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Perception Must Preserve

Fiction Spencer Nitkey
researcher practitioner
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In a near-future city where augmented reality overlays allow people to customize their visual perception, a protagonist discovers that the artificial perfection of their curated reality—engineered by the Zoothesia Protocols—has left them emotionally numb and disconnected from authentic experience. The story explores the psychological cost of perfect perception, suggesting that beauty and meaning require the friction of unfiltered reality, including danger and discomfort.

Related resources

Paper

A Phenomenology of Protocols

Tay develops a phenomenological approach to understanding protocols as human-built systems, arguing that current protocols fail to nurture human flourishing because they were designed without centering human capacity for self-making, character cultivation, and wisdom. She contends that truly human-centered protocols must be reconstructed to be hospitable to human development rather than extractive of human attention and agency.

fiction foundations protocols

Janna Tay

Fiction

A Chronicle of Lumina

In this issue of Protocolized, a Luminian protocolist named Selene describes life aboard a civilizational satellite where a grand game called the Mosaic—a glass boardgame designed to hold civilizational tensions in equilibrium—structures daily ceremonies and intellectual practice across eight circles of disciplinary expertise. The issue also announces a talk on Public Intelligence with Kevin Kelly and updates on the magazine's science fiction contest.

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Timber Stinson-Schroff

Talk

A Protocol Fiction Protocol

Benitesh Raalo presents an informal talk on protocol fiction as a genre and methodology, framing it through the lens of theatrical performance (Kabuki) as an analogy for how protocols function as narratives. The talk explores protocol fiction as both a creative practice and a framework for understanding complex systems, introducing the concept of protocol fiction protocols—meta-protocols that govern the creation and analysis of speculative protocol narratives.

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Benitesh Raalo

Topics

fiction protocols