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Archives of Discontinuity

Article Nathalia Scherer, Jiordi Rosales
researcher practitioner
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This issue examines California's wildfire management through the lens of prescribed and wild fires at the wildland-urban interface, tracing how 20th-century fire suppression policies fundamentally contradicted ecological understanding of fire's necessary role in ecosystems. The case study explores combustion as a memory practice and investigates how new tools reshape our epistemological relationship with fire management.

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Black Resin Mirrors and the Adequacy

The Casio F-91W, a $14 plastic watch worn by everyone from Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden, exemplifies a design philosophy of "unreasonable adequacy"—meeting basic needs through durability, reliability, and ubiquity rather than sophistication. Its emergence as both a cultural icon and an object of security concern reveals how humble consumer gadgets become entangled with geopolitics, popular culture, and surveillance.

article protocol-watching protocols

Timber Stinson-Schroff

Article

Dirt Simple

Issue #17 features a case study of the Crescenta Valley Water District examining how public sector protocols create invisible operational mazes with both challenges and reform opportunities. The issue also curates community discussions on alignment protocols, emerging AI standards (MCP, MLOS, ACP), and preparations for Protocol Worlds at Edge Esmeralda.

article editorial protocol-watching

PAtwater

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Memory Research Group Six Months

The Memory Research Group convened over six months to read texts about memory in reverse chronological order, from classical techniques through digital AI systems and back to physical substrates, tracing which contemporary memory problems are genuinely new versus recurring under different names. The group met biweekly with interdisciplinary participants from neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, architecture, and design to understand how memory operates differently across contexts rather than develop a unified theory.

article memory organizations

Kei Kreutler

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archive article memory protocol-watching protocols research