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Nathan Schneider: Contributions to a Glossary of Protocol

Talk Nathan Schneider, Venkatesh Rao
researcher practitioner
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Nathan Schneider, a media studies professor writing a book on protocols for MIT Press, argues that Alexander Galloway's influential 2004 'Protocol' framed protocols purely as top-down control and is historically inaccurate, proposing instead a broad definition of protocols as 'patterns of interaction' that includes vernacular, non-elite protocol-making (developed with Avery Edenfield) and protocol sovereignty/capture dynamics (developed with Johannes Bunke). He also discusses his Protocol Oral History Project interviewing quilters, choreographers, and diplomats, his concept of 'implicit feudalism' in online governance, and a closing debate with Venkatesh Rao over whether centering indigenous/diasporic knowledge in protocol theory is legitimate pluralism or ideological social constructionism.

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Topics

governance implicit-feudalism protocol-oral-history-governance-archaeology protocol-sovereignty-and-capture protocols protocols-as-patterns-of-interaction-vs-galloways-control-based-definition research town-hall vernacular-protocols