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S04E01 - New Nature

Talk Timber Lenz
researcher practitioner
Open resource →

Timber Lenz, managing director of the Protocol Institute, introduces Season 4 of the town-hall series, which explores the intersection of protocols and artificial intelligence. The season frames AI and protocols as complementary technologies—protocols as infrastructure lattice and AI as the evolutionary vine—inviting researchers and practitioners to examine how these forces interact across industry, government, science, and society.

Related resources

Article

A Government Guide to Open Protocols

Public sector institutions can escape the false choice between proprietary vendor dependency and expensive in-house development by adopting open protocols, which distribute control across multiple actors and allow governments to understand, participate in, and adapt their digital infrastructure. European governments are increasingly implementing open protocols for messaging, digital ID, and cross-border services as a way to achieve digital sovereignty while reducing both software costs and geopolitical exposure.

article governance protocols

Kelly Roegies

Talk

AI as Normal Technology

A speaker presents a paper proposing 'AI as Normal Technology'—an alternative framework to the superintelligence narrative that emphasizes social and institutional bottlenecks over technological progress alone, arguing that AI's transformative effects will unfold over decades similar to electricity and the internet rather than causing overnight disruption. The speaker challenges the conceptual coherence of 'superintelligence' as a framework, reframing the discussion around incremental technological integration and labor transformation.

cognitive-automation governance normal-technology

Benet (mentioned as prior influence)

Paper

Atoms, Institutes, Blockchains

Stark argues that atoms, institutions, and blockchains share a common property of 'hardness'—fixed, immutable points across time that enable coordination and make the future more predictable at scale. The paper traces how this concept of hardness has evolved from physical matter through social institutions to cryptographic protocols, positioning blockchain technology as a new substrate for creating the durable coordination points necessary for civilization.

blockchain foundations governance

Josh Stark

Topics

evolutionary-dynamics governance high-reliability-organizations infrastructure-lattice protocol-ai-intersection protocolization protocols technology town-hall-new-nature