
Quipu - zw123456
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu
======
telephonetemp
Calling it the Inca sneakernet would have been more accurate. Even then,
however, what the Wikipedia article discusses is more of a medium for storing
numerical data than a means of communication, so the comparison is forced.

~~~
gus_massa
(Original title: "The Inca Internert")

~~~
karl_gluck
Mods invisibly changing titles really bothers me.

It's even worse that the mods decided it was a great idea to silence debate by
[dead]ing the topic when HNers discussed possible alternatives.

Makes me wonder how much longer I want to stay in this community.

~~~
aaron695
This is a classic case of why mods should be changing titles.

How on earth is this an Inca Internet??

This is why I clicked, I was intrigued how can the Incas have have had an
Internet like thing?

I then wasted a lot of time trying to see the relationship. But there is none.
It's not even close to an Internet.

I just got link baited. Welcome to Reddit.

The article in itself is probably interesting, but I'm not big on being lied
to.

Other discussions about threads disappearing might be interesting but aren't
really relevant in this thread.

~~~
gojomo
It was the closest thing the Incans had to an Internet, and a bit more like
digital technology than those of us raised on the idea that the Incans had no
system of writing would expect. And of course anything with such a title will
be speaking figuratively: if you were fooled, or unable to see the basis for
the metaphor, the fault lies as much with your literalism as the original
submitter's stab at metaphor.

Now, I'd agree "The Incan Internet" could be improved as a title, especially
to explain the article's relevance to this audience. "Quipu: the Incans'
digital communication tech" would bridge the gap from the original title to
the interesting, vaguely-Internet-like aspect for HN readers.

Unfortunately, it seems the mysterious headline-changing-Gnomes of HN only
have a button for "revert to original TITLE", and a fierce loyalty to
literalism over creative-but-fair headlines. So, we wind up with useless-but-
easily-enforced crap headlines like "Quipu".

~~~
derleth
It's part of a disturbing presentism that is (and probably has always been)
rampant in popularized history. It's as if authors think we can't understand
anything unless we see it through the lens of some popular current technology
or movement. It's a great way to misunderstand something entirely.

This trivializes the subject of history, by enforcing the idea that nothing
ever changes. "The Incas had an Internet, we have an Internet, so they must
have been just exactly like us, so studying them is a waste of time."
Moreover, it ignores the real work done in modern times to make our era
different from times past: If anything we have now can be equated with
something we had then using facile arguments that make a hash of the facts,
then we can make it look like there is no progress and that we don't need to
study science or technology any longer.

It's sham history in the service of sham philosophy.

~~~
gojomo
If an author had written a long case defending the analogy, maybe. But it was
a throwaway metaphor in a headline to pique interest, so I think you're
projecting those other unrelated concerns onto the situation.

In particular, it's those complaining about how the headline wasted their time
who are belittling the value of historical comparisons across very different
eras and societies. Their reaction is, "What? The Incans didn't really have
anything that could literally be called an Internet? You tricked me into
clicking when I could have stayed even more narrowly focused on my present-day
Internet-centric concerns!"

Whereas instead, the headline author was trying to shake people out of their
presentism with the figurative language. "There is something surprising here
about the Incans", he was saying – and absolutely not any larger
objectionable/anti-intellectual theme about how "there is no progress" (which
is obviously unsupportable from the details on the Quipu system).

------
zeckalpha
This was my best scoring Scrabble word.

~~~
roryokane
“quipu” is worth 16 points given no extra bonuses (according to
[http://www.thekatespanos.com/scrabble-score-
calculator/?word...](http://www.thekatespanos.com/scrabble-score-
calculator/?word=quipu)).

~~~
zeckalpha
I landed it on the triple word score square.

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Houshalter
So the Incans independently invented a representation of 0 and a based number
system? That's pretty cool.

~~~
undershirt
Base system, yes. Zero, no.

The Babylonians also had a representation of 0 as being a space. But that
created confusions because you can't end a number with a space. For example, 1
and 100 would look the same if you just used a space in place of zero. They
eventually created a symbol for zero, but never used it by itself or at the
end of a number.

Similarly, the Incas used a space for a zero, but it creates the same reliance
on context to deduce the meaning of a space. And since the Incas represented
numbers differently in the ones place, that was their marker for the end of a
number, which means it can't be nothing. I imagine they could leave a space at
the end and use the context of the numbers above or below since numbers were
vertically aligned in the quipu.

So no, Incas did not have a proper zero.

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prawn
An enterprising jeweller could draw inspiration from this to create necklaces
with hidden messages for us nerdy types to buy for partners. Cord, wool,
silver thread, wires, etc.

They could also do a range inspired by the pulsar distance/frequency depiction
in the Voyager Golden Record that describes our Sun's location. I've always
thought that was quite cool.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voyager_Golden_Record_Cove...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voyager_Golden_Record_Cover_Explanation.svg)

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aaron695
Given the original title "The Inca Internet" why is it not just a mail system?

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coyotebush
Anyone else remember these from Amazon Trail (in the final scoring process)?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazon_Trail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazon_Trail)

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tambourine_man
Native brazilians in the Xingu still use something similar for storing songs,
like partitures.

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theandrewbailey
I'm not sure if this would be immune to the NSA or not.

