Protocol Lexicon
A glossary of terms coined or specifically defined within the Protocol Institute corpus — from protocolization and hardness to Kafka protocols, dynamic non-events, and protocol dysphoria.
Protocol Institute
Protocol Reader 2025
The 2025 edition of the Protocol Reader, a curated collection of essays, research, and perspectives on protocols across technology, governance, culture, and society.
Related resources
Unprotocolized Knowledge (Revised)
This paper examines how knowledge can exist and accumulate outside of formal protocols and institutional structures, arguing that unprotocolized forms of knowledge generation—from amateur scientific dialogues to open-access communities—can rival institutional science in generating attention and insights. The authors use the 2021 arXiv paper 'The Autodidactic Universe' as a case study to explore how decentralized knowledge-sharing networks challenge traditional gatekeeping in academic discourse.
Kara Kittel, Toby Shorin
A Phenomenology of Protocols
Tay develops a phenomenological approach to understanding protocols as human-built systems, arguing that current protocols fail to nurture human flourishing because they were designed without centering human capacity for self-making, character cultivation, and wisdom. She contends that truly human-centered protocols must be reconstructed to be hospitable to human development rather than extractive of human attention and agency.
Janna Tay