Beyond Apps: The Rise of Protocol Civilization
Why the future of AI depends not on products, but on protocols
Electricity didn’t change the world because of the lightbulb. It changed the world because of the grid—the invisible protocols that standardized voltage, built power plants, and connected every home to a common infrastructure.
AI is at the same threshold today. We already have dazzling “lightbulbs” in the form of large language model apps. But the real question is whether we can build the grid: the protocols that turn raw capability into a civilization-wide infrastructure. That is what I call the beginning of a Protocol Civilization.
What is Protocol Civilization
A Protocol Civilization is a form of society organized around executable protocols. Its core logic is to transform language, rules, and institutions into structures that can be executed, verified, and coordinated directly — allowing humans, AI agents, and even organizations to interact on the same foundation.
In a protocol civilization:
Language becomes code — contracts, laws, and policies are no longer just words on paper but executable rules (Rule-as-Code).
Trust shifts to protocols — trust is no longer vested in institutions or authorities, but embedded in transparent, verifiable systems.
Humans and AI stand as equals — any actor that can follow the protocol, whether a human, an AI agent, or a decentralized organization, becomes a full participant in the system.
Governance becomes programmable — protocols don’t just handle transactions; they encode governance, voting, consensus, and enforcement, making social operations upgradable like software.
This stands in sharp contrast to what we might call Product Civilization:
Product Civilization = platforms, apps, and feature bundles, with value concentrated in a few players.
Protocol Civilization = standards, infrastructure, and open collaboration, with value distributed across the network.
In other words, Protocol Civilization isn’t about building “just another app.” It’s about providing the runtime foundation on which an entire society can operate.
Why Talk About “Protocol Civilization” Now
Large language models already provide us with the raw material of language. They generate text, ideas, and symbolic structures with astonishing fluency. But without shared protocols, these raw capabilities cannot mature into the infrastructure of civilization.
History shows us this pattern clearly:
The internet only became universal once TCP/IP standardized how machines communicate.
Global mobile networks only emerged when GSM defined how devices and carriers interoperate.
Electricity only scaled into daily life after AC/DC standards unified power distribution and safety.
Each breakthrough required not just a technology, but a protocol layer that transformed isolated experiments into global systems.
Today, with LLMs, we find ourselves in a protocol vacuum. We have dazzling demos, powerful APIs, and a growing open-source ecosystem — but no equivalent of TCP/IP for language, no shared “grid” that makes models interoperable, safe, and universally accessible.
This is why now is the moment to talk about Protocol Civilization. The technology is here. What’s missing is the scaffolding — the standards, the governance, the social contracts — that will allow LLMs to move from toys and tools into the very foundations of our societies.
The Work Ahead: Building Protocol Civilization
The path toward a protocol civilization is not simply a matter of faster chips or bigger datasets. It requires building an entire multi-layered infrastructure that extends far beyond technology.
Technical layer: Models must be open enough to be interoperable, with standardized interfaces and transparent benchmarks. Execution must be verifiable, so that outputs are not just plausible but provably correct in contexts that matter — from contracts to governance. Just as electricity required plugs, voltages, and safety codes, AI will require open APIs, shared standards, and auditable execution.
Institutional layer: Laws, regulations, and governance frameworks need to evolve in parallel. Who owns AI outputs? Who is liable for harm? How should different jurisdictions interoperate? These questions cannot be left to corporations alone — they demand legislation, international treaties, and enforceable norms that span borders.
Social layer: Perhaps most challenging of all, society must adapt. Education systems must embed “AI literacy” the way schools once embedded “electrical literacy.” Cultural norms must shift to accept AI as a constant presence, neither fetishized as magic nor feared as threat. Everyday habits of cognition and collaboration will need to adjust to a world where humans and AI are protocol peers.
This is not the scale of launching a new app or even rolling out a new product line. It is the scale of crossing a continent— long, arduous, requiring many actors and generations of effort. Yet this is what every civilization-defining technology has demanded. Electricity, the internet, and mobile communication all became infrastructure only after societies committed to this kind of long, collective work.
The Opportunity and the Paradox of Protocol Civilization
There is a striking paradox at the heart of this transition. AI is both the object of protocol civilization and the tool that enables it. On the one hand, LLMs require protocols in order to function as true infrastructure. On the other hand, they are uniquely capable of accelerating the very process of protocol-building: they can explain themselves, translate complex ideas into plain language, and dramatically lower the barriers of public understanding. In other words, AI is both the challenge and the catalyst.
This opens up profound opportunities:
Participation becomes democratized — just as the early internet allowed anyone to publish a webpage, protocol civilization allows ordinary people to contribute to the design, use, and governance of AI systems.
Decentralized communities and open-source protocols will lead the way — innovation will emerge first from networks of contributors who move faster than traditional institutions, establishing de facto standards before governments and corporations catch up.
States and large enterprises will eventually follow — while slower to adapt, they cannot ignore the gravitational pull of new protocols once they achieve critical mass. Just as governments ultimately embraced the internet and mobile standards, they will be compelled to integrate AI protocols into law, infrastructure, and governance.
The paradox, then, is also the opportunity: the very technology that demands protocols is the one best suited to help humanity create and spread them.
Conclusion: Protocol Civilization is Inevitable
The product model may bring convenience, but it cannot carry the weight of civilization. Apps and platforms are useful, yet they remain bounded by their creators’ design. They cannot by themselves reshape the foundations of society.
Only through protocolization can AI truly sink into the fabric of everyday life — not as a novelty or a service, but as infrastructure, as universal and invisible as electricity. Protocols, not products, are what allow raw capability to scale into shared civilization.
That is why the central question today is not “What can AI do?” but rather “Can humanity build the protocols to contain and align it?” The answer will determine whether large language models remain just another wave of clever applications — or whether they become the foundations of a new protocol civilization
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协议通用，但是应用层会有新的墙出现吗