Short notes from symposium
Running list of short notes from the Protocol Symposium.
Great idea from Sean Stevenson's talk at Protocol Symposium -- the test of New Nature should be that there is nobody to appeal to.
Which sends me back to Paul Ford's cult classic "Why wasn't I consulted" -- the argument that the web is fundamentally a customer service medium, and that WWIC is the fundamental question of the internet, the thing every comment section and pull request and reply-guy is really asking. The two ideas are the same idea from opposite ends: the web was built to make everyone feel consultable, and New Nature is what's left when there's no longer anyone on the other end of the complaint.
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The Polina talk was a definite vibe vacation to the Russian internet. A view of protocolized realities that are much more strongly shaped by material conditions than in the west.
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Florian Lohse's talk on the idea of "time moves down the stack" suggests a general way of conceptualizing stacks: infrastructure --> structure --> superstructure --> vivistructure.
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Dan Schmidt on mazes vs. protocols: one hides the path, the other publishes it — and the real question is telling which you're in.
From Anuraj talk on robot protocols
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A great phrase from Sam Chua in his talk on Seapunk, Imaginary Humboldting as in making an imaginary real ("nature") being the paradigmatic example. The Southbeast Asia exercise from the Khlongs and Subaks workshop in 2025 in Bangkok is a good illustration of how that can work.
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the world of enterprise IT AI protocols. Krishnakumar talk.
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From Andre in the Zoom chat.
"It feels like a common theme in the talks is having the outside match the inside - digital identity, visibility of AI failures, organizational design…
Perhaps a rebranding to the Banana Institute should be considered?"
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Forgiveness as Eigenvirtue
From Mike Travers talk
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Memory is not enough?
From Kaliya Group Brains talk
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