ABSTRACT
Blockchain records and (re)presents data, appends and witnesses, (de)materialises and (re)configures, and does so in ways that both reflect existing Internet capabilities and intensify them, for purposes that are primarily economic, but nevertheless result in social, cultural and political consequences. It continues long-standing traditions of human technique and experiment aimed at supplementing but above all preserving memory; making memory better, more expansive, more accountable, more visceral, more powerful, but always outside being. Thus wampum embodies memory, as it extends human memories of inherited knowledges via interconnected, nonlinear designs with associative message storage and retrieval methods. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. Transclusion implies that anyone posting a Xanadu document grants the world a licence to quote from it, charging the reader a one-time fee if they wish – a principle the author call 'transcopyright'.
