Ghosts in Machines is a Protocolized anthology woven from stories of science fiction and science fact. Writers explore strange rules and familiar haunts through the lens of protocols.
This paper explores the intersection of protocol design, community formation, and digital culture through the framework of onchain artificial life (OALife), examining how composable systems create new forms of existence and social organization. The authors investigate what it means when autonomous agents designed to be eternal on the blockchain disappear, challenging assumptions about permanence and presence in decentralized systems.
Fangting, Botao Amber Hu
Flow is a speculative design fiction presented as a corporate onboarding brochure for an AI-powered team collaboration platform that promises to synthesize communication, manage information flow, and enable collective intelligence through contextually aware algorithms. Fernández uses the brochure format to critique contemporary workplace technologies and the rhetoric of seamless productivity, examining how such systems claim to reduce noise while potentially increasing surveillance and control.
Rafael Fernández
This speculative document presents founding memorabilia from a fictional 2038 organization called the Order of Protocological Death, which administers end-of-life rites for collective entities and worlds through practices like ritual deletion and memorial compression. The text establishes a taxonomy of protocological deaths (stillbirth, death by success, ossification, mismanagement) and outlines the Order's core functions including world health assessment, funeral design, and protocol archive stewardship.
Summer of Protocols