SoP Fall Forecast
Issue #49: a flurry of news, events, and opportunities from around the protocol studies ecosystem
In this issue: get ready for a burst of activity this fall, all around the world – we have calls for participation in a Proto-College in Kuala Lumpur, a forecasting workshop on Europe’s AI stack in Berlin, and a protocol studies meet-up in Buenos Aires; plus we wrap-up Ghosts in Machines!; and a SoP Discord link-list.
Seapunk Proto-College
Seapunk Proto-College is a one-week pop-up college about Protocols & Re-Imaginable Seas, being held from September 15-20 in Kuala Lumpur. Expect part frontier study group, part polycrisis-era Southeast Asian studies, and part prototype SEA storytelling school.
Seapunk Studios will host an info session this Friday, September 5. Interested in attending or just keeping tabs? Register here.
Ready to apply? Do that here by Sunday, September 7.
AI Futurama: Europe Edition
Europe’s AI cluster is about to get the Futurama treatment. On October 9 and 10 we will convene at Trust in Berlin for AI Futurama: Europe Edition, a workshop exploring how European businesses might adopt the emergent AI stack over the next 30 years and how industries might change in response. We’ll invite 20 participants to imagine and stress-test Europe’s path from early, uncontrolled adoption of AI to fully mature, region-specific systems. Organized in collaboration with Folklore.
This event builds on the Knowledge Futurama: 1000-Year Libraries workshop, held at Edge Esmeralda, which took inspiration from The Long Now Foundation’s ideas on long-term thinking. Forty participants simulated attacks and defenses of knowledge artifacts like Wikipedia, Muir Woods National Park, and the Internet Archive. That adversarial, blue team vs. red team structure returns in the Berlin edition, this time applied to Europe’s regulatory, cultural, commercial, and geopolitical AI landscape.
Over two sessions, participants will design and critique thirty-year AI adoption roadmaps through a Capability Maturity Model lens, then transform those strategies into speculative short stories – “protocol fictions” – that imagine everyday life under European AI futures. Attendance is free, by invitation only, and limited to around twenty participants. To request an invite, please fill out this form. Join the ongoing discussion in the SoP Discord channel #🚜-protocols-for-business.
Protocol Studies in Buenos Aires
We will host a meet-up in Buenos Aires on November 18, featuring a roster of guest speakers and panels on topics including Cultural Protocols and the Politics of AI, Planetary Protocols, and more to be announced. In the area, or have a curious friend who is? Find our more and register at Luma.
Ghosts in Machines!
We have now published the top three stories from our protocol fiction contest, Ghosts in Machines!
3rd – Loyalty by Zach Hyman
2nd – In the Garden of Eden, Baby by Myth of Sisyphus
1st – Soda Sweet as Blood by Spencer Nitkey
Our fourth and fifth placed stories will be published soon – so we won’t spoil those just yet. The following stories round out the top 10:
10th – In Every Lifetime by Lara Dal Molin
9th – Genius in the bottle by Hypathie
8th – The House That Paid it’s Own Bills by Liz Maher
7th – We Shape Our Tools, and Thereafter Our Tools Shape Us by Tongzhou Yu
6th – The Ghost Fence of Mae Sai by Vianney Kakooza
Look out for them in future issues of Protocolized.
From the SoP Discord
Some links to essays and articles presently stimulating our discourse.
LLM Friendly Zone, by regular Protocolized contributor Sachin, reflects on writing practices in the LLM age, with reference to previous generations’ artistic strategies for utilizing chance and decentering the artist from the process of production.
Vaughn Tan’s Designing AI tools that support critical thinking: “Current AI interfaces lull us into thinking we’re talking to something that can make meaningful judgments about what’s valuable. We’re not – we’re using tools that are tremendously powerful but nonetheless can’t do ‘meaningmaking’ work (the work of deciding what matters, what’s worth pursuing).”
The Protocol Oral History Project is an effort to honor and share the stories of protocol artists – the skilled builders and stewards of the rules, standards, and norms that shape our lives in often invisible ways, ranging from technical standards and diplomatic practices to Indigenous traditions and radical subcultures.
In compiling its 2025 McKinsey Global Survey on AI, the company gathered responses and metrics from 1,491 participants in 101 nations, representing a range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures.
From before the current wave of developments in AI, a Guardian report on legal personification and the case of a Māori tribe from New Zealand’s North Island, who have fought for the recognition of their river – the third-largest in New Zealand – as an ancestor for 140 years.