act as a positive factor to promote each other.

The development of technology infuses into every moment and every corner of our life, which unconsciously influence our thoughts, moral standard and value system. First we can see, the communication methods between people are changing from the letters in old times to short message or e-mail nowadays……. The technological development   gives the morality standard more tolerance which in turn, allows more liberty and alternation to our modern people………. Moreover, ample technological production not only considerably satisfies the human’s physiological need, but also brings the prosperity of spiritual civilization which also influences social customs and ethics to a large extent.  

However, the technology is merely the material satisfaction which cannot replace the spiritual satisfaction brought by customs and ethics. The system of customs and ethics has experienced a long process from initiation, modification, replenishment, development till to mature. It is formed by the subjective thoughts and value system of our ancestors which definitely cannot be determined by technology.

It is not only that technology influences the customs and ethics, but also customs and ethics, in turn, influence and standardize the development of technology. Based on the goals that technological advancements bring convenience and better quality to our lives, technology should also be constricted from excessive development which would perhaps lead to social chaos and ethical hazard. For example, the clone technology………..

In a word, no matter how advanced technology is developed, it should serve to benefit human beings rather than loss of humanity.

钱钱去米国UID: 2761990

Can technologies influence even determine social customs and ethics? Partly, I agree with the author’s view that technologies can influence social customs and ethics. But I don’t consent that the technologies can determine social customs and ethics. Social customs and ethics are mainly determined by the social culture and influenced by many factors including technologies.

Certainly, technologies influence social customs and ethics, as it can change people’s mind of the society and their awareness of social problems. Technologies influence social customs by change the way of people living. For instance, nowadays people usually sent e-mail to communicate with others, while people used to write letters in 20th century. And in the early times, consanguineous marriage is very popular in some regions which also can be seen as a custom of these regions, but with the development of technologies people recognize that it is detrimental for the prenatal and postnatal and this custom was no longer exists. Besides, technologies can affect the social moral indeed. As the new things come out with the technology developing, these new things may challenge the existing moral of human beings. Such as human cloning, artificial lives, which occur with advances in technologies and cause great issues in today’s human’s ethics

However, technologies can not determine the social custom, which actually is mainly determined by this society’s culture development. Technology can influence social culture, thereby affecting social traditions and customs, but technology is not the decisive factor of the social custom change. Such as consanguineous marriage, it did not happen in every area in the past, nor did it exist in every culture. Some of these communities was no consanguineous marriage is not because of their technical understanding of its shortcomings, but of their culture that worked. Besides, many countries even now is not opposed to consanguineous marriage, because some of they hold the view that it is people’s freedom to get marry with anyone they love no matter they have blood ties or not. From this we can find that although the technologies develop without the change of a society’s culture, the social customs may hard to change.

Besides, the technologies cannot determine the social moral at the same time. As a society’s ethics is a response of its culture, it is its own culture that shapes the ethics and moral of one society and the social ethics change with its culture. As different regions have different culture, they do not have different social moral, nor for the technologies which may be all the same while especially with did the more and more closely link of the whole world. For instance, in some area, people is polygamy, such as for some people in mid east, each men can have four wives and most of them may actually have more than these. In many people’s eyes this seems to be unmoral, at least they cannot accept it when it comes to them especially for most of the women. This may conflict with people’s ethics and for some feminists this is really an insult to women. But that can not be determined due to technical reasons, people can not say because of their advanced technology and therefore they are monogamous. It can only be said to be cultural reasons

To sum up, the technologies can influence social customs and morals. Because they can change people’s way of life, especially living materials. But it can hard to determine social customs and morals which mainly shaped by the culture of a society.