Link
My wife and I had a dinner with a couple of friends last night. In the conversation, my friend had a question for me. "Has technology changed our ethics, behavior and/or our morality?" The context of the conversation is this, it started over the decision Microsoft has made with respect to its products in China, where they have agreed to add filters on their products to check for words like freedom, democracy and other topics forbidden in China. This would allow the Chinese officials to track dissidents and keep control over the people. Cisco and a few other companies wanting to do business with China have agreed to similar restrictions in order to sell their products there.
Then the conversation branched to the development of guns, the morality issue with them and also to the development of nuclear, for making bombs to drop on Japan in WWII.
I thought it was an interesting question, so much so, that I wanted your view on the topic. So please make a comment. Contribute to a better understanding of the nuances in the question, as nothing is as simple as it seems. Thanks!
7 Comments:
In my opinion, it did not. In political or business world, morality has seldom been a key factor in their stradegy. As for China, when I heard they said that they absolutely believe righteousness would finally win, I knew they were afraid of being asked this question: What did you do to help it?
I believe technology does change morality. In most repressive societies, rulers want to control information and guns. They immediately contol newspapers, radio and TV stations. The internet is a hugh threat since it keeps people informed. The repressive rulers will want to use technology to control information just as they have through history. The internet now stands to make this use much more difficult to these rulers. All this is good. But on the darker side, bad guys do more damage because things become anonymous. Internet fraud, hackers, predators and theft increase. Bad guys dont see this as personal since they are not dealing face to face with real people. Borderline morality decisions become more acceptable without this personal contact. Overall, I believe our morals drift and become more permissive over time, and technology will just help to make this happen more quickly.
I'd like to substantiate the allegations against Microsoft and Cisco. If substantiated, the problem isn't with the technology. It's the users. I use this kind of feature to eliminate spam. It seems that since human time began, people have created tools to protect themselves. This seems so for bows & arrows, guns and nuclear power. It depends on how persons use them.
In terms of human life and in my opinion, abortions do a lot of damage. Did you know the going rate in the US hovers around 1 million per year? Russia is in the neighborhood of 2.5 million per year. Abortion is another tool which can be either misused or properly used.
I think your dinner friend is right. He must be a brilliant person. Look to him for further good ideas
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
In my opinion, technology is just technology and as such, I believe it is morally agnostic. It is the use of the technology by people or governments or corporations that determines whether it has or hasn't changed morality. That is, the user of the technology decides how to use the technology and in what context --- for repression or in this instance, for freedom of information. That being said, information technology in general and the Internet in particular, provide the users of this technology with choices that may have a significant impact on millions of peolpe if used in a morally improper way. js
Technology does change things but doesn't, by itself, determine the direction, nature, or extent of the changes. All of these things (censorship, control of information, mobilization, privacy, democracy) are a constant tug-of-war between forces for control and forces for anarchy. Somewhere in the middle lies governments accountable to their people. Whether individual technologies get used for control, anarchy, or democracy depends on the creativity and motivation of those using the technology.
Post a Comment
<< Home