Don't Cross the Lines: Mazes as Minimal Protocols

TalkDaniel Schmidt, Venkatesh RaoSeptember 24, 2026

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.

Topics

clockless-clock fiction hard-vs-soft-protocols protocol-author-vs-protocol-navigator protocol-watching protocols scale-lined-vs-scale-entangled-mazes stigmergy symposium-2026 technology

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