Issue88 【六人作文小组】第2周第1次作业

levinshireUID: 2559564

TOPIC: ISSUE88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."
WORDS: 505          TIME: 2:02:11          DATE: 2009-1-15

提纲：
技术影响生活，但不决定社会风俗和伦理道德规范
1.技术进步极大改变人们生活方式，一定程度影响custom和ethic。例：工业革命，女性地位提高。
2.但是custom和ethic都是历史积累产生的，体现人的意愿。例如，技术水平差不多的两个国家，风俗可能大相径庭。
3.技术只是为社会传统的变化提供条件。例，火药对于中国和欧洲。

As to the debate of what role technologies play in the development of human society, some technological determinists may claim that it is technologies that determine the social customs and ethics. While the fact is true that development of technologies has greatly changed people's life, and this change is especially significant in recent centuries. However, technologies alone are far from enough to determine social customs and ethics.

Admittedly, it is an obviously fact that technological improvement has brought about great changes to human being's way of life, and as a consequence influenced the social customs and ethics. Plenty of examples illustrate this kind of influence in the process of human history, for behind almost every important social change of customs and ethics, there lays a relevant technological innovation to back up. The invention of steam engine leading to Industrial Revolution completely changed the way of production, which made it possible for women to join in the work in manufacturing, and finally inspired the women liberation movement to create a society with higher social status for women. From the very essential, social customs and ethics are created to make human beings to live better under the existing living conditions. When technologies change, the living conditions change, and customs and ethics also make some adjustment to match the changing conditions. From that point of view, technologies influence the customs and ethics.

But social customs and ethics are more likely to be determined by people's mind, passing down from history, reflecting the subjective willingness of human beings. A nation's characteristics, spirits, experiences, important events, or even great figures are the real factors to determine the customs and ethics. Indeed, every custom or ethic has its own story. Take a comparison between any two countries in the world with similar land size, population scale, and technological level, we will hardly find that their customs and ethics are exactly the same. That's because even if they have identical technologies----identical machines, factories, vehicles, telephones----they have different people, and different histories.

In fact, technologies only act as necessary conditions for the social changes in customs and ethics. Only when the society is in the eager to change itself, technology could offer a help to push forward. Take the using of gunpowder in China and Europe for example. Although as the inventor, China had put gunpowder into military use for a much longer time, it is a Modern West Europe that gunpowder finally created, while China stayed still in the traditional society until the invasion of the outside world. If technologies really determine social customs and ethics, a Modern China should be expected to appear first. The evolution of society needs various social elements to work together. Technology alone will never be enough.

To sum up, technologies do play important part in influencing the social customs and ethics. However, influencing could not be equaled to determining. Every society's customs and ethics are determined by its own special characteristics and history. Technology is only a necessary condition in the determining process.




[ 本帖最后由 levinshire 于 2009-1-15 02:04 编辑 ]