Looking around at other living creatures it looks as if consciousness is a gradient. Several factors could move you up and down the gradient (to simplify), and

Looking around at other living creatures it looks as if consciousness is a gradient. Several factors could move you up and down the gradient (to simplify), and I'd imagine that the speed of data transmission would be one of those. So as far as the thought experiment goes, I'd imagine the pen and paper method of transmission would be slow enough to knock the "brain" off the consciousness scale completely.