3 Protocols for Articulating Civilizational Memory
Issue #43: Town Hall on Metropolises, Nation-States, and Cosmopolises
Join us on YouTube or Substack in 30 minutes (17:00 UTC) for a talk on Metropolises, Nation-States, and Cosmopolises.
will share a live version of his essay Welcome to the Cosmopolis. Part of the reason for this talk is to encourage you to apply to the Protocol Symposium – the schedule for both the Foundations Workshop and School components is now publicly available. Deadline to Apply: August 22Today’s talk will provide an ambitious synthesis of some of the technological and social forces shaping the world today, drawing on historical cases and modern technical insights. We hope to teach many of skills, ideas, and literacies that you’ll need to navigate the Cosmopolis at the Protocol School from September 15-19.
Furthermore, we’ll convene up to 30 technical researchers from September 12-13 to work towards a formal, mathematizable theory of protocols. A powerful notation and system for protocol design and analysis could greatly accelerate how quickly we bring order to, reduce costs of, and extract value from chaotic technological revolutions.
In the meantime, while we process applications, here’s a sneak peek at some of the Protocol School modules:
Musicalization not Music
Music, art, and poetry have emerged as unlikely throughlines in the study of protocols. Good protocols have an inherent ludic or musical way of choreographing different actors and their conflicting interests. The design of security checkpoints and traffic flows is as much an art as it is a science. Experimental composer Ben Zucker will teach a module on what we can learn about systems through the protocols used in art, especially music. The content is suprisingly technical, building on centuries of musical theory and experiments.
Designing Digital Worlds
We increasingly live and work in digital worlds as well as physical ones. The rules of these new worlds – their protocols – drive how communities form and how power stratifies. Choices today about how gig work software programs are designed and regulated will affect hundreds of thousands of future workers. Should gig work be facilitated through platforms? Or should emerging economies like these be built on decentralized protocols? How do we think about artificial intelligence – like a product, or like a public utility?
Taught by Andrés Monroy-Hernández, director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Princeton and associate professor in Princeton's Department of Computer Science.
Cyber-Physical Systems
Our cities run on a complicated mix of software and hardware. Giovanni Merlino, engineering professor at University of Messina, will share some protocolized approaches for how to model these systems and efficiently verify that they work. Critical infrastructure, from water purification to electricity lines to traffic lights, requires stewards well-versed in both cyber- and physical- systems. Protocols are a high leverage concept for designing, managing, and maintaining the invisible infrastructure of daily life.
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The full list of modules is available here. We look forward to hosting both the online, two-day foundations working sessions and intensive, week-long module series. Thanks to those who’ve already expressed interest in attending – we’ll endeavor to send out decisions by the end of August. If you have questions, please email research@summerofprotocols.com
Highlights from Discord
The dog days of summer are around the corner and the SoP Discord is hot with activity:
Nathan Schneider shared the latest installation of his interviews from the Protocol Oral History Project.
People posted #idle-protocol-musings on everything from selective laboratory rat breeding protocols to funerals for retired frontier LLMs.
The Special Interest Group on Protocols for Business started working towards a capability maturity model for artificial intelligence adoption.
Writers contested over four live protocol fiction bounties.
The server cracked the 1,000 member mark.
Do you research, write about, or work with protocols?