Issue 9
The past week was the beginning of the Summer of Protocols researcher meetings. Each week's meeting is led by a pair of researchers whose research topics reside in one of six emergent themes; the built environment, tech standards, unconscious protocols, crediting protocols, death and memory, and organizational protocols.
Our guest talk series continued with three insightful and engaging talks. Jason Morton spoke the ways in which money acts as a scorecard of our past dealings and offered some unique ways that future money might behave, including a description of his Urnternet concept. Cory Levinson talked about climate protocols, decarbonization and the current state of on-chain property as it pertains to the climate. Simone Cicero, whose guest talk is displayed below, gave some insight on the differences between technology platforms and protocols.
Our guest talk series are now being live-streamed on YouTube. If you would like to take part in the conversation, make sure to subscribe to the Summer of Protocols channel to get notified of new streams.
Meet a Researcher - David Lang
David Lang is an entrepreneur and writer. He is the executive director of the Experiment Foundation and the co-founder of multiple ocean technology companies.
Guest Talk with Simone Cicero
From our Discord
""Meeting a standard" still requires implementation, right? If I build x component according to standard, there's an action there. "Operating according to protocol" is more like following a series of steps, though, whereas standards aren't procedural."
- Nadia Asparouhova
Three Links
The Platform Wars - Article series exploring the future of media platforms (🎩: Rafa)
If Code Is Law, Then Protocols Are Good Manners That Help Us Get Along - An introduction to Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DNSP)
Did Someone Say Emoji? - Substack dedicated to emojis and standards (🎩: Dorian)
Upcoming Event
May 19 - Guest Talk with Matt Webb
Fiction, Desire, and Belief
Beyond the protocol, there is adoption. Adoption isn’t just ensuring that actor interests are aligned. The act of adoption rests on a common ground belief that this protocol is on a pathway to the future. Matt will introduce the challenge. Then we’ll spend time in breakout groups to come up with practical answers — or at least first hypotheses. There will be time for presenting back and discussion.
Pre-Talk Reading Material
May 23 - Guest Talk with Kyle Mathews
Designing for Soft Protocols: A Discord Bot Workshop
In this hands-on workshop, we'll be exploring the design of software aimed at facilitating soft protocols, specifically a Discord bot for managing references we post on Discord. We'll first examine the unique challenges of designing software for soft (vs. hard) protocols. We'll then break into small groups to generate user stories and what I'm calling "protocol stories" for our discord bot. After discussing these as a group, we'll then break back to small groups to design the UI for the bot. After the workshop, Kyle will build the discord bot so we can see how our ideas play out in practice!
Pre-Talk Reading Material
May 24 - Guest Talk with JD Nolen
Protocols...The Structural Change that Healthcare Needs But Won't Ask For
Modern healthcare delivery is a complex set of interactions and workflows designed around the core principle of "do the right thing at the right time for the right patient." While healthcare has become more complex clinically due to medical advances, the healthcare infrastructure has grown cumbersome. While this infrastructure has a "well-intentioned" purpose, it has an inefficient and brittle architecture that needs a dramatic change. For example, an estimated 15 to 30% of every healthcare dollar is spent on administrative aspects of care (billing process, documentation coding, credentialling, authorization, etc.). This talk will take a journey through the evolution of the healthcare landscape using the lens of protocols to simplify the complexity into scalable components for use in the healthcare system. By leveraging the growing base of standards in healthcare informatics, this talk will also highlight places where we as a community can start implementing change using a protocol-first design to streamline healthcare delivery and open new avenues of interaction around health.
Pre-Talk Reading Material