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

TL;DR

The paper introduces Protocol Futuring, a methodological framework that shifts speculative inquiry from artifacts to the infrastructural rules and standards that coordinate sociotechnical futures, emphasizing long-term second-order dynamics. Grounded in infrastructure studies, protocol studies, and design futuring, it demonstrates the approach with Knowledge Futurama, a relay-style participatory workshop that reveals drift, jams, and ossification as protocols traverse centuries. The study argues that focusing on protocols surfaces infrastructural politics, maintenance, and governance implications often hidden in artifact-centric futuring, while acknowledging limits of speculative methods and offering a path for integrating PF with empirical work. Overall, Protocol Futuring extends critical computing practice by enabling exploration of long-range socio-technical constraints and opportunities, informing future design and governance of resilient infrastructures.

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 seeking to investigate emergent sociotechnical systems whose impacts unfold over extended timescales.