Issue88 [Shining Sep]作文组 第一次作业

MagicGlaiveUID: 2112081

TOPIC: ISSUE88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."
WORDS: 517          TIME: 1:42:15          DATE: 2006-8-15

提纲：
1.        举出两个例子，提出我们的生活可以被科技影响，同时提出反驳观点
2.        举出例子证明科技有时被ethics所扼杀
3.        同样也会遭遇到customs的误解
4.        补充观点，说明科技可以逐渐影响人的日常生活以致影响到customs and ethics
5.        总结论点

写的很差，例子完全就是硬凑的，感觉这篇文章的观点最重要，希望拍的同学能交流一下观点方面的想法:)

However we can still find the difference made by technology. When thinking about communicating with someone, we would tend to dial his or her number by picking up a phone rather than conducting a face-to-face talk. When we want to inform others a certain thing, we are more willing to leave instant messages rather than writing a letter or note. People are using technologies everyday and they indeed affect our society in various aspects including customs and ethics, but is it a crucial factor that could "determine" the social customs and ethics? I greatly doubt that.

Technologies are only assembles of people's thinking, so they are totally decided by human begins themselves. So the people who are living in certain customs or ethics won't develop the technologies that disagree with their customs and ethics. Take the first clone sheep Dolly into consideration, when people first heard of that from the news, they felt into deep panic and the ethics makes them to image what will be if the similar technology be conducted on human beings. The ethics system will instantly collapse if one day we find another "ourselves" exist with same faces, finger prints and characters. Fortunately, most country banned this kind of research under the pressure of their people--the ethics in their mind would firmly prevent such things from happening. This is ethic, which determines the fate of technologies but not the opposite.

So does the customs. When steam locomotive was initially invented, its roaring noise and enormous figure drove people away. They treat it like encountering a fierce animal and even thrown stones at it trying to stop it. The misunderstanding of train was not clarified for a very long time. From here, we can clearly see that technologies are always not first accepted by the society under its old and traditional customs and ethics, and therefore there is no possible for technologies to "determine" the social customs and ethics.

But technologies can greatly influence people's way of life and thus influence their way of thinking, which finally cast impact on social customs and ethics. But technologies can not determine them, especially when it goes absolutely against social customs and ethics. Email is a good example: it creates the possibility for people to transfer messages without providing any additional information---no address to show where the writer is; no handwriting to show the emotion of the writer when presenting the views and no envelop and notepaper to provide a glance at the characters.

Under such influence, our customs and ethics can be slowly changed. Look back to the example of invention of train, when people found it useful and not harmful to their customs and ethics, they will gradually accept it and let it influence their daily life just like phone and email does referred in the first paragraph.

In sum, I'm not denying the technologies could influence our daily life as well as social customs and ethics. However, technologies are by no means the crucial factor that could determine social customs and ethics, while social customs and ethics would hold the fate of technologies.

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详见附件！

MagicGlaiveUID: 2112081

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[ 本帖最后由 xuxinyun 于 2006-8-16 22:45 编辑 ]