Ghosts in Machines
The second Protocolized fiction contest asked a simple question: why do ghosts have to stay in houses? What happens when the haunted object is a smart thermostat, a legacy codebase, a hospital EMR system, a payment network?
Writers responded with stories that locate the spectral in the operational — and the operational in the spectral. The best entries found that the protocols we build to manage systems are themselves a kind of haunting: the residue of past decisions, enforcing rules whose original reasons no one remembers.
Also: try to spot all the ghosts. A print edition and EPUB will be available soon.
Contents
- 1.Soda Sweet as Blood — Spencer Nitkey
- 2.In the Garden of Eden, Baby — Sisyphus
- 3.Loyalty
- 4.Latency — Rafael
- 5.We Shape Our Tools, and Thereafter Our Tools Shape Us
- 6.The House That Paid Its Own Bills — Thing Party
- 7.Genius in the Bottle — Claire Pichelin
- 8.In Every Lifetime — Lara Dal Molin
Contributors
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