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Plenary Talk - 2024 Protocol Symposium

TalkTim Beiko, Venkatesh Rao
Plenary Talk - 2024 Protocol Symposium

Tim Beiko and Venkatesh Rao open the 2024 Protocol Symposium by recapping Summer of Protocols' two-year evolution, from testing whether 'protocols' form a coherent cross-domain field to this year's focus on applied stewardship, tensions (tradeoff plus conflict), and workshops like the Singapore and Edge Esmeralda pop-ups. Venkatesh then presents three orienting frameworks for the Symposium—the 'technological Tangled Bank,' the 'Erdos-Whitehead protocol age,' and the 'kit space of civilization'—arguing protocols are best understood as a literacy for seeing technology's relation to humans and environment rather than a technology class itself.

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