Your example reminds me of one of Hofstadter's dialogues in The Mind's I, where he imagines that after Einstein's death, all of the information in his brain has been transcribed into a huge book of numbers which can tell you how precisely it would have responded to different inputs. It would of course be possible to 'talk' to Einstein's brain in this way, work out how his brain would change and how he would respond, and thus have a conversation with the brain. I found the question of whether such a book would be capable of consciousness (and whether it would be Einstein) baffling and a little scary, and raises many of the same problems as in your first meditation.

I'll take that as a compliment because if the "The Mind's I" is a book - I have never heard of it before - written by a famous author and you find this post similar then I suppose it can't be all bad? :)

Ps. However if the book in that particular example recorded only a "still image" or a "slice" from the structure of the consciousness, then I don't think it constitutes as a recording of a thought (even though it still would be possible interact with it if it was allowed to evolve) I think that would require a recording of a three dimensional trajectory over time.