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Taiwan at the Crossroads
If the development of the Northern Hemisphere is not sustainable, it does not seem to make sense for the people in the South to catch up with the North. The American way of life, typified by automobiles and large houses, has been the admiration of people around the world. But we also have to realize that in the United States, 5% of the world's population has been consuming 30% of natural resources on earth. After the independence of India, when answering some questions about the future of India, Gandhi rightfully asked, "As to how many earth should India need, if the people here in India were to live like people in England?" Perhaps, we should encourage the people in the Southern Hemisphere, where most of the Third World countries are, to start their own efforts to find a new way that the people in the Northern Hemisphere might follow. Considering that we all live in the same global village, we have to learn to think and act together with global interests in mind.

For centuries, scientific knowledge accumulated by mankind has been shared quite freely. Scientists still believe firmly that scientific knowledge discovered should be shared by all, as advocated by Francis Bacon. Early in the century, when Madame Curie was asked why she didn't apply for patents on all that she had discovered. After all, if she were to do so, she would have been as wealthy as Edison. Her reply was quite simple. She did not want to take advantage from what she had discovered. She believed that the knowledge accumulated by mankind should belong to all mankind. But, in modern society, when the accumulated scientific knowledge is further developed and transformed into technology and applied to social production, it will become the basis of economic competition. Protection or patent and intellectual property right becomes a very important issue in modern society. But the sharing of the knowledge had already stopped at the so-called pre-competitive technology, but not at all for competitive technology. I was always wondering when I went to Taipei Airport to welcome some of the friends who came to share technology with scientists in Taiwan, we would also see many lawyers who came to Taiwan to sue somebody or some companies for infringing their intellectual property right. There seems to be a great contradiction about whether to share or not to share.
However, the gap, or the time lag, between the scientific discovery and market becomes shorter and shorter; it took 100 years for automobiles, five years for computers, but only 18 months for microprocessors. In certain areas of scientific investigation, it is no longer possible to distinguish between basic research and competitive technology.

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