IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 46

to implement memory as an IPFS
system. The blockchain would be
an always-on accessible memory
augment, predictively and in real
time looking up and verifying memories. One huge under-realized
benefit of blockchains thus far is
the ability to verify and authenticate both users and information
in real time. A central need in the
digital societies of the future could
likely be confirming the source
and provenance of information,
including the identity of entities,
whether biologically-based or digitally-based. The first step in building a Blockchain Thinker would be
instantiating a blockchain-based
memory system. Every memory
could be tagged, addressed, and
registered on the blockchain for
easily validated lookup at any later
moment. Smart memory is exactly analogous to the idea of smart
property as registering all assets
on the blockchain with their own
uniquely identifying indicator, a
cryptographic address, for later activation and transfer. Smart memory would similarly log all ideas,
memories, thoughts, and feelings.
Blockchain-based memory thus is
indexed, explicit, discrete, inventoried, and available. This is just the
"Level 1" basic blockchain-based
memor y description, no IPFS inspired functionality yet.

Level 2: Multiple Distributed
Memory Copies;
Hot-Swappable Memory
"Level 2" blockchain-based memory could add IPFS-type functionality
to make memory access more efficient by having multiple distributed
copies of memories. Deep-learning
and other algorithms could be used
to assess optimal architectures for
Blockchain Thinkers, like the location, separation, and latency specific memory nodes, and overall how
many memory copies are needed,

and their nature and kind. How
should memory copies be arrayed
out from or connected to processing
nodes most expediently? Further
how is the dynamism of "what is an
important memory" to be assessed.
Perhaps memories should be hotswapped per their rising or declining use, in the Storj model (http://
storj.io/), like the brain's own pruning techniques. The idea is an IPFS
implementation for memory: distributed decentralized memory with
multiple copies of files served peerto-peer in real time on demand.

the blockchain; an easy means of
calling and confirming certain unitary ideas but also whole codebases
or ecologies of ideas and memories in the blockchain thinking and
brain-as-a-DAC context. Merkle trees
could be used to hash a whole
corpus or brain state into one file.
What would it be like to have your
whole brain recorded in a Merkle
tree? You could easily reload previous brain state moments and more
expediently get to work without
having to remind yourself of your
train of thought and related subideas. Hashing and Merkle trees
are an important tool that could
be used later in other situations
such as confirming the fidelity of
digital mindfile uploads, that all the
"meatspace" human brain thoughts,
ideas, emotions, and experiences
were adequately received into digital format. In fact, one claim is that
all that might be necessary for the
"cognitive status of the mindclone
to be no different than that of the
brain" would be cloning memories
and thought patterns to digital substrates [18].
Another benefit of versioning
could be using it as an introspection tool in the process of idea
generation. More explicit versioning could allow the possibility of
seeing how ideas are developed;
a sort of idea-generation in the
wild tracking capability, to see how
ideas emerge and are developed.
Just like Github shows the historical record of how a software corpus developed over time, so too
perhaps blockchain thinking could
demonstrate how ideas develop
over time. Understanding more
about the process of ideation could
be of great benefit to facilitating
more and improved idea generation
in all forms of intelligence. One
claim is that humans are special
and unique, and defy implementation in computers, not just because

Level 3: Github Versioning
for Memory
"Level 3" blockchain-based memory
could add additional IPFS-inspired
functionality to a Blockchain Thinker
and a blockchain-based memory
system by incorporating the versioning feature. Essentially a "Github
for memory," this feature would
allow all previous versions of a
memory, idea, or data element to
be tracked over time and retrieved
and analyzed on demand. The first
benefit is provenance, confirming
that the file, that memory, has not
been hacked, and is still the exact
contents of a previous date-timestamped moment. In the future,
blockchains may be used to track
IP (intellectual property), the ownership of digital art ("art" in the patenting sense of owned IP), proving that
a certain entity created a certain
asset at a specific previous time.
The idea of IPFS is not merely versioning, but versioning in an easyto-use format like Github that both
captures the versioning automatically whilst in process so the contributor (ideator) does not need to
think about this administrative function explicitly, and also such that
the easy-to-use web-based platform
makes it easy to assess changes
between versions and how ideas
developed. The idea is Github on
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

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december 2015

http://http:// http://www.storj.io/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015