Ideas referenced:
- Jaron Lanier
- Saul Kripke
- blockchain
- commonplace books
- Walter Benjamin - work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction
Jaron Lanier has an intriguing suggestion that digital documents should be unique and non-copyable. He believes this would restore a sense of context, provenance, and value to them.
A copyable digital universe, the one we currently have, is like a sense and reference view of language (cf Frege). All you need is a description of a file. That is its identity. A descriptive view of reference is one which makes it context-independent.
A digital universe of unique digital objects is more like a Kripkean view of language. Causal chain matters.