Research
Summer of Protocols is a research program aiming to accelerate and broaden the study of protocols.
We increasingly rely on digital spaces. Yet without a common language for them, we cannot imagine, articulate, and realize a shared future. We can summarize patterns that aid human flourishing, and form languages to imagine collectively. This idea, referred to as “pattern language”, was first used by architects to... Read More
Protocols are often viewed or articulated through an instrumental lens – their purpose seen as the means to an end. However, this conception fails to account for the way protocols alter how a participant thinks and acts beyond just giving behavioral direction. Taking a cue from phenomenological methods, which... Read More
A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander’s best known work, published in 1977, embraces this notion of variable agency in the built environment. Alexander presents 253 distinct patterns, each of which "describes a problem which appears over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of a solution... Read More
Digital information is encoded in the built environment all around us. It emerged prior to the advent of electronic computing in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the development of building floor numbers, street addresses and enclosed interior rooms associated with names or numbers all mapped physical space according... Read More
Through a process of visually investigating how addressability appears and operates in the world, we might develop ideas about how that collected information could inform new design work which deliberately responds to the idea as a spatial concept. What follows is a collection of analytical scenarios which operate at a variety of spatial... Read More
This is a multi-node real-time video protocol for nodes of cameras to un-expose, to see, to be masked, to meet each other, to be displaced while being here simultaneously, and to float in-between—all through the tunnel and narrative of the virtual private network—connection as material, protocol as aesthetics. It... Read More
ARC Regenerative Communities Coming Soon Case Study (Coming Soon) Symposium Slides ARC Regenerative Communities Protocol ARC Regenerative Communities is about outcome-driven civilizational design. To achieve this we attend closely to what works and what does... Read More
Four hundred years before the term artificial intelligence emerged, debates about the development of “artificial memory” stirred. In contrast to natural memory, artificial memory involves using aids to help us remember. It represents a procedural, protocolized approach to recollection. Today, memory can’t escape metaphors from computing, but this isn’t... Read More
Autonomous Realities Coming Soon Case Study (Coming Soon) Symposium Slides (Coming Soon) Autonomous Realities We've proposed two speculative protocols for a future where MR headsets are common and users want to share their mixed realities.... Read More
Marcie, a struggling potter, finds herself thrust into an unexpected whirlwind of success when her AI agent, Navi, transforms her art into a viral sensation. Quiet mornings at the wheel become a never-ending hustle as orders flood in for her black clay pottery, but as Marcie delves deeper into... Read More
A protocol for composable memory. A generative process, culminating in an island that encompasses all (real) memories. The player must leverage a pool of “collective real memory” cards to create a brand new character (“'Eve”). The player selects memory fragment cards from different real individuals, and freely arranges them... Read More
Timekeeping protocols, and the devices they are intertwined with, have shaped consciousness and been a primary site of control and power throughout history. Ancient Romans resisted sundials that regimented their days; British imperialists used loud clock towers to assert dominance in colonized lands. Attitudes toward timekeeping acquired moral dimensions,... Read More
Throughout the centuries, successful dating and coupling has always relied on protocols, from arranged marriage to courtship to swiping on dating apps. These protocols have evolved along with technology and culture. In the West, however, swipe-based dating app protocols now occupy a “protocol monopoly.” Hinge, Bumble, Tinder, and other... Read More
Protocols are frequently touted as the liberating alternative to walled technological gardens, but the historical purpose of protocols has always been to simplify decision-making and reduce human agency. How do we reconcile these two narratives? I explore the dangerous side of protocols, and how their ability to drive coordination... Read More
This case study presents the fall of Orkut, a pioneering social network that once dominated the cyberspace of Brazil. The study emphasizes the role of Orkut's forum-like communities as platforms for collective interactions and experiments with new social protocols that shaped the Brazilian digital landscape of the 2000s. Contrasting... Read More
This 6-part work of speculative fiction, set in the year 2065 is told through the lens of a journalist reporting on the City of Vancouver, BC, three decades after its transition to protocolized governance. Though many definitions of a protocol have been offered, for our purposes, protocols are defined... Read More
End to End Encryption in ActivityPub Every protocol deserves a second chance. Case Study Symposium Slides (Coming Soon) End-to-end Encryption in ActivityPub ActivityPub is the W3C standard for distributed social networking. In this project, we... Read More
Protocolization of an individual’s work, the weaving of individual protocols up to a team level, and the zoomed-out view of an organization as a system of protocols push at the basic premises that we have around what intellectual ownership and value capture means in knowledge work. This exploration and... Read More
Farflora is an exploration of generative art NFTs, experimentally integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the generative art creation process. Generative art typically involves autonomous systems, which can independently influence the characteristics of the artwork without direct human intervention. In this case, the project expands on traditional on-chain generative art,... Read More
Fire Protocols After a century of fire suppression and heating atmospheric conditions, California has changed from a fire-ecology to a fire-climate; our ability to work with fire is reshaping how we come to know the world. Fire protocols seeks to adapt communities to fire as... Read More
The protocols of sacred memory are carved in stone. Four Doors is an architectural mnemonic—a collection of portals to my research on monastic memory practices. It’s inspired by the Latin inscriptions above the four doors of the seminary-turned-hotel where Summer of Protocols researchers met for our in-person retreat. Medieval... Read More
The 19-inch equipment rack format found in data centers has been used as a highly flexible technical standard since before the internet’s emergence. Devices of varied shapes and sizes fit within a wide range of rack configurations which may be mounted on walls or on wheels, transported onto stages... Read More
Good Death looks at the end-of-life process for worlds. Worlds are what grows on a protocol when a protocol lives, though they can grow on other substrates, including games, social media platforms, and other communal spaces. The core thesis of this essay is that the death of a world... Read More
Human-engineered systems have long required overrides that prevent the unchecked execution of system procedures from resulting in undesirable outcomes. In the age of complex engineered machines whose failure can predictably kill those using them, this has led to the increasingly sophisticated design of killswitches, failsafes, and overrides. Indeed, the... Read More
*Meet me on the deep net* is a tiny browser-based game about crossing an ocean to meet a stranger. It explores intimacy, trust, and the rituals of establishing connection while being anonymous.
How will the future remember us? How will we remember ourselves as we live through the discontinuity and trauma of these times? What will we tell our children? In 2045 a network of memory sanctuaries have emerged to gather, sustain and breathe life into localised memories of people and... Read More
Inspired by scientist Michael Levin’s research on xenobots, Micronaut Odyssey imagines a future of microbial robots wandering in space. As completely biological robots made from living cells, Xenobots can perform specific tasks without being genetically edited. In the future, they could help repair human tissues, remove pollutants, generate human... Read More
Welcome to the New Time Machines Working Group! We’re an agency that designs and develops memory protocols for aspiring time travelers. For ages, the arts of memory were rigorously developed and passed down from generation to generation. But in this era of digitally-mediated memory, the protocols that augment our... Read More
The on-chain world is shaped by the data we own, and current data visualization tools are not enough for us to actively connect with our data. Do I understand my data? Can I interact with my data? How can I connect with others through my data? We need more... Read More
Plurality in Practice Imagine a future where decision-making and resource allocation are driven by nuanced voting protocols that consider voter identity and expertise, moving beyond the limitations of traditional voting systems. Would this lead to diverse and surprising consensus and efficient results, or become mired... Read More
Seeing the world through the lens of protocols has completely changed how I navigate it. Realizing how “protocolized” I was, it was difficult not to use this language in everyday context. This project aims to make the protocol perspective accessible to everyone. Inspired by Angela Walch’s The Protocol System... Read More
In the Fall of 2022, the word protocol was suddenly everywhere. The proximal cause was obvious: fueled, in part, by the highly visible and fractious change of ownership at Twitter, large numbers of people began heading for the exits. Most of them, of course, were just looking for alternative... Read More
The goal of this program is to understand how could we protocol with uncommunicables, and what is protocol means to us.
The goal of this project is simple: to create a resource that helps people understand what protocols are and why they matter. The motivation was to build a site that introduces protocols in a way that is accessible, engaging, and practical. It isn’t a comprehensive index or a wiki... Read More
The built environment embodies an inherent conflict: The “software” of the city changes faster than the “hardware.” Even at its most flexible and adaptable, the city’s physical infrastructure is rigid in comparison to the information flows that it channels, which assume forms such as money, culture, social interaction, and... Read More
Temporality is a fundamental aspect of all protocols. To more fully explore the temporal underpinnings in the projects pursued during the Summer of Protocols, I conducted interviews with the core researchers in the program. Based on a comparative analysis, I propose three strongly formulated theses: first, protocols emerge out... Read More
Imagine navigating memories stored on circular hard disks, much like flipping through room numbers in a building. Just as people rely on room numbers to find their way, a comparable process is used to locate specific memories on these disks by computers. In this visual narrative, to recover fuzzy... Read More
A prototype for a kit providing instructions, suggestions, and tools for reassigning the various information in a musical score. The demonstration includes musical examples and conceptual discussion, especially the role aesthetics play in the experience of protocols. This project may be considered a "specialist PILL" -- an invitation for... Read More
Hypertext, which we generalize as hypermedia, is text plus links: an extra degree of freedom to move around, other than starting at the beginning and reading all the way to the end. By this definition, the ubiquitous World-Wide Web is a mediocre specimen. True, the Web is a cosmopolitan... Read More
It’s a dangerous world out there. Technological progress and increasing complexity constantly create new hazards. Our first line of defense is protocols, which I define as intentional patterns of constraint on human behavior. How do these patterns develop? This essay derives a theory of protocol evolution from historical improvements... Read More
Shoreline Adaptations to Flooding in Urban Waterways In a world defined by rising sea levels, can we learn to live better in wetter cities? Case Study Symposium Slides Shoreline Adaptations to Flooding in Urban Waterways ... Read More
Technical standards are the quiet rules that give shape and direction to civilization. Alongside private organizations and public institutions, standards bodies form a third and critical function in modern society. When they're well designed, standards can become enabling technologies, like the Internet or shipping containers. Studying the past two... Read More
One day, people were astonished to find that the long-dormant DApps had come back to life, like ghosts in the night, quietly growing in the void. Hidden within the transaction logs of abnormal blocks, a cryptic string of clues emerged, leading back to a silent plan—a mysterious breeding experiment... Read More
Origin story of a protocol drifter who stumbles into becoming a sleuth
This short story explores a possible Liquid Democracy protocol in which citizens have significantly more input on ballot propositions and lawmaking. It follow a high schooler who is attending a caucus to vote on a new proposition and finds herself confronted with the complicated relationships of delegates, experts, activists,... Read More
A protocol system emerges when a group of people acts in relation to a protocol (a set of rules, laws, norms, standards, traditions, etc). This broad category includes nations, religions, professions, families, blockchains, and most other group activity, making protocol systems foundational, all-encompassing features of human life. Focusing solely... Read More
On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms are harbingers of misinformation, heralds of mutual aid, and representatives of the public will. Swarms are networked tempests of humans and information. Most importantly, they can act collectively without... Read More
Local protests are not uncommon in China, but the COVID protest of 2022 stood out as a rare and intriguing event due to its highly networked and oriented nature. This project takes a deep dive into the swarm behavior that characterized the protests by uncovering the underlying promise pursued... Read More
In this pilot study, which served as the initial provocation for the Summer of Protocols, we aimed to capture the gist of the preliminary conversations that led to the program. We also aimed to establish a minimal common-ground foundation for program researchers, including a rough working definition of protocols,... Read More
Overabundance of information and a highly educated public have enabled an explosion of internet-based infotainmnent, amateur science, and crankery. Theories about the dangers of seed oils are one example. These theories have gained significant traction, yet have not been clearly adjudicated by the scientific establishment. This dynamic is frequently... Read More
Unbuildable structures have the capacity to make visible what it is not possible to see in the real built environment. By composing structures impossible to recreate in the material world of architecture, I explore the virtual and abstract components of physical spaces and how different layers of information interact... Read More
According to Ursula Le Guin’s carrier-bag theory of narrative, bags were the original tool of society. They allowed us to gather and take with us not only the things we needed to survive, like food, but also the things that we wanted because they spoke to us. Memories may... Read More