Dangerous protocols

For advocates of the decentralized web, protocols are often viewed as a good thing – a liberating alternative to, say, platforms like Meta and Twitter. But decentralization seems to be at odds with the historical purpose of protocols, which is to simplify communication. Most people would rather have one identifiable adversary to grapple with, inste... See more

In the 1930s, the rise of bureaucracy helped us simplify the information boom that came out of the Industrial Age (Protocolization 1.0). Similarly, today’s crisis mindset is an attempt to simplify a boom of opinions that have proliferated in the Digital Age (Protocolization 2.0). LLMs are the expected output of this era: an attempt to compress huma... See more