A Small Boat on the Great River of Human Innovation
To borrow a popular expression, this is a book destined to be a hit!
Innovation must be one of the most fashionable concepts in China today. From government policy to international trade disputes, from student entrepreneurship to stock-market gains and losses, it is everywhere. But what drives human innovation? Why do some people become celebrated figures in its history while others remain anonymous? What makes some innovations spectacularly successful while others end in disappointing failure? What setbacks and surprises have people encountered along the way? And where will the future of innovation take us?
To answer these questions, we could study classic works on the history of science and technology or consult the latest research in academic journals. In an age when time is so tightly squeezed, however, most people find that prospect daunting. Specialists in the field, meanwhile, are often reluctant to devote time to writing a book that appeals to a broad readership while remaining accurate and comprehensive. In today’s publication-driven academic world, that can seem a thankless undertaking. Dr. Jielin Dong’s book meets precisely this substantial public need.
Drawing on systematic scholarly research into the history of innovation, the author dismantles the conventional chronology of scientific and technological achievements and reconstructs it within a new framework, using elegant prose, compelling stories, and rigorous analysis. In this respect, the book has something in common with the widely popular Sapiens. The resulting work is like a small boat on the great river of human innovation, carrying us effortlessly through its remarkable episodes. We see how human needs have been met and transformed through innovation, and find fresh reasons to look forward to what comes next. Combining a rigorous analytical framework, vivid historical stories, distinctive perspectives, and beautiful photography and illustrations, this is a treasury of innovation that is hard to put down.
Dr. Dong preceded me among Chinese students pursuing graduate study in the United States. She went to Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Physics through the well-known China–United States Physics Examination and Application program (CUSPEA). After receiving her doctorate in 1988, she worked in scientific research and later ventured into the financial markets. Some years ago, she returned to China and devoted herself to research on innovation. At Soochow University, she established an innovation research center and led a group of young scholars and students in gathering extensive data with the rigor and discipline of the natural sciences. They built a database of human scientific and technological achievements, conducted many interesting studies, and published important research papers. She also readily accepted our invitation to take up a part-time appointment at Tsinghua University’s Research Center for Science and Technology Policy. The publication of this book is both understandable and unexpected. It is understandable because scholars commonly bring their earlier research together in book form. It is unexpected because she has produced not a conventional academic monograph but this delightful, more personal history of innovation. The author explains why in her preface: since childhood, she has cherished both the “white rose” dream of becoming a scientist and the “red rose” dream of becoming a writer. This history of human innovation has finally allowed both dreams to blossom together.
At its heart, the book tells the stories of human innovation. Building on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, the author proposes a needs-based classification of science and technology with six broad categories: Subsistence, Security and Health, Communication and Entertainment, Mobility and Flexibility, Efficiency and Utilization, and Exploration and Transcendence. Along these six threads, the narrative develops in two complementary ways. First, engaging stories and beautiful photographs and illustrations reveal the rich variety of innovation throughout human development, bringing to life both famous and lesser-known contributors. Within each thread, the author pays particular attention to China’s contributions. Her fluent prose and careful investigation breathe new life into these historical accounts while also correcting a number of popular misconceptions. Second, she uses structural narrative, drawing on the database built through years of research to examine the organization and development of ten thousand years of science and technology along the same six threads. She compares regions, identifies statistical patterns, and brings together the stories told in the preceding chapters. This arrangement offers abundant, vivid historical material for general readers while providing rigorous analysis through which specialists can explore unresolved questions in the history of innovation.
Another valuable feature is the author’s willingness to confront controversies in the history of science and technology and state her own views clearly. Cai Lun’s papermaking, for example, is celebrated as one of China’s Four Great Inventions, yet the historical details remain disputed. The author presents the view that paper from Fangmatan in Gansu, dating to the Western Han dynasty, and the later paper from Baqiao in Xi’an predate Cai Lun’s work by more than two hundred years. From this perspective, Cai Lun improved the papermaking process rather than inventing it. Another view holds that Western Han paper was at most an early precursor, far inferior in quality to the paper associated with Cai Lun. This book accepts the case for papermaking in the Western Han period. Whatever position one takes, the example shows how rarely a major innovation is achieved in a single stroke. A flash of inspiration may play a part, but much of the work proceeds through incremental improvements.
Another controversy concerns Raymond Damadian, Paul Lauterbur of the United States, and Peter Mansfield of Britain, and their contributions to magnetic resonance imaging. The dispute prompted the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to assemble a team to examine their respective contributions. Damadian was among the early scientists to apply nuclear magnetic resonance to tumor research. He found differences in relaxation times between tumor tissue and normal tissue and proposed using those differences to detect tumors. Yet the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Lauterbur and Mansfield, who made subsequent contributions in this field. In expressing sympathy for Damadian, the author also implicitly makes her position clear: scientific contributions should be evaluated on the evidence, without being swayed by a scientist’s character or personality.
The author also clarifies several common misunderstandings about innovation. When Tu Youyou received the Nobel Prize, for example, commentators on Chinese social media lamented that China had suffered considerable economic losses because artemisinin had not been patented. Research on artemisinin, however, involved discovering the antimalarial properties of the compound found in sweet wormwood. That is a scientific discovery, which in itself cannot be patented. Methods for extracting the active compound and turning it into a medicine suitable for human use are technological matters and may be patented if they meet the requirements for patent protection. Once the findings identifying artemisinin as the active ingredient had been published, many manufacturers could develop different extraction methods and produce medicines. The commercial value of a patent on an extraction method also depends on the scope of its protection and the availability of alternative processes.
Taken as a whole, the book vividly presents an extraordinary history of human innovation, leaving much to reflect on after the final page. How much human ingenuity lies behind the everyday objects and tools we now take for granted! How many thinkers, scientists, and skilled craftspeople contributed to this magnificent panorama of invention! For a Chinese reader, it is difficult not to return to the Needham Question: Why did modern science and the Industrial Revolution not emerge in China? Why have Chinese people not contributed more to the roll of honor of human invention? In Chapter 24 and the conclusion, the author examines these questions and reaches insightful, thought-provoking conclusions. We hope China will learn from history as it pursues innovation, build and improve its national innovation system, remove institutional obstacles, and gain the confidence to address the author’s final questions: Can China become a leading force at the scientific and technological frontier and hold that position over the long term? Will it offer new solutions to human society? What changes might those solutions bring to the world? We await the answers with anticipation.
It is a great pleasure to learn that the second edition of A Brief History of Human Technological Innovation is about to appear. Alongside extensive revisions and additions, this edition gives particular attention to several major questions about the development of innovation: the relationship between major breakthroughs and incremental innovation, artificial intelligence’s effects on innovation, and the comparison of different innovation models. These questions may appear separate, but they share an underlying thread: How does innovation arise, and how is it sustained?
The relationship between major breakthroughs and incremental innovation concerns the rhythm and structure of technological progress. The author has observed that incremental innovations, though small, can accumulate like rain that “nourishes all things without a sound.” Major breakthroughs, once they emerge, can have exceptionally long lives and “remain in the human world.” Without the nourishment of incremental innovation, major breakthroughs struggle to realize their full social benefits; without successive major breakthroughs, the economy will eventually slip into stagnation as returns diminish. Identifying incremental innovations with the potential to become major breakthroughs is no easy task. This makes us particularly curious about the author’s fresh insights into the question.
Artificial intelligence takes this question into a new dimension. The author endorses the view that AI and its development toward superintelligence (SI) will launch a scientific and technological revolution whose effects may exceed those of the previous wave of information technology, potentially transforming the fabric of society. Its influence will extend throughout the processes of knowledge production and technological innovation. Which parts of our understanding of innovation need to be revised, and which should be retained? The author’s reflections on these questions are another reason to look forward to this edition.
The strengths and weaknesses of different innovation models, meanwhile, run through the book’s historical narrative. The revised edition pays particular attention to the factors behind U.S.–China technological competition, including competitive strategies, institutional arrangements, education and research, and manufacturing capabilities. It seeks to provide a window onto the future of global technological competition and help readers assess it more rationally and objectively.
At a time when people are exclaiming that artificial intelligence may be humanity’s final innovation, this revised edition should help turn our attention from anxiety about innovation’s end toward a deeper consideration of its nature in the AI age and its long-term significance for human society.
Xue Lan
Addendum, October 2026