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Protocol Town Hall Salon with Angela Walch | The Protocol System Experience

Talk Angela Walch

Angela Walch, a former law professor and Summer of Protocols researcher, presents her framework 'The Protocol System Experience,' which maps an individual's (personified as 'Pip') journey through any protocol system—from blockchains to families to religions—using concepts like well-being (thriving vs. dysphoria), fit, and autonomy. She argues that autonomy requires both awareness (seeing the 'water' you swim in) and insight (deep knowledge of power dynamics), and introduces terms like 'protocol determinism,' 'protocol overhang,' and 'protocol scars' to describe how membership in one system compels or haunts behavior in others.

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Protocol Town Hall with Chenoe Hart | Addressable Space

Chenoe Hart presents her Summer of Protocols research project 'Addressable Space,' tracing how built environments are remapped through informational systems — from 18th-century European house-numbering schemes that decoupled addresses from physical geography, to skipped floor numbers and hidden 'mechanical voids' in skyscrapers, to elevators as random-access devices. She argues these spatial protocols reshape human experience much like digital file systems, and calls for 'protocol empathy' — the practice of imagining how built space appears from a protocol's or computer system's point of view.

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Research Salon with Kei Kreutler | Artificial Memory and Orienting Infinity

Kei Kreutler presents her Summer of Protocols research essay 'Artificial Memory and Orienting Infinity,' tracing a history of artificial memory from the method of loci and Renaissance memory theaters (Camillo, Giulio Bruno) through Turing machines and the invention of Random Access Memory. She introduces a framework distinguishing 'latent memory' from 'living memory' and 'taxonomic' from 'associative' arrangement, arguing for a sensibility she calls 'orientation' that enables navigating partial, associative cues rather than relying on the metaphor of memory-as-data.

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Researcher Salon with Sarah Friend | Good Death

Sarah Friend presents her Summer of Protocols research 'Good Death,' arguing that protocols and digital worlds (MMOs, blockchains, NFT projects) don't have a binary alive/dead state but undergo a liminal 'dying' process followed by a social decision of death, analogous to the historical evolution of medical death diagnosis (heart death vs. brain death) and anthropological rites of passage. She introduces Venkatesh Rao's concept of 'world' as what grows atop a protocol, examines memorials embedded in blockchains (e.g., Hal Finney-style tributes), dead-blockchain lists, and Ethereum's difficulty bomb as a case of engineered protocol mortality, closing with questions about what archives or memorials are appropriate for dead digital worlds.

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