Terminological Twists
What's in a word? Each story in this anthology uncovers a possible world hidden behind everyday jargon — tales of hyperstition where terminology shapes reality.
Summer of Protocols
Ghosts in Machines
Protocolized is running a contest calling for protocol-fiction stories imagining futures where distributed AI systems communicate through various protocols—from experimental systems like MCP and A2A to blockchain and speculative new protocols. The contest guidelines emphasize creating narratives set in digitally haunted futures populated by multiple ghostly machine intelligences, drawing inspiration from works like Banks' Culture novels and Liu's 'Good Hunting.
Related resources
The Librarians
A Summer of Protocols fiction anthology exploring librarians and archivists as protocol designers — curators who shape what knowledge is preserved, findable, and forgotten.
Summer of Protocols
Protocoling HCI: Hardening Interaction into Infrastructure
Botao Amber Hu presents 'Protocoling HCI,' an early-stage design theory arguing that HCI must shift from designing moments of use to designing protocols as infrastructural material that shapes local action spaces while enabling emergent collective behavior. Drawing on Michael Levine's work on agential material, bioelectric morphogenesis, and 'cognitive glue,' plus concepts like emergent engineering and reverse game theory, Hu proposes that protocols act as 'trust compressors' that let bounded agents coordinate without full mutual knowledge, illustrated through the NFT art piece Merge as a 'protocol art' example.
Botao Amber Hu