Issue88 Ares站队第二次作业

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ISSUE88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."

In today's high digital world, technologies have a great impact in the ways of living and thinking. I agree insofar as that technologies influence social customs and ethics, the assertion that it's the determinable factor to customs and ethics is apparently too extreme.

Social customs and ethics are handed down from generation to generation along a very long history, which are mainly determined by the character, culture and history of a nation or race. They are something steady but rather the thoughts or fashions in a certain time. No matter which nation people come from, they all treasure their customs and ethics which are the unique marks of their nation and race. Technologies prompt the development of the whole world, and they have made the way of life in different nations to be similar to some extent, but each nation still keep its customs and ethics. When the ancestors of Americans came to and settle down in America for a short while, they couldn't used to the weather and the environment. They survived with the help of the Indians, who gave them the necessity of living and taught them how to farm. The next year, the new inhabitants got a great harvest and they invite the Indians to eat turkey to express their thanks. Technology has brought America a much wealthier life from which the ancestors had led, but the custom to eat turkey in Thanks Giving Day still exist and the festival is one of the most important festivals in the America.

Technologies do have the impact to the customs and ethics, but is absolutely not playing the role of determination. In the old days, people were used to send postcards to their friends when they were traveling to foreign countries, which was a little custom to express the feeling of missing as well as to introduce the places they had visited to their friends. Now, with the developing technology, people can send E-mails instead of postcards, which is more convenient and efficient. Technologies only change the ways of expressing the emotions, in the other words, the appearance of the custom. The essence of the customs is still the same as which of the old time. Some people thought that it was technology which led to the liberation of women, such thought was wrong. Admittedly, the industrial revolution make more and more women work outside the families, it seems that technology changed the customs that women could not have jobs and finally led to the liberation of women, but the fact was that the liberation was mainly depend on the progress of the women themselves in both thoughts and social class, which had accumulated during a very long period.  

Admittedly, ethics has faced great challenge with the development of some technological areas. Euthanasia is a great problem which people all around the world have input for a long time, but the result is that almost all nations forbid the euthanasia because it is against the ethics of human. Likewise, cloning human beings is not permitted by the moral and ethics. People from different nations have come to the agreement to the probation of the human clone. So the effects of technology could mostly controlled by people, if some kinds of technologies are against the ethics, people will not accept them in order to protect the ethics and moral.

In sum, customs and ethics are not determined by technologies because customs almost have historic meanings and they can reflect the character of a nation, while ethics are the criterion of moral, they are both indispensable things for a society, their functions decide that they must be steady to a great extent. In a word, customs and ethics are inevitably influenced by the technologies, but they are hardly changed under the impact of technology because of their special natures.
Time: 很久
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[ 本帖最后由 veinard 于 2006-6-28 22:23 编辑 ]

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