The reading of Wampum as Hypertext describes the origins of the ideas behind Hypertext, which actually began with the ideas from the Native American’s wampum belt, in which textile showed specific patterns and links are used in order to represent and read as memory and information. While initially appearing complicated, a person who understands the pattern work would have access to such information through the lines of the wampum and would know the finer details. This idea proved to be a rather profound idea that would arrive to use in the modern era with the creation of hypertext, also in which a person would have access to numerous amounts of related information, created through the patterns of code and programming, similar to wampum textile. These ideas proved to be revolutionary to the internet, and the access of it allowed for easy access to information and quicker development of the computing system
Both wampum and Western hypertexts show digital and visual rhetoric. Wampum communicates through combinations of dark purple and the white beads, just like computers use zero and one. They also share nonlinear networks which contain layered information and narratives, sharing more than one story within each of their respective sections. As well, both act as supplemental memory. Hypertext contains troves of data readily available for research, while each bead within a wampum belt is a node representing information. Moreover, the very nature of wampum is interactive; nodes create association between symbolic representation and the spoken word, with connecting material linking to related information, and the belt as a whole represents the relationship between the “giver” and “presenter” of the belt. All of this lends itself to the power of wampum as a hypertext of community knowledge. Thus, unlike to Western hypertext, people should belong to the community in order to interpret, present, and recreate wampum communications.
Understanding the connections between wampum and hypertext credits American Indians as understanding and developing technologies in their own right. It also poses the question, “whose definition of technologically advanced are you using when evaluating your technological proficiency?” (Haas 94). Haas argues that the west does not get to decide unilaterally what constitutes advanced technology. She does not believe that western hypertext in its digitized format was originally conceived of by American Indians. Instead, she highlights the fact that American Indians, too, developed a concept of an interconnected web of information, and that their version of this web is a different version of technology yet equally valid.
Gabriel -> Wrote the first paragraph
Sean -> Wrote about digital rhetoric, visual rhetoric, associative indexing in the second paragraph and helped edit
Charles -> Wrote about nonlinear knowledge and supplementary memory in the second paragraph
Georgia -> Wrote the third paragraph
