All messages will be understood

The Incas, dyed cords with different colors, tied knots in them, just for to send messages out to the people and the world. It was not easy for people in nowadays to understand the meanings of those cords, however difficulties will always overcome and eventually we are going to be able to communicate with the Incas (through their work of Quipu) and the Egyptians (through their work of papyrus), and then understand their messages. Their work were astonishing and remarkable especially during the time when there is not even one single concept of writing. As we can tell from the Quipu, ancient people were smart enough to send message, do math, and even show a civilization about social standard. By this, I mean that different people hold different social standards and receive different respects, just like the author of this article mentioned, that the quipumaker was privileged. The author did a great job explaining why the quipu make sense to the Incas. Even though he did not mention how the quipu was discovered and understood, however we are now able to say that once a message got sent out, it will be understood and noticed not only by the surrounding people, but also by people we never expected. Messages might be understood wrongly, however once they are there, they have (historical ) values and will be recognizable.

A written message, which we now call it literacy, is easier for people to use to express a feeling, communicate with others and influence the rest of the world. From the origin of literacy, people started to try to write down a message on stones, on bones, etc, until it developed years after years to our current way of writing. We now have different language, which defines a culture and different format of writing, on paper or electronically. Messages are easier to sent out and get responded. It might take people who born 1000 years later, a bit of time to understand our writings, however I strongly believe that every mess

Means of Expression

Before the innovation of a written medium for information, the entirety of human’s pool of knowledge rested solely in the memory of people. Any processing of the world had to be communicated in a very intimate, immediate way, through verbal communication. Psychologically, this placed humanity in the realm of the tangible; people were unable to separate themselves from what they knew. The knowledge had no option to leave the context from which it came. With the development of symbolic representation of information came the potential to extricate the knowledge of one from oneself and place it into the concrete world. The tally marks and clay tokens began to create information away from the knower. This development began to change the psyche of people. With a way of remembering information outside of our heads, our memory, then, began to loose its strength. Ancient bards needed to remember thousands of lines of a story out of necessity, but with a written language came the ability to tell the story independent from the speaker.

Continuing, the development of a written form required people to come to agreement on the symbols or signs, like the tally marks on bones or clay tokens. As the media developed in complexity, what the media represented began to develop in complexity. The complexity, like any human endeavor, was a procedural growth. The tally marks counted some unknown concrete phenomenon, supposedly the phases of the moon, in increments of one with a very limited meaning as in: the tally marks could only be useful if one were told what they stood for. The question must then be asked, did humans further complicate their transfer of information because they required it or did the technological developments lead people to complicate their ability to transfer information?

People had more options to tell the information they needed to tell, and the information now could live beyond the moment. With written medium came the ability to transfer information both spatially and temporally. The Egyptians using papyrus, as opposed to carving symbols into stone, allowed information to be passed across great distances as well as to use throughout the ages. Overall, humans have always sought means of expression, whether economic or artistic, and we will continue to find media through which to transfer the complexities of life.