Abstract
Technology has advanced through global exchanges, with different nations technologically ascendant at different periods. Nations’ perceptions of and policies about achieving and maintaining technological leadership have been based on zero-sum assumptions that ultimately have proved futile and may lead to their decline in the face of emergent technology powers. In the first fifteen or so centuries BCE, China led the world in the development and use of the world’s most consequential technologies, including printing, gunpowder, the compass, and the production of superior iron and steel. These technologies spread as far as Western Europe, especially as the network of trade routes known as “the Silk Roads” were brought under the control of the Mongol empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Mongols radically reduced travel and trade barriers over the four thousand miles from the Sea of Japan to the Mediterranean, spanning widely diverse countries and cultures. In effect, they developed the first global technology trade system. The roads were blocked by the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century, and China’s technological dynamism stagnated. From the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, the West became the primary center for the development and use of military and industrial technologies that enabled a substantial Western domination of the world. The Western domination may now be coming to an end as China and other Asia countries have achieved new levels of technological strength and, as emerging economies, are increasingly challenging the Western domination of the rules of intellectual property rights and technology trade. This article describes the China- and Western-centric eras of technology diffusion, noting prevailing zero-sum assumptions about sharing technology and the perceived need for nations to maintain technological “superiority” over other nations. The article concludes with suggestions for the development of a global commons of technology development and sharing.