Saffron Huang examines how timekeeping protocols shape human consciousness and control, exploring how different temporal measurement systems constrain behavior and coordinate collective action across distributed systems. The paper investigates whether certain forms of timekeeping are preferable to others by analyzing how protocols like sundials and distributed software systems structure human experience and freedom.
Fernández examines internet-era swarms as networked collectives coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops, distinguishing them from traditional crowds and exploring their dual nature as vectors for both misinformation and mutual aid. The paper frames swarms as fundamental organizational units of digital society, analyzing how they emerge from interconnected networks of people, bots, and content.
Rafael Fernández
Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts (TAFs) are cryptic, haiku-like weather predictions produced continuously by meteorologists worldwide that directly inform pilot decisions and shape aviation operations at every scale. These terse textual protocols encode atmospheric phenomena and thresholds that determine individual actions, airport procedures, and global traffic patterns.
Matthew McDowell-Sweet
Samuel Chua of Seapunk Studios presents 'reverse-imagineering,' a methodology for protocol studies that starts from speculative fiction worlds and works backward to infer the protocols that would need to exist to make them plausible. He illustrates this through three Seapunk worlds—South(east Asia) with neoanimist distributed AI and 'ghost machine' commons-hardening, SNOW Society's shanzhai-inspired peer-to-peer climate adaptation supply chains, and the 67th World's longevity/automation governance where immortality requires earning social legitimacy—arguing that building fiction first surfaces protocol ideas that direct present-to-future design work would miss.
Samuel Chua