Closing Session
Dogfooded reflections
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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Notes for Symposium Closing Remarks
AI
- Robert's personality test shows a tech-positive, optimistic stance generally
- Surprised to hear so much about sentience
- AI use in a large number of talks, unapologetic and creative
Worlds
- Small worlds -- stigmergy workshop, Dan's mazes
- Real worlds -- Leal/Clearwater, Polina Kolozaridi, Atwater
- Imaginary humboldting --a kind of factual fiction/"faction" (Clifford Geertz thick description + AI?)
- Pure world-building
- Cosmolocalism
Behavior
- Safety habits
- Memory habits
Engineering
- Robots!
- Blyg protocol
- Formal modeling
Art and Culture
- Monstrous Times: Congrats to Sachin and Spencer
- Protocol Art is happening
- Generated interactive worlds
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Calls to action
- Join the SIGS
- Write up your talk as a paper/essay for a Proceedings volume
- Join the planned November book-writing month
- Support Monstrous Times
- Support PI 1.1 Individual support 1.1 Warm intros to sources of institutional support 1.1 Champion for sponsored research projects
- Start your own protocol thing 1.1. Seapunk 1.1 Protocollege (Fotis)
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v9
Editor