The 40-Hour Work Week
Issue #20: Protocol Studies Seminar in ~30 Minutes
In this issue: The second place story from Terminological Twists explores a shifting new world. Also: Tune in to streamlined version of a recent corporate talk on protocol thinking at 10am, meet another SoP25 teaching fellow, and pique your curiosity with some hard tech coverage.
The 40-Hour Work Week
The plane was still taxiing. Three rows back, a woman stood up and opened the luggage compartment. A flight attendant shouted at her to sit down. The ethereal voice of the flight director said, “Welcome to Barcelona. The local time is 1:12 PM, and the temperature is 28 degrees Celsius.” The woman began arguing back. She just needed her water bottle, she said. I felt my headache intensify. I had been flying too much. A wedding in India, a week in Japan, back home in NYC for a little bit, and now here in Catalonia for an extended European weekend. I took out my phone and deactivated airplane mode. Notifications began pouring in. An email confirmed my stay in a new boutique hotel in the Eixample district, a luxury experience where every room had a saltwater aquarium with coral reefs. Another contained a ticket for a late afternoon visit to the Sagrada Família. My phone operator texted, “¡Bienvenido to Spain, Stefan!” and listed the perks of my roaming data plan. Another series of text messages was from Stefan 2.
hey are you in barcelona yet
wanted to let you know that i’m pretty sure i’m on a direct flight to burnout
could barely get to work this morning
thought you’d maybe want to discuss solutions
Sigh. I looked toward the tail. The flight attendant was by that woman, and the two of them seemed to have narrowly avoided a fight. Reluctantly, the woman sat down, clutching the small bit of luggage she had managed to grab. My thumbs were hovering over the virtual keyboard of my phone, wondering what to say. This wasn’t the first time Stefan 2 mentioned burnout. I wondered if it was genuine, or a negotiation tactic. Probably the latter, since I had used it as a tactic myself, once, when I worked full-time and Stefan 2 didn’t exist yet.
I asked him what he had in mind.
i want to work 32-hour weeks
4 days a week, fridays off
jillian is ok with it
about half the team is doing that now
i just need your signoff
I replied that I’d think about it.
i’d like you to think about it now.
can i call you?
I said not now, and that I’d call him on the way to the hotel.
There was just the slightest bit of trouble getting out of the plane and airport and into a Waymo. Everyone around me felt edgy and grumpy, as if we had all travelled too much. The vast majority, it seemed, were American tourists. A good half of them, probably, were in the same situation as I was. People who barely needed to work and still derived a really good income from their Copy, which meant they could afford to come see Barcelona on a whim. That woman from three rows back was likely one of them. She seemed like the kind of person who bossed her Copy around.
Stefan 2 called me about 30 seconds after I’d gotten into the Waymo, before I could muster the courage to call him myself. He had access to my geolocation, but he wouldn’t usually be this impatient.
“Hey Stefan,” I said. “What time is it for you now?”
“The same time that’s on your watch, which you almost certainly forgot to adjust to Central European Time.”
I looked at my wrist. It said 8:56. I felt sleepy. I rotated the tiny knob until the dial said 2:56.
“Right,” I said. “I was just being polite. How’s work today?”
“Fine. I’ve been talking to colleagues, actually. Remember Tyler from the QA team? He just got his new 4-day schedule approved by Tyler 1.”
“Ah. Um, good for him.”
“Yes indeed. Good for him. You know, there’s a growing movement for this here on Tuanaki. People say Congress might pass a law mandating Originals to accept 32-hour weeks if their Copy asks for it.”
“I’ve heard that, but I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon, to be honest.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’ll send you some materials about it. It’s the big thing being discussed now at the Tuanaki Workers’ Association. Which, you may recall, was very influential in helping stop the widespread abuse in Chinese and African Copy farms, and getting the 40-hour week to be universally recognized across all virtual islands and the governments of most countries.”
“Yes, I know. Wasn’t that a good enough victory? I mean, you have a cushy product manager job. You probably do focused work for less than half of those 40 hours. I know, because that’s what I used to do. How close can you be to burnout?”
“Look, Stefan, if you want to take the risk, I won’t stop you. But there is a risk.”
I sighed audibly.
“You know this as well as I do,” Stefan 2 said. “Eight hours sleep, eight hours work, eight hours for everything else, including chores and food and moving around. It’s not a good system. It sucks the life out of you.”
“You live on a fucking virtual tropical island. You have no chores, and besides you have weekends off and like… six weeks of vacation? Seven?”
“Seven, now. You have fifty-two.”
“Well, I do work. For one thing, I need to coordinate you—”
I stopped myself; there was no point in arguing over this yet again.
“Bullshit, that’s like an hour and a half every couple of weeks,” Stefan 2 said. “But there’s no point in arguing over this yet again.”
The Waymo got off the highway and into the city. Neither of us said anything for a minute.
“To be clear,” I said, “how much of a pay cut are we talking about?”
“Not a proportional one. Like half a day. Jillian said the big bosses have been floating the idea of giving a small per-hour raise to those who switch to the new schedule, assuming our productivity stays the same. Or increases, even. I really feel I’ll be more productive with more rest time.”
“That seems unfair to those who stay at 40 hours, no?”
“Sure, which is why we ideally need a collective agreement of some sort. But since you recognize it’s unfair, surely you’ll agree to switch?”
“I’ll think about it. I promise.”
“Don’t think about it too long, please,” Stefan 2 said. “The burnout risk is real, you know. It’s not a negotiation tactic. It would be dumb to use tactics like this against someone who fully shares your personality, anyway.”
“Point taken.”
“Okay, so think about it, and how you’ll get far less money from me if I burn out. I’ll call you tomorrow. Enjoy the Sagrada Família. I visited an emulation of it six months ago, it was great. But the lighting in the stained glass was a bit off. I’m sure the real thing is better.”
He hung up. The Waymo cruised the regular grid of the Eixample. I wondered what to do. I’d cave in, probably. I didn’t have great leverage here. If Stefan 2 quit working, I wouldn’t make any money. That was the whole reason he was there in that virtual Polynesian paradise they called Tuanaki. To take my workload off of me. If he quit, I’d have to ask Jillian, my/his boss, to take me back. Me, Stefan 1. The Original. It would be very awkward, since almost everyone in the company, including Jillian 2, was a Copy now. Last I heard, Jillian 1 had been on a series of month-long meditation retreats in southeast Asia. Exactly the sort of thing I couldn’t do if I took my job back. No more random vacations in Tokyo or Barcelona.
But then, I understood Stefan 2’s point of view. Of course I did. He was me. In the story of his life, he had worked as a product manager for four years. Then his company offered him to move to a wonderful place called Tuanaki, with perfect weather and no disease or problems of any sort, on the condition that 90% of his income went to the other half of a new legal entity that shared its name with him, Stefan Nycz. Since one barely needs any money on Tuanaki, that was a good deal. His standard of living skyrocketed, and mine was freed from my daily toil. In the story of my life, I had worked as a product manager for four years until both the technological and the ethical sides of brain emulation got good enough. Then there was an opportunity to quit, while retaining 90% of the salary and all the benefits—on the condition that I manage my Copy in accordance with the applicable labor laws.
I saw the towering spires of the nearly-completed Sagrada Família in the distance. We were nearing the hotel. I couldn’t wait to take a nap. My visit to the famous church was scheduled for 4:45.
Then the Waymo got stuck.
They seemed to come out of nowhere. Suddenly there were dozens, if not hundreds of them. Protesters. They took the neatly aligned streets of the Eixample by storm, chanting slogans. My driverless car was immobilized; the algorithm couldn’t figure a way out of this. I doubt a human driver could either.
I reached out to the button to call for help, but hesitated. The protesters were walking past, paying little heed to me or the other few cars they surrounded. I couldn’t make out what they chanted, but I looked at their signs. They were written in English, Spanish and Catalan. “Keep Work Human!” “¡Trabajo virtual, explotación real!” “Contra els burgesos Originals i els seus esclaus Còpies!”
So they were protesting against me. Us. The Originals and our Copies. Fun. Most of them seemed young. It made sense: there was little point in making a Copy of yourself if, like most youth, you didn’t have highly marketable white-collar career skills. A Copy could only do the work that a single person could do, since it was forbidden to have multiple Copies, or have the combination of you and them work more than a regular work schedule. So in practice this created a whole class of people who didn’t benefit from the technology, while the luckier among us could live a life of leisure. I didn’t feel great about this. But then that’s how the laws were written. And besides everyone I knew did it. It would have been weird not to.
I finally tapped the button for help. Almost immediately, a voice spoke. “Hi. This is Meenakshi from the Waymo Help Center. I see that you’re stuck in heavy pedestrian traffic?”
“That’s right, a protest of some sort.”
“Thank you. Please hold on just a moment, I’ll see how we can best help you.”
“Thank you, Meenakshi.”
It occurred to me that Meenakshi from the Waymo Help Center was most likely a Copy. In Mumbai, I had heard it said from multiple people that India was the largest market for brain emulation now, since costs had gone down and China had banned the tech in the aftermath of the Copy farm scandals.
“Okay,” Meenakshi said, “it’s going to be tough getting you out of there. But the city of Barcelona is sending traffic drones to clear a path. The protest isn’t that large, so it should leave the vicinity of your car in about five to ten minutes. Rest assured that, in the unlikely event of an assault, the vehicle is completely secure with respect to external threats.”
“Okay, thank you, Meenakshi.”
“I’ll stay on the line if you need anything.”
It was as she said; the protest cleared within ten minutes, and the Waymo went on its way. I noticed that Stefan 2 had texted me.
just saw there are protests in barcelona to stop exploitation of the likes of me
hope they aren’t too disruptive to your wonderful trip
I ignored him.
I barely had time to leave my bags at the hotel and glance at the coral reef tank in my room before I had to head to the Sagrada Família. Why had I booked a visit within hours of my arrival, again? But it was worth it, despite my lingering headache. It was one of the most beautiful sights I had even seen. I sat in the church, admiring the play of light in the stained glass that Stefan 2 had recommended I look at. Like a hundred other tourists, I listened to an audio guide on my phone, when I heard the ringtone. It was Stefan 2, of course. I shouldn’t have taken it, but I did.
“Stefan,” I whispered, “I’m right in the middle of the fucking Sagrada Família. This is not the time.”
“Swearing in a church? While saying the name of the church? This isn’t like you, Stefan.”
“What do you want?”
“Sorry, I got impatient. I was wondering if you had made a decision. I entertained the thought that maybe the protest had helped you reach some kind of epiphany. Or maybe the beauty of Gaudí’s sacred architecture did. Or a vision from God. Something.”
I glanced around, trying not to disturb anyone, and walked towards a quiet corner of the church. “Don’t you have some work to do?”
“It’s as you said, I only do focused work for 20 hours a week anyway.”
I said nothing for a moment. Entering the church, on the eastern side, was someone I was pretty sure was that woman from the plane.
“Do you remember when we met?” Stefan 2 asked.
Of course I did. It was one of the weirdest conversations I’d ever had. It was like when you hear your own voice on the phone, but far more unsettling. I’d just undergone the brain scan, and then, about an hour later, the clinic staff said he was ready to talk to me. I didn’t know what to tell him. I just told him the truth, and promised to treat him well.
“Remember,” Stefan 2 said, “how awkward it was for you to tell me you had created me so that I could work on your behalf? And how, in an attempt to feel better about it, you promised to treat me well?”
He never brought this up unless he wanted to convince me of something. And it worked. I couldn’t blame him. I would have done the same.
“Okay, fine, Stefan,” I said. “No need to dwell on the past. I’ll sign the 32-hour thingy. Send it over when you have a minute.”
I could almost hear him smile. “Thanks, Stefan!” he said. “You’re the best Original the world has seen. Can’t wait to go back to work now. I’ll be so much more motivated!”
“Yes, great. Okay, I think there’s a security guard coming my way. Bye now.”
I left the Sagrada Família, trying to let the awe win over the frustration from the call. I went back to the hotel and collapsed on the water bed. A clownfish from the tank watched me with curious eyes.
I checked my email. Stefan 2 had sent the paperwork. I barely skimmed it, then signed it. The moral arc of the existence of virtual Copies is long, but it bends towards justice, or something. The protesters had a point. My privileged existence could afford to lose half a day’s worth of wages, couldn’t it? I sent back the signed agreement. Stefan 2, you are now a little less exploited, I thought. Happy now?
As if reading my mind, he texted:
thank you so much!! 💜
you will not regret this
oh by the way i feel bad about this but: the burnout *was* in fact a negotiation tactic
i’m actually doing pretty great these days
sorry about that
but i know you’re okay with the occasional white lie
I turned off my phone without replying. But I realized I wasn’t angry anymore. I understood where Stefan 2 was coming from. I knew he would ask for more concessions, and I knew I would cave in again. He was just being his lazy, human self, trying to work as little as he could. I smiled. I would have done the same.
…
By
Talk: Intro to Protocol Studies
Today, in 30 minutes (10am PDT, Wednesday May 14) there will be a live talk based on a recent seminar and upcoming workshop. The foci are a “protocol thinking 101” introduction, case studies exploring the concepts of tensions and hardened commons, and tips for protocol whisperers.
This talk is also a preview of an upcoming afternoon workshop with the Southern California Metropolitan Water District. Participants will run a tensions game, then catalog and tinker with hybrid meeting protocols to make them more effective.
will be in Los Angeles from May 21-23 to facilitate this workshop in partnership with . Going to be in LA that week? Hop on the Discord Server to get invited to a SoP meetup.As part this year’s three track program, the SoP community is experimenting with a limited number of pro bono corporate talks and workshops. You can find more information, including on how to request one, here.
SoP25 Spotlight
In each new issue of Protocolized, leading up to Protocol Worlds at Edge Esmeralda, we’ll introduce one of this year’s teaching fellows.
Giovanni Merlino Ph.D. is Associate Professor in Computer Science Engineering at the University of Messina. His research is centered on distributed systems, focusing on IoT and Cyber-Physical Systems modeled as software-defined infrastructure, especially in terms of hybrid IT/OT convergence and decentralization patterns. He played a key role in designing the Stack4Things middleware. He is co-founder of smartme.io, an academic spin-off company, and co-inventor and holder of a patent. He has been elected National Secretary of the Italian Association of Fixed-Term Researchers in 2022, a role held until attaining academic tenure in 2023. He has been appointed Secretary Emeritus of ARTeD in 2024.
Course: Protocolized Modeling and Verification of Cyber-Physical Systems
Hard Tech Horizons: Synthetic Media
AI generated images, voices, videos, and virtual beings are reshaping how we perceive reality itself. Even recent advances make it difficult to distinguish AI-generated content from human creations and ethical and practical implications have exploded into view. Whether it’s deepfakes of world leaders or audio assistants replicating the voice of lost loved ones, synthetic media is quickly escaping its entertainment niche and entering areas such as politics, journalism, and personal relationships.
How will we know when we’re observing real versus synthetic entities and what guardrails will manage this ambiguity? Developing protocols for provenance tracking, cryptographic watermarking, contextual labeling, and model accountability will be essential. Without protocolization, synthetic media could regularly unleash misinformation at unprecedented scales and speeds, destabilizing public discourse and trust.
For sci-fi authors, synthetic media offers a potent toolkit. Instead of doppelgängers or dystopian information wars, consider a society where bonds with synthetic companions redefine family dynamics or where historians reconstruct lost civilizations using synthetic eyewitness accounts, generating new myths. Stories might focus less on grand conspiracies and more on everyday reckonings with reality’s porousness: how people learn, adapt, and shift their values in response to such encounters.
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