Firstly, I am glad to be here, let me introduce myself. My name is Li Wei, my English name is Aleevon. I am 22 years old. I come from the northwest of China, the most ancient city in China——Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province. I am studying in the Foreign Language department of Minjiang University situated in Fu Zhou of Fujian Province.

I cross the whole of China to Study because I want to redefine myself; I want to stand on my own two feet. So I left my beloved home town, and started a new life in the southeast of China.

In the past 3 years, I learnt a lot about myself. I never knew that I could have a charming voice, but later I became a Broadcaster on the Campus Broadcasting Station; I never thought that I could have the courage to go on stage, but later I became the First place winner in Campus Host Competition and still do the host every now and then; I never thought that I could be an Inspiring person, but later I became the Head of College Students’ Art Ensemble; and I love to dance ever since I was a kid, I never thought I could dance professionally, but on campus, I became a cheerleader in our cheerleading squad, and we competed throughout the country, from provincial to regional, to the nationals.

I have found a new me in the past 3 years, a new me that I never knew before, and I am still surprising myself. So that’s me, an inspired young man, a cheerleader who will always smile even in the days of despair.

 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It is my honor to be here to present my speech to you about the role of humanism in today’s technologically advanced world.

What’s the role of humanism today? At the first sight of this topic, I felt that I had a vision of walking along a dark passage to our destination, an ideal harmonious society. Humanism, is a lighthouse on this way to guide us in case we are getting lost, together with modern technology, we are well on our way toward our destination.

Like other young men, I love the internet. To be honest, I could not imagine a life without internet, which is a blessing taken by high technology. To some extent, it represents the whole world to me. I have registered some accounts on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Renren, Weibo and so forth. It’s really amazing because these network technologies make it possible for people all over the world to communicate with each other freely and conveniently.

However, there are two sides to the argument, so what of the internet. While it could lighten our life, it could also turn into evil. It started with some of these arguments—well, it is argument at first—then the situation seems out of control: people start to curse and scold each other just because they have different opinions. People became more and more aggressive, seditious, and insulting, and later on, with the “Human-flesh searching” involved, the situation gets even worse. Those are what we called “Network of violence”, they are still happening, and still going on.

It seems like that the internet frees us from the burden of our public identities so we should be our true, authentic selves online, except it turns out—who wouldn’t see that coming—that our true, authentic selves aren’t that fantastic.

The reason we define ourselves as human is because we have some natural instincts to care for and respect other people. In other words, we are pursuing the universal brotherhood, a peaceful world of free minds. It is humanism that keeps our society moving on and on.

As one of the most important inventions in our time, internet has changed the way of our life tremendously. It has changed the way we express and communicate with each other. It has made it possible for us to meet each other without distance; it has made it easier for us to know and to comprehend each other.

However not only some changes has it brought, but also brought on some challenges. Net has anarchy in its DNA, It’s always been about anonymity, playing with your own identity and messing with other people’s heads. It is a challenge, it challenges our self-discipline that we are proud of, it challenges our humanity that we are proud of. Sure technology promises us more freedom but it doesn’t mean that we should leave our civilization behind.

That’s why we need a guideline to light up our path, to lead us. In this technologically advanced world, what we need to do is to avoid the misuse of technology, but to take it as an accelerator, a lube or a navigator on our high way to create a better world, a harmonious society.

So don’t ever forget our aspiration, and always have faith in humanism, and we are going to make it happen, in this technologically advanced world! Yes! We can!

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.