- Mar 2023
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venkatesh-rao.gitbook.io venkatesh-rao.gitbook.io
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Unlike stacks and platforms, protocols tend to define and regulate flows of codified behaviors rather than stocks of technological artifacts.
does this feed into improvisational ability? Because it's about flow more than artifact, it can more easily substitute or replace one artifact with another? This means the process is easier to replicate with other means when one becomes defunct or there is a better or more suited way?
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What is the relationship between protocols and agency? Do protocols assume or require a set of participating agents with autonomy or free-will?
Initial thoughts — review later I mean, if I had to pull in some Bandura, it's bi-drectional determinism? Right? So it's influencing behaviour as an environmental factor that could also be done by thinking?
If I think about Csikszentmihalyi in Good Business on culture as a game, perhaps rules are to games what protocols are to culture? If culture is a set of norms that keep you from anomie / entropy and make spaces for alienation, then the agency of the individual may be developed over time (control over consciousness) that may allow for greater expression over agency to follow or not follow protocols. In this sense, protocols would be the default, and intentionally not following protocols (probabilistically not by chance) might require agency? That is if we are following the definition that good protocols have the Schelling point or become default and are almost invisible untill they break.
Bureaucracy may be an example of a deeply frustrating protocol?
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gloom and doom which often accompanies theoretical views and cultural commentary.
Not sure which theoretical views and cultural commentary is predominantly gloom and doom. Would associate conservative statements (rather than extreme valence) with theory, perhaps this is relating to more popular media like internet bloggers and news sources / op-eds & opinions? twitter? Are these sources too ephemeral to take seriously?
Unsure.
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built around default expectations of obviously worse outcomes dominating obviously better ones, and worst-case behaviors driving systemic outcomes.
this feels immediately like it might hold some water, not sure if because it's similar to entropy or because of... Not sure whether to trust feelings of agreement This is an interesting statement to me. Perhaps it's because it seems to bridge between catastrophising (which is arguable pathological), and risk management (which acknowledges there is infinite down side and limited upside) Also wonder how trust factors into this and context?
Concern here is: using emotion to get logical buy in, which is fair, but worth knowing that this is a feels like not an is
Wonder if this might also relate to play and the 3Cs
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