Protocols/Protocol Fiction (Classic)
28 Sep 2025 - 17 Oct 2025
- The Harlan Ellison story Repent Harlequin said the Ticktockman
- That scene in The Sopranos where they try to shake down a Starbucks
- Most of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm
- The Wire (and really all police procedurals, or all workplace procedurals, or maybe almost all drama whatsoever)
- Deadwood is pretty explicitly about protocols; the characters are very aware of protocols, the main drama is about the imposition of protocols (capitalism vs government vs lawlessness).
- Various minor moments: Bullock and Utter commenting on the absurditities in trying to arrange these male-male social occasions ("maybe I should of brought posies"). The open discussion of the "bribe sheet".
- Milch's earlier show NYPD Blue, a better-than-average cop show, pretty protocolized as the detectives try and do their work within permissible lines. The IAB (rat squad) is the hated enemy because they are cops to cops.
- The Wire on the other hand is about governance collapsing, how individuals deal with a dysfunctional instutiton and its protocols. They invent new ones. Stringer Bell's arc is trying to replace gangser protocol with capitalism, and failing. "Is you taking notes on criminal fucking conspiracy"?
- Bruce Sterling’s 1998 novel Distraction has a number of different aspects involving protocols:
- the opening scene is a flash mob swarming attack on a bank
- the main character is a political operative who is trying to resucitate failing social institutions by protocol-hacking them
- one of his clients is an architect/designer who developed a distributed, protocolized construction technology which figures in the plot
- The Bruce Sterling story Maneki Neko has a network-mediated gift economy that exists as a kind of subversive subculture within capitalism. This story also involves a conflict between protocol systems. I officially declare this the most protocol story ever.