I wonder if anyone has read any of my writings over the last 20+ years about communication between humans, between a human and a machine, or about communication between machines. It was actually this that led me to PCT, and that allowed Bill P to say in 1993 that I was the only person he knew who came to PCT by way of seeing that it was, after all, the foundation of my “Layered Protocol Theory”.
Anyway, I think a lot of what has been said in this thread would have been unnecessary if the writers had a clear concept of the Protocol, even without considering it as an element in a hierarchy of protocols. PPC Chapter II.14 is about Protocols, though they are casually introduced earlier.