Issue 7
The Summer of Protocols has officially begun. We held a kick-off call on Monday to outline the expectation and culture of the program followed by a series of breakout rooms to allow some space for our core researchers to get to know each other and the project concepts that will be worked on. Ironically, we struggled to find a protocol to create a layout for 12 researchers to participate in 4 breakouts, meeting as many of their fellow researchers as possible with minimal overlap.
The Summer of Protocols Guest Talk series also kicked off this week with a salon with architect and author Geoff Manaugh. Geoff gave a keynote on the Codes of Entry, a primer on how "Nakatomi space" is used for criminal activity and other ways the built environment is used in unconventional ways.
Call for Permissionless Participation
A Distribution Protocol
As mentioned in the editorial above, we struggled to find an efficient way to group 12 people into 4 groups 4 times, where each person would meet as many people as possible with minimal repeats. A python script from Connor McCormick got us started on the right track, but required a significant amount of rearranging.
Consider this a call for participation in the permissionless sector of the Summer of Protocols. Compose n people into m subgroups of p each (ie partitions) iteratively until everybody has been in a small group with everybody else at least once, and preferably with minimal repeats along the way, with minimal iterations.
Our team is brainstorming some unique ways to reward and recognize those that participate in a permissionless manner.
Meet a Researcher - Chenoe Hart
Chenoe Hart is an architectural designer investigating how the internet relates to the built environment. She is interested in how digital technologies can transform architecture's historical condition of being a passive and location-based form of media. Her work includes writing and speculative design research, and it is informed by her interdisciplinary awareness of computer programming and her experiences with growing up in geographically diverse urban environments. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Barnard College and a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. She is located in New York.
Guest Talk with Geoff Manaugh
From our Discord
"I suspect there’s an entire family of “check-in / check-out” protocols. Inspired by the library card image from Toby, we could imagine similar protocols related to tracking inventory that needs to be “returned” in a way. Some examples:
- Hotel Check-In (Visitor Log and Room Assignments)
- Passport Control (Citizens in / out of country)
- Library Book Lending
- Other Item Rentals
All of these have:
1. A unit (people or object)
2. A state (location status)
3. A state change task list
(Currently going through passport control and realizing “I am the book, and I’m being “lent” between nation-states”)"
- Rafa
Three Links
Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space - Podcast episode exploring the seen and unseen impacts of infrastructure (🎩: Dorian)
Breaking Out and Breaking In - A distributed film fest of prison breaks and bank heists (🎩: Geoff Manaugh)
Desire Paths - A look at the tension between the native and the built environment
Upcoming Events
May 5 - Pilot Study Discussion (open to all researchers)
The authors of the pilot study, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Protocols, will host a salon style discussion starting with a quick overview of the study, and some discussion among the authors, followed by open live Q&A and parallel discussion in the Pilot Study channel on Discord
Pre-Reading Material
May 9 - Guest Talk with Scott Moore (open to all researchers)
This Session is Legitimate: An Exploration of Social Rule-Making
In a world of norms, rules, and institutions we often find ourselves asking whether something is legitimate. Where exactly does this idea come from, and how do we arrive at an answer? In this session, we will explore several models for coming to agreement about the legitimacy of a given action, idea, or even protocol and try to articulate how we might be able to formalize the concept further alongside relevant historical examples (both online and offline).
Pre-Reading Material
May 10 - Guest Talk with Jason Morton (open to all researchers)
Unpacking Money as a Protocol
Lately it feels like something is breaking in the financial system. Perhaps it is just the end of a larger debt cycle, but perhaps there is some kind of deeper obsolescence developing. We'll take a "Martian anthropologist" perspective on how money functions as a protocol, what that protocol is actually for, and where the abstractions that have served us well for organizing economic activity start to break down. Then we'll offer some thought experiments on other protocols that could accomplish similar aims, mainly to help us take a step back from how it is now.
Pre-Reading Material