Summer of Protocols

One of the things about field-building I didn’t quite appreciate when we started the summer of protocols is that there is a natural window in the evolution of the protocol field when it makes sense.

For example 1600 would have been too early to start the field of astrodynamics. You need newtons laws to compute orbits. 1850 would have been too early for space rocketry. Rockets and Newtonian mechanics existed but sufficiently capable metallurgy, rocket fuel, radio communication, and guidance and control capability wouldn’t exist for a century.

Protocols are a bit meta because they in fact model the conditions under which other fields can mature (you could say spaceflight as a field was ready for protocolization by 1950). But as a subject in its own right, it was ready to be created only after 2000 or so, when internet protocols made protocol patterns legible. Crypto added the last 10% for the field to become well-defined.