Protocols/Protocol Fiction (Classic)

28 Sep 2025 - 17 Oct 2025
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    • 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.