Issue #18 protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/egregoretex

"Standards make the world." - David Lang

Issue #17: protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/dirt-simple

“Though we leave behind innumerable traces, it has become commonplace to forget the source, origins, or authenticity of the information we carry.” - Kei Kreutler

“The hero of a protocolized world has mastered a general set of technological patterns that undergird not just the internal realities of organizations across the entire planet but even the interstitial spaces between them.” - Venkatesh Rao

Starting at 9am PDT (in 25 minutes): www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBc7...

“The average person’s awareness of protocols, in the built environment and elsewhere, likely suffers from adverse selection: the most visible protocols are the most dysfunctional ones.” - Drew Austin, Protocols Don’t Build Pyramids

“...if we do not start with a strong conception of what we and the world ought to be, we risk succumbing to designs that reward short-term payoffs or are dictated by those who stand to profit from our attention.” - Janna Tay

"Most life capable of meaningful interstellar travel is indistinguishable from technology." - Kevin Kelly, 12 Assumptions for Extraterrestrial Life

In a world that increasingly comprises protocols, power follows knowledge, not ascriptive authority.

Starting in ~30 minutes (19:00 PDT) www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjVj...

Issue #14 protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/a-chronicl...

Tomorrow’s guest talk is timely and powerful. What is Public Intelligence? Catch @vgr.bsky.social and @kevinkelly.bsky.social in conversation, tomorrow, April 22nd at 19:00 PDT, to find out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjVj...

“The real world was full of larger structures, smaller structures...than the tiny portion comprising sentient creatures and their societies, and it required a profound myopia of scale and similarity to believe that everything beyond this shallow layer could be ignored.” - Greg Egan, Diaspora

"I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It's not. Mine had me trained in two days." - Bill Dana

Issue #13: protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/zero-knowl...

“A clash of doctrines is not a disaster — it is an opportunity…In formal logic a contradiction is the signal of a defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.” - Alfred North Whitehead

“You’re telling me that seeing has a cost?” “No one wants to believe it, but yeah. Collective awareness is finite. Too much load, and the System starts dropping frames." protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/fault-tole... #decentralization #fiction at @protocolized.bsky.social

“Design is the beauty of turning constraints into advantages.” - Aza Raskin

“The internet has let us build the early stages of a global, digital civilization. But today it is built on weak foundations... And most of it is owned by a handful of companies, controlled by a small group of people, who live in one country.” - Josh Stark

"Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert." - Hannah Arendt

“A historical look at protocols suggests that their purpose has always been to simplify coordination and communication. With enough time, protocols converge upon conformity. They do not liberate us, but rather seek to control us completely.” - Nadia Asparouhova

"See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places." - Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.” - Jon Postel

Join us tomorrow, April 2nd, at 7pm PDT for a talk by @vgr.bsky.social titled A Protocol Fiction Protocol. Want a reminder? Tap play, then tap the one-time Notify Me button. www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2xd...

“Good protocols liberate in the same way disciplined habits and routines can liberate artists.” - @saffron.bsky.social

“Instead of viewing natural and artificial memory on a spectrum of authenticity, it’s more useful to regard them as unprotocolized and protocolized approaches to memory.” - @keikreutler.bsky.social

"Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths." - Umberto Eco

Live now!

“Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.” - Joseph Schumpeter

“Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.” - José Ortega y Gasset

“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.” - Frank Herbert

"The question is not how to get good people to rule; the question is: how can we organize political institutions so that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?" - Karl Popper

New story alert 🚨 "To Share, And Remember" is up now on the @protocolized.bsky.social Substack! Thanks to @tmbr.bsky.social and @vgr.bsky.social! protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/to-share-a...

SoP25 kickoff / Q&A starting in just a few minutes – join us live to learn more about this year's programming, grants, and tracks: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E1Y...

"Routinizing human behavior into a protocol can be characterized as a form of forgetting in the same way political engagement can feel exhaustingly endless." - Business Class Wine

“Protocols should be designed to fit our desires. We shouldn’t mindlessly redesign ourselves to fit them.” - Shreeda Segan

I'm pleased to announce the third year of the Summer of Protocols program. This issue of Protocolized contains a full program overview and several grant and prize opportunities. Please circulate widely, especially to educators and SF writers. protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/sop-2025-a...

“You should consider that the essential art of civilization is maintenance.” - Pete Seeger

“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.” - Stewart Brand

“A protocol simply imagined and designed is no protocol at all until it is actualized – applied to a given context and generated behavioral interactions with social actors. This is what weds protocols to time.” - Olivia Steiert

“Not only do cities contain protocols within and between systems like traffic and public space, cities also are protocols themselves. A city...is a localized system for organizing and focusing collective behavior toward coherent goals, like commerce or cultural production.” - @Drew Austin

“When movement through physical space becomes sufficiently abbreviated, it no longer involves travel at all. You can order delivery from a restaurant you might never visit in person. You can [teleport]... “home” from anywhere in a city without knowing the navigational steps involved.” - Chenoe Hart

Issue 004, out now:

Have you seen our guest talk with sci-fi writer Chen Qiufan, author of Waste Tide and AI 2041? www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6BD...

"I extricated myself to stand outside the shop and look at the coniferous tree, yearning for something that I couldn't quite put a finger on. Something I knew but had forgotten." protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/haven-tail...

“...building and implementing alignment technology is still an emerging art. Basic features like mute and report are blunt tools used in social media ecosystems. Network participants are sculpting their relationships with hammers.” - Rafael Fernández

"The constraints that emerge in good protocols are in some ways similar to the conservation laws that emerge in scientific theories of natural phenomena." The Unreasonable Sufficiency of Protocols

“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.” - Robert H. Barrow

"Good protocols, more than comprehensive physical design, enable the staging of uncertainty, the irrigation of territories with potential, and the accommodation of unanticipated opportunity." - Drew Austin, Protocols Don't Build Pyramids