Spring ’83

Welcome! This is a draft protocol intended to suggest new ways of relating online. If you are just discovering it, I recommend reading this narrative description. Don’t miss my notes on a summer spent operating the protocol with other people, either.

This is speculative software intended to invite consideration and imagination; it doesn’t have any “users”, only co-investigators.

This spec is now a historical artifact, but/and I hope it might prompt you to think about new ways of relating online.

Most recent draft:

• Protocol specification

Previous drafts:

• 20220619
• 20220609

Here are the implementations I know about currently:

• The Kingswood Palimpsest, a client
• rdmurphy/spring-board-element, a web component
• rpj/spring83, in JavaScript
• royragsdale/s83, in Go
• motevets/springboard, in Go (running here)
• michael-lazar/lets-dance, in Python (with some great notes)
• pteichman/ahoy, in Go
• cellu_cc/so83-gpu, on GitLab, in OpenCL 🤯
• JohnB/spring83, a client

If you’ve implemented a client, server, or utility, at any level of completeness, and you would like me to list it here, let me know.

This work is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.