Split from: Taiwanese who cross the street without looking
Three examples from the past six months of Taiwan being recognized for invention and innovation.
taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ … 2003506241
taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=179431&ctNode=445
moea.gov.tw/Mns/english/news … s_id=21876
A lot of what Taiwan invents is not shiny consumer stuff that gets publicity and attention but that doesn’t mean nothing gets invented here.
Taiwan has talent, people who think outside the box, inventors, designers and so on. It’s worth remembering the bell-curve (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve) this exists in any country. Think about your own country and think about all the people who, just follow? You know, till operators, cleaners - all people who are needed and most never think out the of the ‘box’ (the illusionary box).
I think Taiwan is getting a bad deal in a lot of these posts but, some points are valid and at least need discussing.
I think us westerners are very good at associating the Taiwanese culture with our own and coming up with a negative result. The thing is, it’s not a very good idea. Our social constructs are, at times, the polar opposite. We have to accept it isn’t our culture for better or worse. Taiwanese need to accept outsiders ideas but, it’s early days in Taiwan’s path of finding it’s place in the world, as a developed nation. It’s not been too long since one defeated army left only to be replaced with another defeated army, each one making the rules up as they go along. It takes time to get a good set of rules and social norms worked out, based on the cultural preferences of the nation.
As for the mindlessness that bother us so, I find it puzzling. Is it the social system or the educational system? The emphasis on getting good grades leads a child to only act for themselves as in a competitive pursuit and this transfers into adult life? Therefor creating a atmosphere of pushing forward oblivious to all else around them.
[quote=“Steviebike”]Taiwan has talent, people who think outside the box, inventors, designers and so on. It’s worth remembering the bell-curve (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve) this exists in any country. Think about your own country and think about all the people who, just follow? You know, till operators, cleaners - all people who are needed and most never think out the of the ‘box’ (the illusionary box).
[/quote]
Taiwan does have people that think outside the box. They emigrate somewhere else. Specifically I can think of all my ABC friends parents who moved to the US to start computer or engineering companies or move to Mainland and make bank. One of my TW ABC friends I met in Beijing, his dad moved to the US to develop a major component involved in WiFi. One of my classmates here a while back, her parents moved to Montreal because her dad works for a computer firm there and her mom opened a private mortgage company using the dad’s savings and earnings. These people do exist, they just are smart enough to get the hell out of here. Think about on average how much family money these ABCs have.
[quote=“cfimages”]Three examples from the past six months of Taiwan being recognized for invention and innovation.
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A lot of what Taiwan invents is not shiny consumer stuff that gets publicity and attention but that doesn’t mean nothing gets invented here.[/quote]
I’ve seen those articles before, and they’re a good example - because they are, in fact, non-inventions. Taiwanese Good Ideas are invariably:
You get plenty of that elsewhere, of course (someone just mentioned bell curves, so let’s keep that in mind). It’s just that you get more of it in Taiwan. Just commenting on the ones that are described properly:
I’ve mentioned similar non-inventions in other posts, and I could ramble on about half a dozen others I’ve seen lately. To qualify as an invention - for patent purposes - something must be demonstrably useful. Taiwanese inventions are usually technically clever and demonstrably pointless, like a Rube Goldberg cartoon. If those items were the prizewinners, I doubt the losers were anything to write home about.
Quite. I have actually met several Taiwanese people with brains like The Mekon, except, um, less evil. They moan about the exact same stuff people are moaning about here, and are busy planning their escape.
Stevebike is right that Taiwan has come a hell of a long way in a short timeframe, and things are bound to be a little bit strange. That’s probably why most of us like it here.
[quote=“finley”][quote=“cfimages”]Three examples from the past six months of Taiwan being recognized for invention and innovation.
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A lot of what Taiwan invents is not shiny consumer stuff that gets publicity and attention but that doesn’t mean nothing gets invented here.[/quote]
I’ve seen those articles before, and they’re a good example - because they are, in fact, non-inventions. [/quote]
If that’s the case then, why is Taiwan winning awards in the US, Europe and Asia then? Those links weren’t to things Taiwan thinks it’s invented, they were to recognition from other countries and international bodies. I don’t know whether any of it is useful or practical, but the original claim (by mike029 I think) that Chinese / Taiwanese are not capable of inventing anything doesn’t hold up.
In the past I worked as a plant microbiologist and Taiwanese scientists were known as being very innovative; in terms of its size Taiwan punched well above its weight. They are also extremely innovative in terms of flower production especially Orchids as I also worked as a plant breeder for a while (they rival and surpass Holland in many aspects of flower breeding and production). Anyone who says otherwise in regards to those mentioned fields is “full of shit”.
Correct. Western Education perpetuates the myuth we are all so fucking special. Then when we cant find a job with our fancy $100,000 liberal arts bleeding hearts degrees we attendt occupy wall street protests. The reality is that western education produces just as many mediocre graduates as other countries. The dregs below the mediocre come to Asia to end up as English teachers as they are unemployable back home with no skills.
Winning awards and making sales are two different things entirely. Do you disagree that those inventions I mentioned were pointless and would never sell a single unit? Taiwanese people are quite capable of coming up with technological ideas - but they fail to analyse what the actual problem is, or consider it in only the most superficial way, and therefore come up with irrelevant devices that are a waste of energy or materials, or just introduce some new problem.
Another example then: there was a news item a couple of years ago about some teenager who had installed a drinking-water filter in the shower outflow to ‘recycle’ the water (I can’t remember what it was then being used for). This was praised as being highly inventive and ‘green’, when in fact it was neither. Using a commercial water filter to filter water really isn’t that clever; and if everyone used one like that - bearing in mind that a shower uses about 100x more water than we drink - we’d have a hell of a lot of filter cartridges to dispose of. The actual problem is that most countries fail to separate greywater and blackwater for bulk reprocessing, which isn’t something you can solve with a little box under the floor.
They do exactly the same thing when driving. Haven’t practiced turning your head to look behind you? Well, that’s going to be dangerous if you do; therefore, better not look. Logic is (sort of) correct; understanding of problem is not. The two-stage left turn for scooters is an implicit admission that scooter drivers don’t know how to turn properly from the left lane and that car drivers are not paying attention to scooters who might wish to do so. Again, solution correct under the circumstances, but underlying issue remains unsolved.
Fenlander may have experienced some innovation in his industry, but I have not seen any at all (except of the aforementioned Heath Robinson variety) in mine. One exception: some rather good stuff from an ABC engineer. Again, I’m not saying there are NO creative people in Taiwan. Obviously that isn’t true. But there are way too many people who can’t proceed through a logical train of thought. It’s a learned skill, and it’s not being taught.
Replicant’s viewpoint is a bit extreme, but I think he’s right that Western education still churns out a hell of a lot of mediocre people with expectations that are way too high. I’ve experienced a lot of that, too. I suppose you could say that the mean is about the same (not surprisingly, since people are people) but the variance is larger.
finley, my response was only to the claim that Taiwanese are incapable of inventing stuff. As I said, I don’t know if it’s useful or not. When it comes to sales that’s likely to be as much an issue of marketing as it is of usefulness.
Everyone everywhere is capable of inventing anything. It’s a question of whether or not people here lack the ability or foresight to see if what they are inventing actually serves a purpose or is just the equivalent to a 6th grade science fair project. Inventing things is directly related to their usefulness, otherwise there is no purpose in inventing it. It is true that great marketing can sell anything, but the inventor of the product still holds some responsibility to know if their piece of shit actually can be marketed. It seems Chinese people lack that ‘critical thinking’ step along the way.
Blagenzflorg: there, I just invented a new word. Is it useful? No. So there’s no point in using it, and inventing it was a waste of my time.
It seems there is no thought process as to whether or not the invention serves any purpose a lot of the time.
For example, one of the inventions from one of those articles:
I don’t need an LED to tell me when a tissue box is empty. I will be able to see that there is no paper in the box. How did this win a ‘gold medal’? It took 4 people to make this?? I could easily make this myself!! Put a scale inside, and when the weight is 0 turn on a light. Done. Where’s my gold medal? 
Today I witnessed an old woman driving with 2 kids (all with no helmets on a 50cc) on the wrong side of the road and left turning through a red light into the moving traffic. A cop was literally stopped at that same light on a scooter and didn’t do anything. Too mafan for him, I guess.
[quote=“Dangergyrl”]
Just an example in my conversation class. 2 weeks ago 9 out of 10 students for the death penalty in Taiwan. Whatever the debate I respect their opinions. Last week we talked about prison films, all of them American of course, those shows on Discovery, etc. I ask what they know about Taiwan’s prison system, blank stares. They know almost nothing about it no background. Not much in the schools, media, books or whatever, what really goes on there, nothing. But kill the murdering lot. It baffles me. [/quote]
I’ve tried to talk about this issue before, and I decided to stop wasting my time. It seems they all just agree with me about whatever I say. To try things out, I switched to the other side of the issue with other people and saw the exact same thing happen. Also, I learned the guy from Prison Break is chao shuai.
Everyone everywhere is capable of inventing anything. It’s a question of whether or not people here lack the ability or foresight to see if what they are inventing actually serves a purpose or is just the equivalent to a 6th grade science fair project. Inventing things is directly related to their usefulness, otherwise there is no purpose in inventing it. It is true that great marketing can sell anything, but the inventor of the product still holds some responsibility to know if their piece of shit actually can be marketed. It seems Chinese people lack that ‘critical thinking’ step along the way.
Blagenzflorg: there, I just invented a new word. Is it useful? No. So there’s no point in using it, and inventing it was a waste of my time.
It seems there is no thought process as to whether or not the invention serves any purpose a lot of the time.
[/quote]
And yet buyers have already placed orders. So someone thinks they are useful.
Pray tell what have any of the posters on forumosa done towards inventing anything as well?
All a bunch of naysayers claiming the Taiwanese can’t do shit. English teachers rule the world. :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
Everyone everywhere is capable of inventing anything. It’s a question of whether or not people here lack the ability or foresight to see if what they are inventing actually serves a purpose or is just the equivalent to a 6th grade science fair project. Inventing things is directly related to their usefulness, otherwise there is no purpose in inventing it. It is true that great marketing can sell anything, but the inventor of the product still holds some responsibility to know if their piece of shit actually can be marketed. It seems Chinese people lack that ‘critical thinking’ step along the way.
Blagenzflorg: there, I just invented a new word. Is it useful? No. So there’s no point in using it, and inventing it was a waste of my time.
It seems there is no thought process as to whether or not the invention serves any purpose a lot of the time.
[/quote]
And yet buyers have already placed orders. So someone thinks they are useful.[/quote]
I look forward to seeing at Family Dollar with Chinglish all over it. 
I look forward to seeing at Family Dollar with Chinglish all over it. [/quote]
Thats what happens when English teachers become product editors in Taiwan. 
It’s what I do for a living. There are several other scientists and engineers on forumosa too. Only I don’t call it “inventing” because 90% of what I deliver is bleedin’ obvious “to one skilled in the art”, as the patent office puts it. Yet what I do as a matter of day-to-day humdrum is beyond the ability of the average Taiwanese engineer. I know this is so because I’ve tried to hire people who do the same thing, and eventually gave up in despair.
Anyway, I think the original point was that a lack of critical thinking prevents people from understanding that a wide variety of stupid actions can get them killed. When presenting this possibility, I usually get the response “well, I’m still here, aren’t I?”, or words to that effect. Do they teach probability theory in high school?
I’ve often wondered what doctors think about all this. Are they secretly glad to have a job, or are they mightily sick of watching broken bodies wheeled through their emergency wards day in, day out? And if the latter, why don’t they say something?
I’ve also “invented” a couple of things, although I’m no engineer. It’s not all that difficult, but I often have to Blagenzflorg in order to get my designs to work properly.
Would you care to elaborate on how they are innovative? Are they developing new ways of breeding or just improving on original methods?
You see, with the Chinese, since the introduction of gunpowder and paper there hasn’t been a great load of innovation at all. How many things that are used on a day to day basis that are actually useful, or even ground breaking, have been invented by the Chinese?
I never read in the newspaper or in a journal that scientists in China or Taiwan have developed original, new, never seen before pieces of technology.
So is this lack of innovation really a cultural problem resulting from ingrained social intimidation or because of other issues that are not discussed?
Anyway. an LCD fridge door - LCD’s have been around for over 40 years and so have fridges. Doors have been around for even longer.
A tissue box with a light on it to show you it is nearly empty? My motorcycle has a light on it to tell me when I am nearly out of gas:
Oh shit. I’d better prepare a trip to the back bedroom and arrange to have a bag of tissue handy as current tissue depletion is imminent That light thing there is on, look.
I find the best thing to do if you are worried about how much tissue you have left is to either look inside the box, pick it up to see how heavy it is or simply wait until you run out. It’s not as if you’re going to damn well fall out of the sky, is it? And changing the battery? The inconvenience of raiding the TV remote control in order to change the battery for that little sensor and light thing is going to cause more hassle and dilemma than would have been caused if one had run out of tissue in the first place.
5000 years of culture and they still eat with a pair of twigs…
[quote=“Super Hans”]You see, with the Chinese, since the introduction of gunpowder and paper there hasn’t been a great load of innovation at all. How many things that are used on a day to day basis that are actually useful, or even ground breaking, have been invented by the Chinese?
I never read in the newspaper or in a journal that scientists in China or Taiwan have developed original, new, never seen before piece of technology.
So is this lack of innovation really a cultural problem resulting from ingrained social intimidation or because of other issues that are not discussed?
Anyway. an LCD fridge door - LCD’s have been around for over 40 years and so have fridges. Doors have been around for even longer.
A tissue box with a light on it to show you it is nearly empty? My motorcycle has a light on it to tell me when I am nearly out of gas:
Oh shit. I’d better prepare a trip to the back bedroom and arrange to have a bag of tissue handy as current tissue depletion is imminent That light thing there is on, look.
I find the best thing to do if you are worried about how much tissue you have left is to either look inside the box, pick it up to see how heavy it is or simply wait until you run out. It’s not as if you’re going to damn well fall out of the sky, is it? And changing the battery? The inconvenience of raiding the TV remote control in order to change the battery for that little sensor and light thing is going to cause more hassle and dilemma than would have been caused if one had run out of tissue in the first place.
5000 years of culture and they still eat with a pair of twigs…[/quote]
I understand your point and agree with it to a certain degree - after a certain dynasty, Chinese society became more inward looking and conservative. That, in part, led to its weakness when confronted by Western Powers much later.
Having said that, you should read Joseph Needham’s brilliant and comprehensive series on China’s technological history (“Science”).
For example, they led naval technology for a long time and contributed to the West’s ability in its Age of Discovery. to give you some examples:
Most of these were filtered through the Middle East/Arab world:
sail technology (I unfortunately forget the details but if you look at early 1st millenium ships, think Arab-influenced carafes v. later ocean-going vessels, you will see the difference);
the rudder and with it the compass
compartamentalized bunks (those spaces in the bottom of the ship) (helps with controlling buoyancy and averting sinking-limiting flooding)
shape of the hull. this is an interesting one: early western shipbuilders thought to mimic the shape of a fish as they thought it would be the most streamlined. Wrong, under the water, yes, but not on the surface. Chinese shipbuilders mimicked the waterfowl (with much fatter profile in the middle, instead of a “torpedo” like fish) which proved to be much better drag, etc. This idea was transported by the Arabs to the West. You can still see its influence in sailboats today and small motorboats (large ships have different considerations and also powered by engine).
Having said all this, patents are rising in China. Whether that means something (ie the patents speak of “real” technology"), we will see in coming decades. Whether it will have a global, revolutionary effect like the Scientific Revolution is a whole other ballgame, but that should also be wait-and-see. That said, the education systems in Asia are still not conducive to innovation - conservatism IMHO still smothers that natural talent.
but it also means that China was already instrumental in providing a Scientific Revolution to the pre-modern world (see Needham) that is not often recognized.
Wikipedia’s list of chinese inventions;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions
Thanks Jack Burton, and Steviebike for the wiki page.
I mentioned gunpowder and paper in an attempt to signify that nothing of great note has been invented since the good ole’ days, and I don’t think anyone is denying that the Chinese thought out some very good early gadgets and that China was well and truly an incredibly advanced society. I do find it strange that society was more conducive to freedom of thought then than it is now. There is a massive time gap - it’s like China ceased to exist for several hundred years. It is very interesting to look at the reasons why this happened.
Could it have something to do with the abundance of porcelain? 