issue88 divine第十篇

DivineUID: 2650173

TOPIC: ISSUE88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."
WORDS: 494          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2009-8-8 21:00:51
The author's view that technologies actually determine social customs and ethics contains some elements of truth. After all, the modern technologies have showed huge impact on shaping our behaviors and thoughts. However,
the issue concerning customs and ethics is more complex than the author imagines. After a careful thought, one would agree that convetions and values
held by a society is hard to change. Technologies, to be more accurate, create customs and ethics instead of determine them.
Nobody would doubt that technologies, as ways for human beings to adapt the
nature and develop, have infuluenced the patterns of life. Before Industrial Revolution,  women in England are mainly kept in houses, and long distance communication is not efficient as now, if not impossible. Due to the invention
of Sewing and Steam machines, women started to work in big factories
, a  brand new experience for them; trains made a long journey possible
so traveling become a new fashion. Also, the rise of factories reshaped the
apperance of cities, and life paces become quicker than people imagined.
This example is enough to show the influence technology has on both life styles and  value systems.

Social customs and ethics, however, are pervasive ideas held by majority, and have survived the test of time. Technologies only create new
customs and ethics in introducing new ideas of life to compete with the existing ones. To illustrate this point, let's take two examples: First consider
the fastfood culture, made possible by the apply of technology into cooking,
differentiates in its eating patterns from the traditional ones. When on a traditional dinner people hold some rules known as table manners and eat with knife and fork delibrately, consumers in a fastfood restaurant eat with hands and with no regard to any manners. This "fastfood convention" is suitable in the modern society, since it saves time. However the traditional ways are not abandoned, in fact they are still practised on formal occasions and good manners are regarded as symbols for elegance as before. So the old customs
are challenged by new ones raisen by technologies, but they are not so weak
as the author assumes to face the challenge and survive.
Another example take us to ethic issues. New technologies, especially in fields such as genes adjusting, have provoked a new ethic problem:
Whether people have the right to shape themselves or even control the characters of future generations? This problem may never be thought before because in the past there was no such ability held. At that time creating people wuold be thought to be the job of God. This case shows best that technologies bring about new ethic problems with their own developments, rather than conflict with the old issues.   

To conclude, throughout the history technologies and social values have been two major forces that influented the path of mankind.  They have also greatly shaped one another. In order to create a better future, we should rely on both of them to provide us power and faith, rather than impose the interest of one on another.

495128865UID: 2663598

第一段 technologies create ethics 感觉怪怪的  社会的伦理道德的变化更应该是经过时间积累的漫长过程，用create感觉很突兀很绝对 况且之后的例子更多是一个custom层面上的 所以建议用影响较深之类的词替换

LZ文章其余的部分我还没找出可拍之处，而且行文很值得我学习呀，羡慕羡慕
有空看看https://bbs.gter.net/viewthread.php?tid=994733&extra=
by the way LZ什么时候考AW？

DivineUID: 2650173

恩，我的意思是说技术带来了更多的伦理问题，例子在倒数第二段，关于人类改造的
可能不太清楚你没看到，create这个词的确不太好，我也不知道引起了新问题该怎么说