Should The West Be Grateful To The East For Past Innovations?

Drawing of an early Chinese soldier lighting a rocket (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some of us believe the West had created and innovated everything without the need of borrowing ideas from anyone. Some people went as far as to belittle the people who lived in China and said that China copied everything from the West. This is true now since China is playing catchup in technology, but it was not the case in the past. The videos right after the break claim ancient Chinese had invented technologies such as paper, gun powder, metal stirrup, compass, and a lot more, and these ancient inventions had helped the West built empires and became more innovative than ever before.

Afterthought: In my opinion, only through sharing technology (e.g., open source, copyleft) we humans can improve as a whole (i.e., we are humans). By sharing technology, some of us might be even more innovative. By relying on past knowledge, some of us might be able to ignite the next sparks that can change the world, hopefully for the better. So, we should not be so petty in the matter of who copied who. Instead of anything, we need to race ahead in sharing technology so we can improve the world as a whole. Nonetheless, the world can also be hell on earth if we are racing ahead in sharing destructive technology such as nuclear weapon.