AI tools create windows into hidden business protocols by disrupting normal operations, revealing tensions between production and authority that standard organizational descriptions obscure. Rafa Fernández explores what happens when formal policies fail to explain recurring breakdowns or unexpected successes, suggesting that observing these fault lines requires looking beyond tooling and execution to deeper protocol structures.
Kei Kreutler reports from Memoria, an unconference on spaced repetition and memory systems organized by Saul Munn and Raj Thimmiah. The Memory Research Group is launching a new module on digital memory architectures, examining memory management in AI, computational memory history, and how digital technologies reshape human remembrance.
Kei Kreutler
The Memory Research Group, a special interest group incubated by Summer of Protocols, launches a monthly series examining memory across disciplines, starting with Frances Yates' classical account of the art of memory. Rather than debating whether machines should automate memorization, the group investigates how contemporary tools reshape our understanding of memory itself, moving beyond surface-level recall toward deeper modes of knowing.
Kei Kreutler
Timber Stinson-Schroff closes Protocol School 2025 with a capstone talk on 'Applied Protocol Thinking,' arguing that protocol literacy is best built through 'protocol watching'—a low-intensity, habitual practice analogous to an endurance athlete's easy-pace training—before attempting high-stakes protocol design. He introduces frameworks like hazard-oriented protocoling (analogous to object-oriented programming), the Chesterton's Fence vs. Gordian Knot heuristic, and Erik Hollnagel's ETTO (efficiency-thoroughness trade-off) principle reframed as an ongoing tension to manage rather than solve, illustrating concepts with examples from dog-walking, library shelving carts, tree-trimming crews, and GitLab's engineering trade-offs.
Timber Stinson-Schroff