IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 47

of irrational behavioral foibles, but
because of ingenuity - independent
thinking, new idea generation, creativity, spontaneity, serendipity,
and free will. This claim is used to
argue that one reason AI might be
"friendly" to humans is that it cannot itself replicate these properties
of human ingenuity to which there
is great value. Blockchain thinking might be used to investigate
human ingenuity more specifically.
Perhaps ingenuity might be articulated in greater detail, so that it
could be catalyzed and facilitated,
both in the classical real-life environment of human-based intelligence, and in Digital Thinkers.
It might be possible to obtain a
more granular characterization of
the architecture of ideas, and their
development, propagation, interaction, and retirement.

train, or the sense of time "flying
by" in fun interactions with friends
or family, or being in a flow state
and losing all sense of time. Bergson denotes this qualitative internal experience of time as duration.
This sense of the qualitative internal
side of experience extends to all
lived experiences such as the sense
of consciousness and the self; and
possibly the inner sense of the
experience of information (Bergsonian Information) [23], and ideation.
We may have a qualitative sense
of ideation, of what it feels like to
come up with new ideas. Consider
a time when you have been in peak
intellectual form, and had a major
flash of insight or a really good
brainstorming session.
Quantitatively, these moments
of ideation have been measured
electromagnetically as gamma
wave bursts in the brain, and
advanced mindworkers like monks
tend to have more of them [4],
[7], [10]. Qualitatively, there is an
experience too, and this might
be captured by blockchain thinking's soft-hashing tools in "Bergsonian Ideation," extending the
progression of duration-as-time
to duration-as-consciousness, to
duration-as-information, to duration-as-ideation. Bergson starts
to contemplate this too, that the
process of ideation might be better understood, in his notion of
intuition is a "method of thinking
in duration." The reason that the
qualitative is important is that both
quantitative and qualitative dimensions may be necessary for generalpurpose problem solving AIs, and
the qualitative may be a term that is
more-readily technically articulable
to incorporate in AI design than
consciousness.

Level 4: Soft-Hashing and
Qualitative Ideation: Ideas
in Development
"Level 4" blockchain-based memory
functionality now extends beyond
the IPFS-inspired ideas in blockchain-based memory to include the
notion of soft-hashing to denote
memories and ideas in formulation and development. This is the
concept of qualitative hashing or
soft-hashing - a qualitative sense
of ideas in development, including the notion of gaps where there
should be new ideas. The philosopher Bergson articulates the distinction between the quantitative and
qualitative aspects of lived experience. For example, in the case of
time, there is clock time and the
internal subjective experience of
time. As the term suggests, clock
time can be measured objectively
and externally; a minute is always a
minute. Subjective time, however,
is the internal experience of time,
which might be faster or slower than
clock time. Consider waiting for a
december 2015

Blockchain-Based Memory Aides
Departing from qualitative ideation, a more immediate practical
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

benefit of having the whole of a
thinker's memory on the blockchain (and by extension the whole
of a society's thinking on the blockchain) could be running algorithms
over it for patterns and consistency. First, even just the base case
of memory retrieval is a killer app.
Blockchain-based memory aides
(having the whole of your memory
encoded and accessible on a blockchain) would be a heightened version of what is currently envisioned
as memory aides, for example,
wearables or augmented eyewear
conducting facial image recognition or other means of identifying
others and presenting information.
Relevant information could be
summoned for use in the ability
to greet someone with higher-resolution; to more immediately be
apprised of what has been happening in the other's life. Obviously,
this would include the memory
retrieval of a name, but also much
more per the integration with realtime Internet-based information,
perhaps matched priority-wise to
the highest-order shared interests
between the two parties. You could
say "Courtney, how nice to see you
again, how is Mark (e.g.; partner,
son, artificial companion, etc.)? I
see your recent post on the Philosophy of Complexity; I am working
on a related project." It would be of
substantial benefit to have humans
and memory appliances working
together seamlessly, especially in
cases of impairment (general memory decline with age, stroke, and
neurodegenerative disease like
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease); in new situations; and in general off-loading the mental drudgery
of memory and the social cost of
poor memory. The ability to look
up and verify blockchain-registered
data in real time automatically via
wearables could enable higher-resolution human communication.

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