Torsten Goerke
Technische Universität Dresden
Center for Open Digital Innovation and Participation (CODIP)
Guest Lecture · Simon Fraser University, School of Computing Science · 2026 @tgoerke.bsky.social
Act 0 — The Utopia
What If
What if your most-cited figure could be cited independently of the paper it's in?
A dataset you built in 2019 accrued credit every time someone reused it — regardless of platform
Your community defined what "peer review" means for your discipline — not a journal
Your researcher identity moved with you — not with your institution or publisher
You had the vocabulary to describe what you actually produce — including artistic practices, co-creation, and cultural work — not just what a platform's affordances allow you to call it
"We need a seamless formal research environment — a standard protocol for easily modular publishing — with outputs interoperable across platforms."
— Reuse Incentive Working Group, March 2026
Act 0 — The Utopia
From Albums to Streams
"The question is not whether scientific communication will evolve, but how that evolution will be shaped, and by whom."
— Courtney Babott & Rowan Cockett, From Albums to Streams (2026) · Keynote speakers, ATScience 2026, Vancouver
Music changed when infrastructure made it possible to break apart bundled products and move value through use rather than control. The PDF bundles research the same way.
ATScience 2026 ecosystem — already building:
ChiveDecentralized eprints on ATProto
Margin.at / Seams.soSocial annotation in the atmosphere
LanyardsResearcher profiles on ATProto
SembleSocial knowledge network for research
Paper Skygest FeedPersonalized research feeds on Bluesky
Groundmist.xyzObsidian integrated with ATProto
AstroskyIndependent home for astronomy
Hypgen InfinityEvaluating scientific AI agents on ATProto
Act 1 — The Problem
POSIWID
The purpose of a system is what it does. — Stafford Beer, via Larens Hof, "The Purpose of Protocols" (2026)
SMTP, HTTP, RSS — claimed to be neutral infrastructure
Their silence on governance was not apolitical — it was a choice
The outcome: concentration of authority, lock-in, passive user
Platform
Claimed purpose
Actual outcome
Journal systems
Disseminate knowledge
Subscription lock-in, copyright transfer
Preprint servers
Open access
Single-platform indexing monopolies
Citation indexes
Track impact
Commercialized metrics, opaque algorithms
Act 1 — The Problem
The Governance Vacuum in Research
User lock-in → data commercialization → enshittification: platform quality degrades as users lose alternatives
Research platforms follow identical topology: proprietary infrastructure, opaque algorithms, extraction of community labor
Affordances researchers get: submit · review · publish · cite — designed for an undifferentiated "everyone" that doesn't exist
"Protocol design can constrain how actors operate within a system, but it cannot ensure the conditions that keep the broader ecosystem functioning."
— Hof, 2026
No current research platform implements Ostrom's commons principles:
Defined community boundariesCollective choice mechanismsAccessible conflict resolutionProportional cost/benefit distribution
Act 1 — The Problem
The User/Developer Dualism
Communities select from a platform-defined set: submit, cite, download, share
They cannot specify: what counts as a contribution, how credit flows, what review means for their discipline
The user/developer dualism is an industrial narrative — "platforms build, researchers use"
The researcher loses two things:
The Process
AI tools optimized for task completion deliver outputs, not understanding. The cognitive work of science is outsourced.
The Literacy
The capacity to carry out peer review, evaluate evidence, situate claims — eroded by fluency illusion and metacognition bypass.
"Hyper-individualism — including AI-assisted 'vibe coding' — emerges as its latest manifestation."
— Goerke & Barthold, Information Civics as Counter-Imaginary (2026)
Act 2 — Protocols as the Hinge
Protocols: Hard to Study, Easy to Ignore
"Hard to study and easy to ignore."— Rao et al., The Unreasonable Sufficiency of Protocols (2023)
Framework
What protocols are
What they enable
Actor-Network Theory (Latour)
Bridge between ontologies
Agency in heterogeneous networks
Assemblages (Deleuze/Guattari)
Sites of emergent properties
Connections through shared experience
Cybernetics (Wiener)
Governance of communication
Coordination across realms
Engineering ontologies (objects, functions, interfaces) must translate into social ontologies (power, identity, norms, credit). Protocols are the translation layer — but they are not neutral.
Act 2 — Protocols as the Hinge
The Governance Ladder
Early protocols
SMTP, HTTP, RSS — silent on governance → enabled monopolies through mimetic convergence
ActivityPub
Explicit about decentralization → recreates platform dynamics at instance level; governance by administrator discretion
AT Protocol
Most normatively explicit — "speech and reach should be two separate layers" → but Bluesky still dominates through market dynamics
"Protocol architecture shapes which governance mechanisms are 'natural' — but cannot enforce them."
— Hof, 2026
Act 2 — Protocols as the Hinge
Hatching: Initializing the Commons
"Engineering any complex system is a consideration of its initialization conditions — in a Commons, we call these initial conditions the 'Hatch'."
— Commons Stack (via Goerke & Barthold, 2025)
Not just building — co-constructing topology AND governance simultaneously
Not layering democracy onto pre-built infrastructure — designing democratic conditions from the start
The governor-engineer role: translating social frameworks into actionable technical steps
The 5-step governance pipeline:
① Identify initial conditions② Introduce governor-engineer role③ Apply technical knowledge④ Shift focus to users⑤ Implement deliberative practice
Act 3 — AT Protocol as Substrate
Why ATScience
ATScience — empowering science communities with open, democratic, researcher-owned infrastructure. (atproto.science · co-founded by Ronen Tamari, Torsten Goerke, Barry Prendergast)
Why AT Protocol as research substrate:
Sovereign identity — researcher identity independent of publisher, platform, institution
Portable data — research objects travel with provenance intact
Credible exit — structural condition for community self-determination
ATScience 2026
March 27 · Vancouver A full-day exploration of AT Protocol in science, education, and open knowledge.
10+ projects building. The hatch is in progress.
Act 3 — AT Protocol as Substrate
Atmospheric Reviews: The Hatch in Progress
Hatching step
Research commons equivalent
① Enable Deliberation
What affordances does this research community need?
② Algorithmic Choice
Community-governed discovery and curation
③ Sovereign Identity
Researcher identity independent of publisher/platform
④ Implement Rules
Governance encoded at protocol level
Modular research objects as first-class protocol citizens
Review, curation, annotation as specifiable community affordances — not platform defaults
The hatch sets governance conditions before concentration can occur
Act 3 — AT Protocol as Substrate
From Select to Specify
"Communities should specify affordances for situated needs — not select from a platform-defined set."
— Goerke & Barthold, Information Civics as Counter-Imaginary (2026)
Current platforms (select)
submitreviewpublishcitedownload
AT Protocol commons (specify)
What counts as a contribution?
How does credit flow — to figure, dataset, method?
What does review mean — and who does it?
What is reuse and when is attribution required?
Information Civics: Network architecture as civic design. Not what algorithms can do — but what kinds of collective futures communities want to build, and with what authority.
Act 4 — Community in Motion
Reuse Incentive Working Group
Creative Commons + Continuous Science Foundation · Feb–March 2026
Goal: surface friction around reuse and licensing of modular research; produce framework and recommendations
3 meetings across 6 weeks — Meeting #3 was recently (March 19, 2026)
"Reuse is still treated as optional or downstream. What would it look like to treat reuse — and the permission to reuse — as core infrastructure for how science is shared?"
— WG framing question, Feb 2026
Act 4 — Community in Motion
What Does Modular Research Actually Need?
Publishing for reuse
Know if and how to reuse a component as primary source
Know if and how to license their own components
Know what proper licensing requires
Setting attribution expectations
Track attribution per component, Panel of Evidence, Paper Repo
Distinguish citations for primary vs. secondary sources
Reuser guidance
Know what the license requires
Easily comply with license terms
Track their own compliance
Outside the PDF
Prevent gaming of citation metrics
Standard protocol for modular publishing, interoperable across platforms
Attribution during informal sharing
Act 4 — Community in Motion
Citation as Currency
"Citation as currency — but citations have no sentiment: support, reject, oppose. The hazard is that this might be gamed."
— Reuse Incentive Working Group, March 2026
What modular research requires instead:
Attribution that propagates downward — to sub-components, figures, datasets, methods
Credit that travels across platforms — not locked to a single index
Licensing embedded at the object level — not as a separate document
"Machine automation: embedding attribution as a cultural norm, and not just as a legal requirement."
Act 5 — The Research Horizon WIP
AIDLE: A Research Agenda
The remaining gap: who has the capacity to co-design? The governor-engineer role requires both technical and governance literacy — and AI tools as currently designed are making that rarer.
Thesis
Vibe coding = task completion = the latest form of the user/developer dualism
Antithesis
Hatching a commons — communities specifying affordances, deliberative co-design
Synthesis
AIDLE — AI redesigned for human capability development, not task completion
AI that knows when not to answer — scaffolds co-design rather than completing tasks
Skill Trajectory Modeling: tracks capability gaps, not preferences
Atmospheric Reviews as testbed: agentic tools that scaffold protocol co-design for research communities
"Not what algorithms can do — but what kinds of collective futures communities want to build."
Act 6 — Close
Protocol-Mediated Agency
The PDF bundled research the way albums bundled music. AT Protocol gives us the infrastructure to unbundle — and re-bundle on community terms.
🔑
Specify
affordances for your community
🏗
Hatch
governance before concentration
🌐
Own
identity, data, relationships
Hatching is underway: Reuse Incentive WG · ATScience 2026 (March 27, Vancouver) · Atmospheric Reviews · AIDLE
What affordances does your research community need to specify — and who currently decides?