» ISSUE 88 yeer’s blog 生活思考觉悟

Published 23:53 Sunday, June 7th, 2009 by yeer 1,326 views

ISSUE 88

88、"Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."

With the rapid development of technologies, our daily lives have changed dramatically. While it is no doubt that social customs and ethics we are used to have influenced a lot by more and more advanced technologies, to assert that technologies tend to be a decisive factor of social customs and ethics seems to be superficial.

Admittedly, great advances in technologies exert prominent impacts not only on social customs but also on ethics of a society. On one hand, the ways we live and communicate have varied much compared with those in ancient time and even a couple of decades ago. Consider the convenience electric commerce brings to us. Shopping online became prevalent recently as the development of internet and electric billing. Just turn on your computer, log on internet, and search online shops such as Amazon and Ebay for what you want and finally click the Purchase button below the goods you prefer. What you need to do next is just waiting at home for the delivery worker. The shopping process is so easy now rather than driving miles away to a crowed supermarket and looking several rounds for planned products as before. Moreover, we write fewer letters on papers while send more emails on computers. What is more, businessmen and academicians do not have to travel by air to certain cities and universities to attend meetings and seminars, instead they could negotiate and discuss with their counterparts in front of video-meeting system anywhere and anytime. On the other hand, some ethics have also been deeply influenced by technologies. For example, intermarriage, which was regarded as an effective means to concentrate the blood tie of a family, has proved to be of great danger to offspring due to the development of genetics. In addition, the concept of ethics has been expanded, from the relationship between different people to the one between people and nature, after people realized the disastrous consequences to our environment caused by inappropriate employments of technologies.

However, neither social customs nor ethics are determined by technologies. As to social customs, technologies just change forms of their existence but the substance of them. Just as online shopping emerges merely as a new form of trade; sending an email or making a phone call to a friend during Chinese New Year do not change the tradition of greeting each other during festivals; communicating remotely facing a video camera in their own offices do not modify the convention for academicians of exchanging different opinions on some scientific studies regularly. As far as ethics are concerned, contrary to what the speaker asserts, it is ethics that determine the application of technologies. The people’s attitude towards clone is a typical case. Though clone exhibits incomparable advantages and potential applications in medical field, it is limited all over the world and even banned in some countries such as United States by President Clinton. The main reason for the fact is that if it was set free, the current ethnics system will be broken. Think about the following assumption: what should you call the one cloned from you, who resembles you in all aspects, brother, son, father, or just “copy”? No position in kinship can be assigned to another you. In fact, technologies only produce a direct effect on us, not on ethics. Those responsible for determining ethics are human beings.

In summary, technologies only influence but do not determine our social customs and ethnics. Since we act as creators for technologies, we should try best to be master of them instead of becoming slaves of them.