This issue explores identity verification protocols and their societal implications while featuring a guest talk on alignment protocols for AI agents, which propose using purpose-driven roles and swarm-like dynamics to coordinate collective intelligences. The alignment protocol approach draws from nature-inspired swarm behavior and classical economic division of labor to solve the coordination problem of distributed AI agents.
A meditation on a post-industrial city hollowed out by economic decline, where the replacement of manufacturing with speculative digital work leaves residents producing 'vapor' in innovation quarters while the physical infrastructure of past productivity becomes merely aesthetic monuments. The piece explores the psychological toll of living in a place stripped of momentum and purpose, where economic abstraction has replaced tangible material production.
Sachin Benny
This issue explores the legal concept of the 'reasonable person' standard and its potential mathematical formalization, while launching a creative contest for readers. The opening excerpt introduces a speculative narrative set in Halverton Smart City, where an AI system called a 'Partial' monitors and optimizes a resident's behaviors, raising questions about personalization, autonomy, and algorithmic governance.
Marie-Hélène Lebeault
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.
Afeez