crumbs of the cake. So when I sold Inter-Ker in 1996 I decided to start a financial page, a portal that offered all that information (currency exchange rates, bank data, interest rates and loans, tables of investments and trade, etc.) that the businesses I had programmed applications for had to laboriously obtain from different avenues. It was called Keralt.com , and it was an immediate success. After just one year, I began to receive buying offers from the most important banking companies in the world. In1999, on my thirty-second birthday, I became one of those guys that in North America they call ultra-rich, when I sold Keralt.com to Chase Manhattan Bank for four hundred sixty million dollars. My story was neither the only story like this nor the most well-known. Beating me in profit, for example, were Guillermo Kirchner and the Casares siblings, María and Wenceslao, of Argentina, who sold seventy-five percent of their Patagon.com portal to Banco Santander Central Hispano for five hundred twenty-eight million dollars. When it came down to it, the important thing about that transaction wasn’t all the money I received so much as the fact that they had bought an idea from me, only one of the many I could think up, so, with the dollars well invested, a few months later I began construction on my house, and I started Ker-Central, dedicated, on one hand, to programming internet security applications—antivirus software and firewalls—and on the other, to financing innovative projects in the field of artificial intelligence as it applied to finances (for example, the creation of neural networks for the advanced prediction of share prices). Ker-Central received these projects, studied them, and if they met the requirements and satisfied the advisory committee, produced and financed them, taking, obviously, a very high percentage of the profit. What no one in my family seemed to understand was that all of that had cost me many years of hard work, of struggle, and of lack of sleep. In their eyes, fortune had smiled on me because of some whim, and because of this my luck was just that, luck, and not the product of an effort like that which Daniel had expended in order to get where he was.
“The Miccinelli documents,” continued Ona, with a smile still on her lips, “written by two Italian Jesuits, missionaries in Peru, were comprised of thirteen folios, one of which, folded, contained a
quipu
that….”
“What’s a quipu?” I interrupted.
“A quipu…. Well, a quipu…,” She seemed unable to find adequate words. “A
quipu
is a thick wool cord from which hang a series of colored strings full of knots. Depending on the arrangement of these knots, their thickness, and the distance between them, the meaning varied. The Spanish chroniclers maintained that Incan
quipus
were accounting tools.”
“So the quipo was a kind of abacus,” I suggested.
“Yes and no. Yes, because it really did allow the Inca to keep track, in minute detail, of the taxes, weapons, the population of the empire, agricultural production, etc., and no, because according to references found in minor documents and in Guamán Poma de Ayala’s chronicle, discovered in 1908 in Copenhagen, the
quipus
were something more than simple calculators: they also related historical, religious, or literary occurrences. The problem was that Pizarro and the successive viceroys of Peru made it their business to destroy all the
quipus
they found, which were many, and to massacre the
Quipucamayocs
, the only ones who knew how to read those knots. Their interpretation was lost forever, and the only thing that remains is the obscure memory that the Inca controlled the administration of the empire with some exotic tangled strings. Whenever a
quipu
was found in some burial site, it was sent directly to be shown as a curiosity in some museum. No one knew how to read it.”
There were some quick knocks at the door, followed by the entrance into the room of a nurse with
“The Miccinelli documents,” continued Ona, with a smile still on her lips, “written by two Italian Jesuits, missionaries in Peru, were comprised of thirteen folios, one of which, folded, contained a
quipu
that….”
“What’s a quipu?” I interrupted.
“A quipu…. Well, a quipu…,” She seemed unable to find adequate words. “A
quipu
is a thick wool cord from which hang a series of colored strings full of knots. Depending on the arrangement of these knots, their thickness, and the distance between them, the meaning varied. The Spanish chroniclers maintained that Incan
quipus
were accounting tools.”
“So the quipo was a kind of abacus,” I suggested.
“Yes and no. Yes, because it really did allow the Inca to keep track, in minute detail, of the taxes, weapons, the population of the empire, agricultural production, etc., and no, because according to references found in minor documents and in Guamán Poma de Ayala’s chronicle, discovered in 1908 in Copenhagen, the
quipus
were something more than simple calculators: they also related historical, religious, or literary occurrences. The problem was that Pizarro and the successive viceroys of Peru made it their business to destroy all the
quipus
they found, which were many, and to massacre the
Quipucamayocs
, the only ones who knew how to read those knots. Their interpretation was lost forever, and the only thing that remains is the obscure memory that the Inca controlled the administration of the empire with some exotic tangled strings. Whenever a
quipu
was found in some burial site, it was sent directly to be shown as a curiosity in some museum. No one knew how to read it.”
There were some quick knocks at the door, followed by the entrance into the room of a nurse with
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