Innovation

United States of America – what a nation!! When one thinks about the US of A, one thinks of the dominance the nation has gained in the spheres of – well almost all spheres of excellence, be it military, technology, films, infrastructure and so on. As we Indians experience it, we have been bombarded by their culture all through our lives; at least the Generation Y is. We watch the Hollywood blockbusters right from our childhood. Firs it’s the animated films that enters our world. From Mickey Mouse to Narnia to Bolt, the new generation has seen it all. Then as the teenagers starts watching the action films like Terminator, Bourne, Jurassic Park, Transformers etc. The same guy is also taken aback when he watches the thought-provoking ones say the Matrix Trilogy. Then comes a mature guy who admires the classics like Shawshank Redemption and Pursuit of Happiness. Along the same time, he or she also watches high quality TV series like Friends, Prison Break, Big Bang Theory etc. I know I might have missed a score of suitable names above but that’s not the point. The point is that media like that is an exceedingly efficient way of exporting a nation’s culture. I have heard so many friends who use phrases like “Jesus Christ!” even though they are not Christians. I am not against Christianity and have no objections with people making such statements.

People embrace impressive culture so fast that even their parents wonder, why couldn’t they learn what we taught this fast.

Then many of the youngsters also observe that all computer related stuff either comes from America or is somehow related to America. Say the PC processor, the only names that will come to your mind are Intel and AMD , both American Corporations. Think software, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Apple etc.etc. All American. Think web, Google, Yahoo, e-Bay, Wikipedia, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Amazon all headquartered in the same nation.

Then one begins to ponder how one nation could produce “stuff” of so great quality that no other nation is even close. Well this is not at all surprising and neither it should be.

The nation that is the global power for about half a century is the innovation-engine of the world. The British Empire (On which the sun would never set same as they termed the Titanic the “unsinkable”) ,the global power before USA , was also the innovation engine for the 18^th and 19^th century. The real industrial revolution began in Britain and then spread to the whole Europe then to the entire world as we see it. The textile mills, lathe machines and steam engines came from Britain. English language as we see it is dominant in the world due to the British and American dominance on the globe called earth. But now what next?

The USA is on the decline as we know it. So who is on the rise? Asia particularly China.

So it seems as of now that the 21^st century would belong to China. Bam. Welcome to the Language Conflict. English would decline because the Chinese are not that eager to learn English as others are like say Indians or Brazilians or French. They would rather continue the Chinese language and bring more glory to it. It is a well known fact that the world learns the language of the superpower. Hadn’t it for the British Empire, English would not be the so called “internationally accepted” language. The same logic applies for currency. It was the USA who brought the American Dollar as the standard international currency. Look at the web, there are already so many Chinese websites because the Chinese people think twice before trying to learn English. It seems inevitable as of now, that the Chinese language would dominate the world. So what we (the non-Chinese) do? Learn Chinese?