throughout the whole network of participants.
What designers can engage with is the design of the protocols guiding interaction
to find forms that encourage collaboration and common work processes. Organ-
izing action spaces through establishing protocols can do this. Protocols can be
tested through practical workshops exploring crafts and skills and also through
games of ludic interventions. Protocols can be more formal contracts for collabo-
ration in a similar vein as the GNU/copyleft or Creative Commons licences, which
renegotiate copyrights so that instead of closing information they are opened up to
share information. These types of protocols aim to intensify and increase the cir-
culation and exchange of energy between creative publics, thus open passages to
facilitate catalytic loops.
Protocols create a common language for facing connectors that need to communi-
cate. These connectors transfer codified expressions and use standard rules for
communicating their intentions in the form of protocols. I do not use the term
protocol as a mathematical contract, nor as a diplomatic code of conduct. Instead
it is a format of paradoxical form as it combines liberal inter-operation and dy-
namic exchange with standardized or uniform procedures. As network ecologist
Alexander Galloway (2004) means,
The contradiction at the heart of protocol is that it has to standardize in order to liber-
ate. It has to be fascistic and unilateral in order to be utopian. (95)In software, protocols are coded functions delegating processes equally throughout
the network and they facilitate the interoperation between all parts of the “bazaar”.
We should keep in mind that protocols are not only guiding speech acts or com-
mon language for shared understanding, but also regulate material flows.
Protocols are systems of material organization; they structure relationships of bits and
atoms, and how they flow through the distributed networks in which they are embed-
ded. (Galloway 2006: 319)Protocols are often informal, hidden or non-spoken and can be overlapping fields
of thought that create common understanding. This can come from earlier suc-
cessful communication acts but also through the repetition of elements and con-
nections, creating a limited predictability or a feeling of being “in tune”. The net-
work consists of a complex of interrelated currents and counter-currents,
interacting in multiple, parallel, contradictory, and often unpredictable ways (Gal-
loway 2004). In this way they escape hierarchal chains of command and facilitate
the inter-operations of the network.
Protocol functions largely without relying on hierarchical, pyramidal or centralized
mechanisms; it is flat and smooth; it is universal, flexible and robust. (Galloway 2006:
317)This is the key role of the protocols; offering a flatter and smoother form of dy-
namic cooperation. In hierarchical “cathedrals” the rules are an immanent part of
the structure and are not defined as protocols. There is no need for communica-
tion about control, as this is hardwired into the structure. No negotiations needed,
no hesitation - just obey your orders.
Compared to pyramidal hierarchies, networks are indeed flimsy, ineffective and disor-
ganized. But this relationship of asymmetry is precisely what, in the long run, makes