Issue88

88"Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."
(589 words)
I agree with the author that techonologies have something to do with social customs and ethics, and the later two things would be influence by the former one to a sort of extent. However, there are many other factors that influence social customs and ethics, thus the determinance of the two things is complicated.In nowadays world, science and techonology bring about what is called "modern", they help us to be free from hard and meaningless works, focus on the iniative and interested ones. In every country of this world, no matter rich or poor, developed or developing, change is happening every minutes. As for social customs, for example, before the Industrial Revolution, women often just stay at home, do some housework, look after husband and other relatives, rear children, even endure the complaint from mother-in-law. But now, more and more women go out of the narrow rooms, devote themselves into every field, from science to commercial, for art to politic, even president. Another example upon social customs is communication, paper letters were being substituted by E-mail, phone, fax, etc. People don't have to wait for a couple of days to send a message, and need a longer time to receive the reply. No one can deny that these changes of social customs are brought about by technologies.As for ethics, the similar alteration due to technologies has been happening since a long time ago. The production of Dolly, a sheep cloned, proved that it is possible to clone mammals from adult tissue. Panicked, the public calls for an outright ban on human cloning — arguing that human beings have a right to be "born in a human way, and not in a laboratory". Yet before this sheep, any discuss about human cloning is restrained in science fiction, let alone the ethics problem together with it. Meanwhile, the person experiences discomfort unless he or she can be a member of the opposite sex has been stigmatized in many parts of the world for a long time. Though remains controversial, transsexualism has become more widely accepted in Western culture in the mid to late 20th century, concurrently with the sexual revolution and the development of sexual reassignment surgeries. The two example show us how strongly technologies influence and partly determine social customs and ethics side by side.However, there are still some kinds of social customs and ethics which are not changed at all. In the aspect of social customs, for instance, according to the tradition, Tibetans who want to pilgrimage to Lhasa, have to kneel and bow low enough to touch the head to the ground every few steps of the way. Although it is more convenient for Tibetans to go to Lhasa now than ever before -- especially after the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has been open to traffic, no Pilgrim today changes to travel by train, bus, or plane. Because one who take modern vehicles can't be called a pilgrim, just a traveller. In addtion, as for the ethics, even our civilization has been established for over thousands of years, our oppositions to murder, stealing, robbery and cheating have never changed. Because these ethics are the basic of our human society, we can't survive without them, the world will be a mess if they are changed.As discussed above, I agree that technologies influence social customs and ethics, however, whether it can determine customs and ethics must be addressed on a case-to-case basis. Anyway, there is always somtthing that can't be changed, which are also the basic of technologies.