Intelligence media are shifting toward circulating intermediate products—social kernels—between contexts via relatively simple pipes, analogous to containerization in physical supply chains. The rise of coding agents like Claude Code demonstrates this model in practice, with hobbyists building \"agent factories\" that coordinate multiple agents in parallel, suggesting a new form of human-machine sociality organized around intelligence intermediates rather than complete artifacts.
This editorial introduces Obliquities, a new column examining the shift from destination web to social media as a fundamental transformation in how intelligence is produced and distributed through protocol infrastructure. The piece proposes the concept of a 'social kernel' to understand how RSS, the Facebook newsfeed, and algorithmic feeds restructured both user behavior and the underlying protocols that now mediate information consumption.
Protocolized
The Protocol Institute is building itself around AI adoption, using bots like C3PO and Humboldt to handle research discovery and organizational tasks rather than traditional human-led infrastructure. The organization's approach treats AI tool proliferation as a generative process, allowing practical patterns to emerge through experimentation rather than top-down design.
Timber Stinson-Schroff
AI systems inherit the fundamental crookedness and contradictions inherent in human thought, making them unsuitable vehicles for creating perfectly rational or straight solutions. To responsibly develop and deploy AI, we must understand and work with this essential crookedness rather than pretend it can be engineered away, drawing philosophical insight from Isaiah Berlin's work on human limitations.
Venkatesh Rao