issue88

jenniferganUID: 2443583

TOPIC: ISSUE88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."
WORDS: 617          TIME: 00:60:16          DATE: 2008-4-1 16:55:39


The speaker asserts that technologies not only influence but also determine social customs and ethic. Does a society's customs and ethics are determined by technologies? As far as I'm concerned, technologies are becoming one of the most important factors which influence a society's customs and ethics, but it is not a determinable factor of customs and ethics.

First of all, technologies really play very important roles in modern society, which make modern life become better and better. Take the most common things for example; technologies are around today's life all the time. When go out for some place, we usually drive our car, as we know; car is a indispensable tool for each families in western developed countries. When we have to contact with somebody far away from us, we pick up a phone then we can communicate with him or her. When we need to find some data documents, we search on the net and a large amount of messages are shown to us. Everything we need is so convenient. Thus, technologies give lots of changes to today's lifestyle and improve the standard of life.

While technologies improve modern life, they also influence concept of a society such as customs and ethics. On a conventional level, they change many traditional customs. Although some traditional customs are deep in people's mind, but with the acceptance of technologies, they are replaced by better customs. For instance, during China's Spring Festival, relatives and friends came and went to each other's home to say "happy new year!" before cell phone messages become popular, now, they usually send messages to each other to celebrate the new year's coming. Many people think it is a convenient and good way, they don't need to go out in cold winter morning to their relatives and friends' home now, but in the same time, they send their wish to them. So, technologies also improve the customs of today's people. I believe the change is better of course.

On an ethical level, technologies take a test on people's ethics. Technologies make people's life more open to others, especially with the development of the popularity of internet. Today, everyone's messages and documents can be found on the internet, which make secrets are no more secrets. To those celebrities, they have no secrets at all; even all their life is exposed to the public because of the pursuit of media. A famous example is the sexual scandal of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Powerful media open the affair. Clinton’s reckless and immoral behavior and its public dissemination had reinforced the publication of sexual acts over the internet, radio, and television. Obviously, it reinforced the ethical rules of people all over the world. Therefore, to some extent, technologies are not always positive to a society's ethics.

However, I don't think it is a determinable factor of social customs and ethics.  A society's custom and ethics are more determined by the traditional conception of people to their society and country and religion, which is less relative to technologies. Social customs and ethics are gradually developed and with the development of society, which need a long period. For example, technologies truly improve creative tools of society, with which there existed world war II, so many people are died of war, even advanced technologies do not give the world peace, the most important thing in modern society.

In sum, society pays more and more attention on the development of technologies, which reinforce the life of all the people, change social customs and ethics. But they are not determinable factors. Human should keep on paying attention on technologies in any case, after all they do more good to bad in today's life.

patric1212UID: 2456029

个人觉得语言一般。短句数量较多。例子都比较简单但很实在。
建议笔者多琢磨些句子。。。cheers.共勉。也是我的弱项。

比如谈到nuclear.是这样拼吗？
我觉得你的例子太简单了。
你可以谈谈既可以发电很清洁，但又在世界大战中使用。他的摧残性。
可以google一下这方面的例子和文章。学习学习语言组织。

jenniferganUID: 2443583

谢谢啊，我会努力改进的！！