Portability - Bryant McGill

# Portability **Domain:** Infrastructure / Rights / Continuity **Doc Type:** Canonical Infrastructure Node **Maturity:** Foundational ## Definition **Portability** is the practical ability to move data, state or function between custodians and substrates without losing integrity, meaning or rights. ## Evolutionary Nexus Public genome formats and recombinant DNA in [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] show different forms of encoded structure crossing institutional or biological boundaries. ## Continuity Context Export is not enough. Portability requires documented semantics, compatible interpreters, provenance and freedom from contractual retaliation. It limits the residual sovereign's power to make exit equivalent to death. ## See Also [[wiki/Continuity Stack|Continuity Stack]], [[wiki/Technical Obsolescence|Technical Obsolescence]], [[wiki/Knowledge Commons|Knowledge Commons]], [[wiki/Substrate Transition|Substrate Transition]] ## Relationships - **Collection route:** [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]]. - **Source context:** [[articles/Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] and [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]]. - **Inference provenance:** [[research/Research Inferences|Research Inferences]]. ## Research Inferences  These entries translate the forward-looking register in [[research/Research Inferences|Research Inferences]] into ordinary wiki prose. The tier labels apply to the inference, not automatically to every factual anchor inside it. The interpretive frame comes from [[articles/Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] and [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]]. Collection route: [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]]. - **INF-0208 — Plausible.** A sidecar that holds the person's state separately from the model that runs it makes the model replaceable without loss. Decoupling state from engine is the single design decision that determines whether a hosted person can ever change providers.  ## Research Inference Attractors  These are secondary semantic placements for the inference attractor network. Each statement keeps its original ID and tier; its canonical cluster page links back to every destination. Source register: [[research/Research Inferences|Research Inferences]]. Interpretive context: [[articles/Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] and [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]]. Collection route: [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]]. - **INF-0241 — Analytic.** Defining death as the irreversible loss of the information that specifies a person makes the threshold dependent on future reading technology rather than present medicine. Under that definition the boundary moves as capability improves, which is a coherent and increasingly operational position. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Deep Time Continuity|Deep Time Continuity]] - **INF-0259 — Plausible.** If clinical BCIs write a common format, a patient's decoder history survives a change of device vendor. Device-neutral records are the patient-side equivalent of the portability fight, and they are decided in standards bodies years before anyone notices. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Continuity Governance|Continuity Governance]] - **INF-0267 — Plausible.** Persistent identifiers with resolution services, as used for publications and datasets, would let a hosted state be referenced across custodians and centuries. The infrastructure exists and is cheap; only the decision to use it is missing. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Continuity Governance|Continuity Governance]] - **INF-0272 — Plausible.** Data-portability rights in general privacy law already require exporting personal data in machine-readable form, and a hosted residual is personal data by any definition. Existing law may compel state portability long before any continuity-specific statute is written. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Continuity Governance|Continuity Governance]]