zip

[Tom Jennings]

On Thu, 26 May 2005, John Foust wrote:

> Although I agree with KISS principles, I'm not buying the validity of
> the quipu as a good analogy in this situation. 
> [...] There seems to be a cottage industry in
> theories about them.

Actually, they are a really good example!

The point about them is their use was fully embedded in some local
culture.  The medium, the content, the context, nearly everything
is gone.  Whatever the use was, we don't need the technology; we
have nice nylon rope, thank you.  The cultural embedment is what
is interesting.

If tomorrow morning a quipo rosetta stone were found, I doubt it
would make all that much difference.

Even if it became known that quipo were harvest/hunt/marriage/etc
demo data, there's not enough accompanying contextual data (date?
season? year? owner? gender? farmer? king?) to render the content
very meaningful.

The approximate technological implementation and interface (eg.
knots) are important; reading it seems less so.


Quipos had meaning (presumably) only within their local culture.
So will ZORK and everything else.