I live in the country with largest population, and with long long history, lasting over 5000 years. It’s our treasure, and also, it’s something that we cannot get rid of.
I’m always focusing on the most innovative products, which make good use of computers and the Internet, and I’ve found out that it’s quite hard to find them in our country. It’s a pity, but not as easy as a pity.
Here are some examples. In our country, the biggest SNS, www.renren.com, is a copy of Facebook; the biggest chat software, QQ, is a copy of QICQ; the biggest micro-blogging service, t.sina.com, is a copy of Twitter. And, we’ve got long long list of copies:
www.tuita.com / www.diandian.com - Tumblr www.zhihu.com - Quora www.youku.com - YouTube www.meituan.com - Groupon …
One may arguing that copying is a common phenomenon all over the world, as Jobs said, “Windows is a copy of Mac”, but the problem is, the companies who copied others’ products in our country, never innovate! They earned money from their clients, and kept on copying.
We talked a lot about these things, as well as innovation in our country, and later, we found that it’s the problem of culture.
I cannot say too much about this, just list a few points about our characteristics, to figure out the reason.
- Too easy to be satisfied. If our current life is so-so (that is, not in poverty), most of us will never take effort to make things better.
- Profit-driven. Few idealists there are, most of us are fed by profit / fame / interest, or something like these.
- Dependent. We likes watching on others, and are eager to be identified by others.
- Timid. It’s hard for us to face directly to big challenges, even the ones that is not profit-guaranteed.
These are bad words about our culture, which roots deeply in our heart (for 5000 years!). And, to write down these, I just want to keep them away from me.
The good thing is, the open Internet is changing lots of people, and I guess things will not be the same as they were before (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China). I’m hoping for the change.