The age of cognitive extraction is here. Always has been - and yet we are coming to a moment of runaway capacity in data harvesting, cognitive science and algorithmic surveillance capitalism that will put the prior modes of domination to shame.

Some of our colleagues and readers had been asking how to get more involved with the Open Machine. We explored what they were desiring and two clear modes emerged.

The term "Ethereum Localism" arose out of our efforts in the Portland community to engage the broader community of artists, organizers, hackers and makers on the affordances of the distributed ledger.

Like animal neuropathways mirrored in the game-trail lichen paths of a mountain valley, structures gestate from unplanned reciprocity in unruled substrates and emerge, irreducible and new.

Open protocols, we whispered. The key is open protocols. Software stacks, bike repair zines, intercropping strategies. Microsolidarity protocols, BDSM rope tying methods; how to throw a rave, how to build a backyard sauna, how to make a vegan peach pie.

Our project at OPRG began (and remains) an investigation into a structural analogy between open protocols of the web and the open cultural and technical protocols that drive and sustain underground cultures.