Protocol Futuring: Speculating Second-Order Dynamics of Protocols in Sociotechnical Infrastructural Futures

TL;DR

This paper introduces Protocol Futuring, a method for exploring how protocols evolve over long periods, revealing infrastructural politics and second-order effects in sociotechnical futures.

Contribution

It presents a novel methodological framework focusing on protocols as primary material for speculative inquiry in long-term infrastructural futures.

Findings

Revealed how protocols change through ambiguous handovers and reinterpretations

Demonstrated the method's ability to make infrastructural politics visible

Showed how shifting norms and crises influence protocol evolution

Abstract

Drawing on infrastructure studies in HCI and CSCW, this paper introduces Protocol Futuring, a methodological framework that extends design futuring by foregrounding protocols -- rules, standards, and coordination mechanisms -- as the primary material of speculative inquiry. Rather than imagining discrete future artifacts, Protocol Futuring examines how protocol rules accumulate drift, jam, and other second-order effects over long temporal horizons. We demonstrate the method through a case study of Knowledge Futurama, a multi-team participatory workshop exploring millennial-scale knowledge preservation. Using a relay format in which teams inherited and reinterpreted partially formed designs, the workshop revealed how ambiguous handovers, adversarial reinterpretations, shifting cultural norms, and crisis dynamics transform protocols as they move across communities and epochs. The case shows how Protocol Futuring makes infrastructural politics and long-run consequences analytically visible. We discuss the method's strengths, limitations, and implications for researchers investigating emergent sociotechnical systems whose impacts unfold over extended timescales.