Thing Knowledge

We kicked off an eight-week protocol study group last weekend with a Telegram chat. The first call was today﹣no worries if you didn't make it. Lots of members choose to participate asynchronously via the group chat. You can still apply to join here.

In November, SoP alumni, coordinators, and directors went to Thailand to attend one pop-up city and one gigantic conference: Edge City Lanna, in Chiang Mai, and Devcon, in Bangkok. There was one formal workshop at each of these events. We're in the process of distilling the context-specific plans from these sessions into reusable templates, but you can get already access the original documentation:

• Tension-Based Narrative Development Workshop (Link)

• Hardened Commons / Protocol Maturity Models (Link)

Interested in partnering on a half-day protocol workshop? Send the program team a quick note: hello@summerofprotocols.com

In a landscape of algorithmic tech, where procedures and tools evolve together, Thing Knowledge offers a useful vocabulary. The instruments we rely on do more than execute tasks — they help define what we know and how we know it. Baird argues that knowledge exists beyond ideas and theories, even making the case that technology is an active participant in knowledge-making processes.

That also means that tools or technologies get things wrong. Their knowledge is often incomplete and requires supplementation. A recent quote from @vgr on Farcaster:

"...protocols are a best understood as a kind of behavioral envelope around things that bear knowledge in the sense of Baird’s notion of material epistemology. Protocols complete incompletely encapsulated things that cannot be entirely black-boxed or made fully foolproof."

In this book, Baird demonstrates how instruments and tools — the things themselves — embody and convey knowledge. This focus makes for a worthwhile reading for protocol researchers and entrepreneurs, who would benefit from understanding how protocols shape technological domains﹣and vice versa.

Like reading this kind of stuff? You'd be a great addition to the protocol study group.

EV Charging Standards

A new “Plug and Charge” standard for electric vehicles is set to launch in 2025. It could eliminate the need for multiple apps, accounts, or fobs to use different EV charging stations. This joint public-private initiative will allow drivers to simply plug in their EV and have the charging process — including authentication and payment — happen automatically and securely.

The working group will update the existing ISO 15118 standard with a secure, universal framework. The goal is to speed up EV adoption by reducing friction at public charging stations. The system also supports future innovations like vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, which could improve grid resilience.

Antibiotic Administration Protocol

A recent UK trial has demonstrated a measurement protocol that can safely reduce the length of antibiotic treatment for sepsis patients by nearly one day compared to standard care. This approach, which uses procalcitonin, upheld survival rates while being more efficient than a similar method that uses C-reactive protein as a biomarker.

Protocols like this offer a way to minimize unnecessary antibiotic use, which can help prevent the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Even a small reduction, like the 10% achieved in this study, can lead to significant cost improvements in hospitals and support global efforts to combat superbacteria.