The Internet’s communication protocols separate diverse physical communication channels from a wide variety of communications applications. That separation encapsulates complexity and fosters incremental innovation. It has been a hugely productive communicative structure.
A variety of communication content, however, remains closely bound to particular communication protocols. Consider, for example, physical-layer protocols for the transmission of the classical Chinese text, The Scripture and Instructions on the Elixirs of the Nine Tripods of the Yellow Thearch (Huangdi jiuding shendan jingjue). This text, from roughly two millennium ago, claims to describe a way to eternal life. In addition, the text describes a specific physical-layer protocol for its own transmission:
As a [token of an] oath, a golden human figurine weighing nine ounces and a golden figurine of a fish weighing three ounces are thrown into an eastward-flowing stream. Both figurines should be provided by the one receiving the Way [the text plus oral instructions]. Beside the stream, in a place unfrequented by other people, a seat [or altar, zuo] for the Mystic Woman should be set up. Burn incense and announce to those on high: “I intend to transmit to so-and-so the Way of long life.” Place the scripture on the elixirs on a table, and place the seat next to it. When you are ready to transmit the Way, face north and prostrate yourself for an hour; if the sky remains clear and there is no wind, the transmission may proceed. At the transmission, master and disciple together sip the blood of a white chicken as a covenant.[1]
The text describe instructions for wondrous elixirs. If those instructions are valued, so too should be the text’s instructions for its own transmission. Put differently, not transmitting the text according to its instructions would explain failures of elixirs made according to the text’s instructions.[2]
The significance of communications protocols for applications isn’t just a matter of ancient superstition. Even in our age of convergence and multi-platform content, who hasn’t heard, “It’s not what you said, but how you said it!”
Notes:
[1] Quoted in Campany, Robert Ford (2009) Making transcendents: ascetics and social memory in early medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press) p. 97.
[2] Ge Hong‘s Inner Chapters (c. 320), which promotes alchemy, explains the failure of an alchemical book thus:
When Liu De, Xiang’s father, came into possession of this book while in charge of the case of Liu An, he did not have it properly transmitted to him by a teacher. And so when Liu Xiang, who had no understanding of the arts of the Dao in the first place, happened to encounter this book, he assumed that its meaning was conveyed exclusively on the surface of the paper on which it was written, and that is why his attempt to fabricate gold [based on it] failed.
Quoted in id. p. 99.