The Crooked Timber of AI
The philosophical perils of conflating discoveries and inventions, and how to overcome them
CultureTech
Protocolized.
Sci-fi, essays, and articles about the world's invisible infrastructure and strange rules.
Recent essays
23 of 23Jamverse Live
A recording from Protocolized's live video
Thanatosis on the Central Mast // Liveness Check
We enter an intractable new world conjured by Spencer Nitkey and find a protagonist in search of perspective
A Visitor’s Guide to the Disposition
Forty Years of Observation. Forty Years of Being Right. Forty Years of Being Lied About.
Durable AI Adoption
Introducing the Durable AI Adoption guide, developed in our Special Interest Group for Business
The Character of Public Transit Systems
Kannen leads a tour of the world's public transit systems, revealing what they tell us about the cultures and trust dynamics of the cities they serve
Jamverse Jam
Announcing Protocolized’s fourth contest: we’re looking for artists and writers to extend and connect interoperable worlds
The Big Man
Elizabeth Maher's world-building series continues, reimagining American folklore from a protocolized perspective
Challenges: Trivial, Grand, and Whitehead
Introducing the Protocol Institute Challenges program
Maintaining Everything That Matters
Matthew McDowell-Sweet and Mike Travers discuss Stewart Brand’s recently-published book ‘Maintenance: Of Everything’
2026 Protocol Symposium: New Nature
Call for abstracts open, due June 14, 2026
Irrigation by Protocol: When Vineyards Delegate Decisions to Networks
When vineyards can speak through data, the question isn’t whether to listen but whether we still know how to read what the vines themselves are saying
The Overloaded Train
In this, our first crossover between two protocol fiction universes, Sachin Benny's Unified Eurasian Train Line passes through Spencer Nitkey's Zoothesia
Inventing New Nature
Defining the Protocol Institute's research mission
All You Can Do Here Is Leave
A rich new series by Elizabeth Maher seeds an extended universe around T.R.O.(L.L.), awarded in our Building and Burning Bridges protocol fiction contest
Protocols for the Long Now
The Protocol Institute collaborates with the Long Now Foundation on three participatory, cross-disciplinary labs – applications are due June 5!
Introducing the Protocol Institute
Building a field and community to steward the planetary-scale process of protocolization
The Headless Empire
The Magazine of Strange Rules
A Primordial Computing Soup
Fostering AI art scenius, creating an open planetary network of robots
The Flesh Perfected Is the Flesh Possessed
The longest single rail line, connecting Lisbon to Laos, is the setting for a bio-thriller in Sachin Benny’s new world-building series
The Fabric and the Brain
Articulating agent ecologies with high-personality planetary computation
The Faithful Channel
A translator maintaining a shadow bridge between superpowers discovers something she cannot unsee.
A Government Guide to Open Protocols
Public sector teams must go beyond the in-house or off-the-shelf dichotomy to take advantage of open protocols, which offer a unique way to manage both software costs and geopolitical exposure