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Circadia

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Circadia explores a world where sleep is perfectly regulated by wearable technology that monitors and controls dreams, following protagonist Kemi as she experiences an anomalous recurring dream that breaks the system's design—a dream that shouldn't be remembered but is, suggesting something unexpected in the protocol. The issue also announces a guest talk on poetry, protocols, and infinite games with Robert Peake.

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Talk

Divergent Protocols: A Speculative Protocol for Cultural Convergence Zones

Nicolás Madoery presents 'divergent protocols' as a counter-model to standard protocols that converge toward homogenization, arguing that AI and robotics now function as infrastructure (not tools) through which culture becomes 'liquid' and infinitely re-versioned. Drawing on examples like AI-generated Argentine folklore, a dancing folk robot, and his PIACH framework for cultural organizations, he proposes protocols that preserve diversity by naming what is lost, keeping source names, and leaving room for noise rather than optimizing transmission.

Nicolás Madoery

Talk

Don't Cross the Lines: Mazes as Minimal Protocols

Daniel Schmidt argues that mazes are a minimal formal instantiation of protocols, not just a metaphor, using his own maze-drawing history and games to illustrate concepts like hard vs. soft protocols (physical walls vs. crossable paper lines), scale-entangled vs. scale-lined navigation, and stigmergic memory. He demonstrates an ant colony pheromone simulation, a multiplayer infinite maze with shareable 'pebble' markers, a maze-design platform separating protocol-author from protocol-navigator with heatmaps of friction points, and an art-gallery maze as medium. Venkatesh Rao joins to explain his 'clockless clock' maze, a topological map of thought-space (rat/goat/crow vertices) designed by Schmidt to represent arrested development and spiraling toward nirvana.

Daniel Schmidt, Venkatesh Rao

Talk

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