Introduction to the Protocol Reader

In the next couple of weeks, we'll release an abridged version of the ProtocolKit, called The Protocol Reader. It includes only the major essays from SoP23 freshly resequenced for maximum readability. The collection kicks off with a never-before-seen chapter, written by program director Venkatesh Rao. Introduction to the Protocol Reader is an efficient and thorough tour of this strange new field. It illuminates the driving forces and implications of the growth of protocols. Visit the link to view the essay online, or download it as a PDF or ePub file.

Was there perhaps something more universal and coherent lurking beneath a word used for such disparate things as computer networking schemes, climate treaties, hand-washing practices, interactions with royals, treatment of football injuries, medical research design, fire-fighting practices, diplomatic etiquette, and blockchains?

Introduction to the Protocol Reader is a great choice for anyone with completionist tendencies, who hasn't yet managed to read the ProtocolKit front to back and make it through the >60 recorded lectures on the Protocol Town Hall channel. We get it. For another synthesis of the past two years of research, see Tim Beiko's talk, The Shape of Protocols to Come, which provides an overview in video format.

Get notified when the full Protocol Reader, in ePub and PDF format, becomes freely available online.

Protocol Watch

The world did not take this week off. Here are some highlights from protocol-watch:

• Anthropic introduces Model Context Protocol, which can quickly enable an LLM to interact with data from other applications like Excel or Notion or Github.

• Sixteen highlights from bestselling book Read, Write, Own. The author, Chris Dixon, came on the Protocol Town Hall earlier this year to discuss the shift from platforms to protocols.

• A protocol for a large cohort study of how health outcomes might be affected by light exposure, an important question that's coming into public awareness.

• Gatwick Airport's recent response to a suspected bomb threat highlighted the momentum that protocols can have once they are triggered.

A researcher's field guide to protocol watching was produced as part of SoP earlier this year. Deliberately scanning one's surroundings for patterns is a good way to develop literacy. The ability to identify and describe protocols is a useful in many professions﹣everything from highly social roles in diplomacy to highly technical roles in engineering.

Strong behavioral norms affect the development of physical infrastructure, like cowpaths. The built environment affects the evolution of soft protocols, like how we queue for the bus or to place a coffee order. These combine to create a continually evolving stack of protocols: a technological tangled bank.

“It is interesting to contemplate a technological tangled bank, clothed with many technologies of many kinds, with mile-markers weaving by old railroads, with various vehicles flitting about, and with fiber crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by artificial laws acting around us.”