9 papers
Protocol Futuring: Speculating Second-Order Dynamics of Protocols in Sociotechnical Infrastructural Futures
Botao Amber Hu, Samuel Chua, Helena Rong
Drawing on infrastructure studies in HCI and CSCW, this paper introduces Protocol Futuring, a methodological framework that extends design futuring by foregrounding protocols -- ru…
Insured Agents: A Decentralized Trust Insurance Mechanism for Agentic Economy
Botao 'Amber' Hu, Bangdao Chen
The emerging "agentic web" envisions large populations of autonomous agents coordinating, transacting, and delegating across open networks. Yet many agent communication and commerc…
Infrastructuring Pop-Up Cities with "Social Layer": Designing Serendipitous Co-Livings for Temporary Intentional Communities
Danwen Ji, Botao 'Amber' Hu
After the pandemic, a new form of "pop-up city" has emerged -- co-living gatherings of 100-200 people for 4-8 weeks that differ from conferences and hack houses. These temporary in…
Inter-Agent Trust Models: A Comparative Study of Brief, Claim, Proof, Stake, Reputation and Constraint in Agentic Web Protocol Design-A2A, AP2, ERC-8004, and Beyond
Botao 'Amber' Hu, Helena Rong
As the "agentic web" takes shape-billions of AI agents (often LLM-powered) autonomously transacting and collaborating-trust shifts from human oversight to protocol design. In 2025,…
On Improvisation and Open-Endedness: Insights for Experiential AI
Botao 'Amber' Hu
Improvisation-the art of spontaneous creation that unfolds moment-to-moment without a scripted outcome-requires practitioners to continuously sense, adapt, and create anew. It is a…
Composable Life: Speculation for Decentralized AI Life
Botao Amber Hu, Fangting
"Composable Life" is a hybrid project blending design fiction, experiential virtual reality, and scientific research. Through a multi-perspective, cross-media approach to speculati…