DNS[0] is only a decentralized hierarchy with caching, a class of system which pre-dates the digital era as the de-facto means of political and military organization in any human society larger than a village or town. DNS as a directory system for IP is could itself be viewed as a direct philosophical descendant of military insignia (perhaps via the then-popular branch-tangent of the telephone book, itself ex-telegraph, and postal system) and these could all be in effect traced back to at least Roman society[1], I don't think arguing this is a "western" invention is very convincing or useful. Any ancient army or polity of any size would have had an equivalent, which would then include ancient Egypt, China[2], India, Mesopotamia[3], Mesoamerica, etc. Actually, come to think of it, the comparative study of ancient postal systems would be pretty interesting.[4]
> I don't think arguing this is a "western" invention is very convincing or useful. Any ancient army or polity of any size would have had an equivalent, which would then include ancient Egypt, China[2], India, Mesopotamia[3], Mesoamerica, etc.
And yet, none of these other regions and cultures actually did invent it, and thus it remains a Western invention.
Of course. However, my point was the originality and claim to authorship is low, because if you look at store and forward networks with centrally agreed node identification and local caching using that for routing purposes, humans have literally done it globally for 3000+ years... that's clear prior art.
It's like "technology" being used to describe a bash script, or "invention" used to describe a standard algorithm.
By that same token the internet was invented by the first person to hand gesture to another one. You can’t dilute DNS down to a directory because there were/and are already other directory protocols.