Issue88 【CSMY作文互改小组】第三组第七次作业

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Issue88

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

【翻译】
技术不仅仅影响而且实际上是决定了社会传统和道德规范。

观点：
技术确实影响了社会的传统和道德规范，但是并非足以决定这些传统。

提纲：
1。科学技术提供了生活便利性，也同时必然会影响社会的习惯，传统。
2。一些根本性的科学技术的应用，也会渐渐的改变人们的道德规范。
3。但是，科学技术并非决定传统的唯一因素，还有历史，地理，政治，文化等等很多因素，都对传统有着重要的作用。

I quite agree with statement that technologies have a great influence on social customs and ethics in large extents. However, in my view, it is insufficient for technologies to determine the traditions and morality of our society alone. The assertion exaggerates the power of technologies and neglects the other factors that deeply affect the society, such as culture, political and geological environments.

First of all, the significant impression the technologies inflict on our social customs can not be ignored. To provide more convenience and happiness to human lives is a crucial purpose of scientific researches. Therefore the application of new technical achievements probably changes the traditions and customs of society when they benefit people's daily life. If the improvement is so great that some customs, which have a long history of inherently conduction, can be discarded, then some new customs take place of them. For example, before e-mail comes into existence, people are accustomed to writing paper-based mail and delivered post office. However, after the wide use of computer and Internet, people choose to write e-mail as a common method of communication instead.

Secondly, scientific achievements are sometimes so significant and so fundamental that they become to influence our ethics gradually. For example, ancient people live in groups and probably marry with one that is relative to himself. They actually have no clear concept of relationship of relatives. They gradually form the ethics rules that people should not marry with relatives, since they found the bad quality of new born children of such marry. The scientific achievement, though did not be proved, it actually changed the ethics rule gradually.

However, though technologies deeply influence our social customs and ethics, it is still an exaggeration to consider that they can determine those social traditions. To understand the proper impact of technologies on social customs and ethics, it is necessary to analyze the factors that affect and form the current social customs and ethics. In my view, they are the comprehensive products of history, culture, geographical and political environments of the nation and so on. For instance, people of some countries take riding horse as their customs which is partially because of their nomadic history and specific geographical condition. Moreover, given the same technical environment, the ethics standards are varied among countries due to their culture and religious beliefs. Considering the woman rights in different countries, some countries remain unfair because of their religious code, though these countries have made no less technical accomplishments. In many case, technologies can hardly rule out those deeply rooted traditions but yield to them.

In conclusion, new technologies influence our social customs and ethics by raise new moral or custom problem to its people. Tempted by the convenience or pleasure those new technologies provide, people should face the new problem and enjoy their benefits as well as take their consequences of changes of customs and ethics.