Class Discussion Question 5.26.08

A person's environment will inevitably shape and mold the inner being; as a person comes across values that leave an impression they may adopt those values into their world view. That information becomes part of the filter through which they strain other data coming in. (Intro to Ethics Course Notes)

Although our environment, to lesser and greater degrees, influence ourselves we are not merely the products of our environments. In my opinion, people are more like catalysts than products. They react and interact with their environment; different personalities influence how environmental factors will be approached. Being a 'product' of one's environment implies that human beings are the predictable outcome in a manufacturing line: Throw in some religious dogma, conservative parents, well-to-do upbringing and you end up with a Southern-Baptist Republican. That's just not how people work. Human beings can change their environment, just as their environment can change them.

The same is true with technology. Human beings influence new technology, just as new technology influences them. Similarly, just as some people do adopt the values they were brought up with and live out those teachings in their lives, other people rebel against everything they were brought up to believe in and set out to find their own way. Their environment still influences them, it just doesn't create who they will become. In this way, the boundary between ourselves and our technology is similar to the boundary between ourselves and our environment. I argue this point because not everyone adopts the true purpose for certain technologies. On the contrary, some people rebel against the true use for certain technologies and manipulate them to meet their own agendas (be their agendas good or bad).

I, accordingly, don't feel as though science or technology changes that boundary or our perception of the boundary, rather I believe that science and technology reinforces the perceptions of the boundary that already exists.