Today we're announcing the Summer of Protocols research grants. Check out the biographies of the 12 Core Researchers and 22 Affiliate Researchers. They will be working together over the summer to advance our thinking on protocols via a variety of fascinating brewing projects. We'll share details of the projects in coming weeks, but to preview a bit, the themes include: urbanism, memory, architecture, cultural transmission, organizational behavior, safety, and of course, computing technology. The summer will kick off with an intensive-immersion early phase featuring 20 guest speakers who will challenge our researchers to think hard about a variety of protocol-related topics. In composing this cohort, we were primarily solving for thematic breadth and a high potential for collaboration and cross-pollination. Since this is one of the first research programs of its kind, in an era of exploding interest in protocols, we tried to create a portfolio of strong and broad projects that felt most relevant to foundational questions.
We'll introduce our researchers in-depth in future issues, but here is a brief introduction to our core researchers for today.
Nadia Asparouhova(US) - writer and researcher
David Lang(US) - entrepreneur and writer
Chenoe Hart(US) - architectural designer investigating how the internet relates to the built environment
Dorian Taylor(CAN) - self-taught practitioner who grew up in Canada in the dot-com 1.0 era
Rafa(GER) - explores and builds web3 collectives and DAOs
Kei Kreutler(GER) - a writer and artist interested in how cultural narratives of technologies shape their use
Kara Kittel(US) - researcher and creative producer based in New York
Toby Shorin(US) - writer and technologist based in New York
Timber Stinson-Schroff(CAN) - recovering business student, but has a lingering interest in organizational design and management theory
Drew Austin(US) - writer whose work explores the relationship between technology, culture, and cities
Sarah Friend(GER) - artist and software developer currently based in Berlin, Germany
Angela Walch(US) - crypto researcher & law professor
As with other frontier technology areas, it is tough to cast a wide net, but we think we've made a small start. One of our hopes is that if this program succeeds in the ways we hope it will, it will open up many more options to grow this nascent field of what we're starting to call "Protocol Studies" in a highly pluralist and inclusive way.
"Good protocols minimize required information by its participants..."
- Rafa
Juice - A design protocol for interactive user experience (shared by Kyle Mathews)
The Hobo Code - Secret hieroglyphs used by travelers to pass information
Protocol Heist - Gamer uses obscure rule to pull off one of gaming's largest heists
Josh Davis and Venkatesh Rao
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