The Open Machine

Open Protocols

2 min read

Open Protocols

Sociotechnical knowledge sets that circulate freely through the social field, crystallizing before diverse publics into maximally versatile and practical forms. Open protocols have two defining features: memeticism (they actively encourage reproduction and divergent application) and open-ended empiricism (they are continuously revised according to practical outcomes, resistant to ideology or institutional capture). They stand in contrast to institutional protocols, which are anti-memetic (classified, branded, proprietary) and anti-empirical (resistant to inconvenient truths that threaten institutional stability).

Open protocols are not merely technical standards; they carry cultural values of consent, high agency, and participatory aesthetics. Because they must discourage enclosure and centralization in order to persist, they are inherently anti-institutional in character. They are “finely tuned, concretized cognitive assets — the genius of the publics.” (— attemptatdefinitions) Examples span centuries: LSD distribution ethics, S&M safety practices, free party logistics, urban gardening techniques, and the open-source software movement.

In the web3 context, open protocols represent the structural homology between the informal extitutional undergrounds of city culture and the permissionless open-source culture of Ethereum — both defined by memeticism, empiricism, and anticapture.

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