Innovations Rediscovered: Innovations lost in time and found again, Importance of preserving your culture
It took a European Country's filling a patent on the medicinal uses of Turmeric for us Indians to proclaim the intellectual property that was haldi. We often forget the riches of our own cultures and ignore the knowledge of our ancestors. It consequently takes many years in rediscovering these "innovations" which obviously consumes time and effort that could have been put to some other better use.
Progress in one of its many definitions, is ridding one of the old and embracing the present or the future. How do we then selectively learn and unlearn aspects of our culture? How can we take the good and forget the bad, moreover how do we judge the good or the bad?
In our project, we aim to study some such innovations that have been lost in time and ponder over ways of preserving our learnings from our forefathers. We will be carrying out a specific research of the Civilizations in the Indian sub-continent and the orient and look for instances when the wheel had to be re-invented because we could'nt preserve it.
We look forward to some specific examples that might come to your mind?
We also plan to draw a framework to preserve the innovations of today for use by tomorrow's generations.Do you have any ideas that may help us in this regard?
Hi,
ReplyDeleteNational Innovation Foundation, was formed with a similar objective. It may be of some help to look at their framework for pointers or shortcomings in safeguarding and preserving our traditional knowledge.
Cheers,
Shantam