Feeling out the full edges and context of a protocol is less like the well known adage of many people with blindfolds on feeling out an elephant and explaining to each other the different parts—rather, it's much more like all of us being INSIDE of the proverbial elephant and feeling out that we are, actually, inside of something together.
There was a moment of cosmic horror for me in realizing how apt the metaphor of a immune system is for any protocol—in the way that autoimmunity attacks the host because it is merely "following protocol" mades me wonder just how many times we are, as social creatures, doing the same thing and who/what/why/how these initial protocols were created...from scratch, or patched together over time. At what point is a protocol no longer the original protocol, or is it impossible to get to that point, as long as a Ship of Theseus approach is taken? The glossary session that brought us to "The Path of Inevitable Externalities" in which changing a protocol will always bring about new and different unintentional consequences brings me to a titillating point of frustration—in fixing one part of the protocol by removing a blocker, one may very well have also removed an important bridge, and vice versa. There's something heavy about the responsibility for the protocol designer/engineer/weaver that there will always be three new leading causes of death in the workplace, no matter how good your protocol for safety might be. The sweet and sour of a Protocol Pickle—you'll only find out over time.
And to echo what's been said before—being in person animates the textual dimension of a Discord with all of the colorful personalities, intonation, body language, and brilliant and wry senses of humor, well beyond in person time. This server now feels like coming back to a never ending after dinner conversation that just builds forever.
One big insight I had this week is that protocols embody the saying, "When one door closes, another opens". How we successfully mitigate the FOMO from following protocol is a question that the retreat left with me
I'm on a Memory Walk through the St Edwards forest with Kei and Alice. We come across a big circle of logs—from afar it looks like a sitting room or a campfire spot. There's a laminated sign laying flat on the ground in the center. Intrigued, we step over the logs and walk over to read it. DON'T STEP ON ME, it says in sun-bleached letters. Too late... we've already broken protocol! On our way out, we have no choice but to walk all over whatever this mysterious sign is protecting underfoot. Our trespass moment revealed a contradiction between Pattern and Protocol. The affordances of the architectural pattern (circular arrangement, seating spots) suggested a particular use case, which turned out to be in conflict with the Rule. In light of this self-negating "campfire circle", it seems like there's a relationship between protocol and architecture, like how the protocols of a courtroom are reflected in its very layout and seating arrangement. Maybe there's something to the notion of protocol-architecture "harmony" : when the Form and the Process are in a mutually re-enforcing relationship. You can't build a congress in an elevator…
During the 100-year fiction exercise I had a realization: A protocolized future may create public factions based on protocol adoption. These exist today, somewhat, in the form of nations and socio-economic classes. However, in the future we may have factions defined explicitly by the protocols people consciously choose and are eligible for. The fiction exercise highlighted how people within each faction may go to great lengths to change their protocol world, or ecosystem. This rhymes with current trends of migrant refugees and international movements.
An example for today is when a crypto-creator needs to "move chains" and bring their community with them. Another is people migrating from fiat to crypto based economies. More subtle ones include changing a company based on benefits eligibility.
Coming on the heels of our breakout discussion about protocol humor, the conversation about terrible protocols and the one we created was surprisingly hilarious for reasons i still don’t fully understand.
Even looking at the diagram now makes me laugh (also my journey to the flight home from the retreat was a kafka index-level series of minor mishaps, that hit different after a week of protocol discussion).
“Ossification” for blockchains is almost euphemistic: the chain is designed to exist forever & create network effects. Ossification pre-assumes that the impact of your protocol as it exists, including second order effects, will be net positive forever.
What did we all gain from our retreat at the Lodge at St Edwards Park? We certainly didn't leave the retreat with a definition of protocols, and by the end of our retreat, Tim Beiko, the project's main sponsor at the Ethereum Foundation, announced cheerfully he had given up all hope of a single definition emerging from the project whatsoever. But we did learn something that none of us are likely to forget anytime soon: speed bumps kill children. We were first made aware of this dark knowledge, shared gleefully by Steve Powers, in a conversation conducted by Nadia. While discussing the dangerous, controlling, and unsavory elements of protocols, Steve pointed out that a study of speed bumps in Boulder, Colorado showed that for every life saved on average, something like 8 lives are lost in the additional time costs speed bumps incur on ambulances on the way to hospitals. Here was an example of a humorously terrible protocol: one with a poor information loop between the protocol's advocates (haughty families who want people to drive slow outside their house), its implementation (by the municipal authority) and its ultimate subjects. This factual nugget led to the notion of the "path of inevitable externalities" and the "externality surface" in later conversations. We won't forget anytime soon that protocols have unintended effects, and wary the short-sighted protocol designer who puts them in place!