Research Salon with Rafael Fernández | The Swarm and the Formation

Rafael Fernández presents his summer protocols research 'The Swarm and the Formation,' arguing that digital swarms—networks of people, content, and bots coordinated through algorithms rather than explicit protocols—emerge precisely in the absence of protocol, using the 2017 Puerto Rico hurricane Mutual Aid response and the Silicon Valley Bank collapse as case studies. He proposes a taxonomy distinguishing swarms from crowds, guerrillas, mimetic tribes, digital farms, online communities, and encoded virtual organizations (e.g., MakerDAO), mapped along a spectrum from unprotocolized 'terrain-driven' coordination to fully encoded social protocols, and introduces concepts like 'emergent promise,' swarm life cycles modeled on hurricanes, and 'attunement technologies' (like Community Notes) as an alternative to assimilationist alignment.