Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
1/ 20 GM. I am pleased to officially announce the Summer of Protocols (SoP) program, along with a draft of the pilot study that led to it, The Unreasonable Sufficiency of Protocols (TUSoP), which I've been working on with a bunch of collaborators for the last 3 months.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
2/ The program will be primarily virtual, and run for 18 weeks from May-August. It will fund a set of full-time Core Researchers and part-time Affiliate Researchers (primarily in the second half) to think broadly and creatively about protocols. https://summerofprotocols.com
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
3/ The goal of the program is to catalyze conversation and experimentation around all kinds of protocols, including cultural, social and political ones. We want to get the world thinking in "protocol-first" ways and foster what we call protocol literacy.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
4/ We believe protocols are critically under-theorized, and under-tinkered-with, and should be first-class concepts, alongside concepts like institutions, platforms, and nations, in structuring how we think about and act in the world.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
5/ SoP Core Researchers will be challenged to produce a piece of longform writing about protocols over the summer, accompanied by a composable protocol-ish artifact (not necessarily technical) of some sort that others can build on.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
6/ The written component can be anything -- an essay, a short story, a technical analysis, a future scenario. The only requirement is that it be for a broad general audience rather than a narrow specialized one. Get creative!
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
7/ The artifact component can of course be something technical like a reference implementation of a speculative protocol but the only requirement is that others should be able to build on it. So you could do a design library, a lexicon, a game, a kit of some sort. Get creative!
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
8/ SoP Affiliate Researchers play an equally critical role. We believe the true test of a protocol is whether other people use it. So Affiliate Researchers will join the second half of the program primarily to try and build on the projects being pursued by the Core Researchers.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
9/ Affiliate Researchers will be expected to add creative contributions to one or more core projects, and provide feedback and development support. Core Researchers: you will be expected to market your work to the Affiliates and get them excited about building on what you're doing!
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
10/ We want to set you up to succeed, so the program will include resident domain experts from various protocols, guest talks, reading groups, etc. But we want to provide you some resources right now during the application phase. We have 3 goodies for you today --
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
11/ First, we have a draft pilot study titled The Unreasonable Sufficiency of Protocols. It's ~8000 words, and we hope you'll find it full of stimulating provocations and nerdsnipings https://efdn.notion.site/Pilot-Study-1bf3e3be6bf34a2eb8156ddf98d3fa67
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