Re siro's assertion that capitalism is the key factor in the west's dominance: I studied Chinese economic history for a while and this learned some really interesting things about progress and innovation. As far as innovation goes, the chinese, and Asians in general have the advantage in sheer time of dominance. This is not due to some innate ability because of genetics or anything like that, but due to the fact that they basically have had thousands of years living in a resource rich area with a huge land mass. They basically had unlimited room to expand and grow enough food for what amounted to a huge population boom well in advance of any population boom around the world.
The Chinese had a multitude of inventions that allowed for world travel well before any Europeans (excluding vikings) were making long sea voyages (read about zheng he the Chinese admiral for more on this). They had more than enough knowledge and resources to have an industrial revolution as early as 900 ad. But what stopped them? There are probably a lot if things that stopped them, but one thing that I came across a lot in my reading back then was the Chinese affinity for confucian values of self sufficiency and not stretching beyond ones own means. There was basically a conscious choice by leaders of the Chinese people on multiple occasions, over about 800 years, to avoid too advanced of a technological age. This was even perpetuated into Mao's rule with "the great leap forward" followed by re education and turning inward for answers to their problems of growth.
While I am not 100% sold on capitalism being the vehicle for industrial revolution (imo, it's a stronger chance that the printing press was the vehicle, or that ingenuity had reached a critical mass and could not be held back any longer), it does have some merit.
The world would certainly be vastly different had Asians been the ones who spread modern technology.
Side note on the Americans of 1000 years ago: those people were pretty advanced in their own right, and at least as prosperous as contemporary Europe. They lacked one insurmountable advantage, they didn't have the exposure to disease that Eurasians did, and obviously lacked immunity. If native Americans would have had exposure to a few more large animals, we could be living in a world dominated by aztec, incan and maya people.
