Seeing SCP as a Narrative Protocol

Simon Dea Rir discusses the SCP (Secure Contain Protect) collaborative fiction project, analyzing it as a narrative protocol that combines creative storytelling with structured governance frameworks. He explores parallels between SCP's collaborative mechanisms and protocols from crypto and web technologies, examining how protocol-like elements enable large-scale distributed fiction writing.

Related resources

Talk

Guest Talk with Matt Webb | Fiction, Desire, and Belief

Matt Webb discusses fiction, desire, and belief in relation to protocols, exploring how narrative and imaginative frameworks shape our understanding of technical systems. Webb, a writer and consultant known for his work at BERG and his long-running blog, presents ideas on protocol fiction as a literary and conceptual practice for exploring how protocols function in society.

ai-systems blogging-and-writing-practice desire-and-belief

May 2023

Matt Webb

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

Dec 2023

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.

fiction protocol-watching protocols

Apr 2025

Timber Stinson-Schroff