Cartographic Power: Reality–Protocol Theory (RPT) and the Politics of the Maps We Live Inside

This paper advances Reality–Protocol Theory: the claim that power in complex societies is exercised primarily by designing, distributing, and defending protocols—lossy, rule-bearing maps that structure what agents perceive and how they act. A protocol is formalized as a tuple of categories, metrics, rules, versioning policy, and governance. Agents adopt protocols not because they perfectly mirror the world, but because the protocol trades off legibility and coordination benefits against distortion, translation, and embodiment costs. Diffusion is modeled via replicator dynamics, while a simple linear model captures Goodhart drift and immune correction. The theory explains genesis (crises, recombination, liminal spaces), the stability paradox (how successful protocols preserve a stable core while enabling adaptation at the edge), and durability (error-correction, boundary policing, and self-repair as an “immune system”). We propose operational indicators—legibility, distortion, network lock-in, translation cost, embodiment cost, opacity, immune repertoire, and bridging centrality—and outline empirical strategies for testing RPT’s core propositions.