reflections on standards & society

This course has left me with a severe case of standarditus , a condition in which one sees all problems in the world through the lens of standardization.  As a recurring offender of STS courses here at Stevens, I went into the class with tools such as an understanding of Actor Network Theory and an understanding of the political demensions through examples like Winner's bridges and the many automobile examples given throughout Vinsel's classes.  As a computer scientist who keeps up to date on what is going on in open source project standards committess, it would have been a disservice to myself to not take this class.  I had heard the terms de facto, de jure, and concencus before in discussions about standards but lacked an understanding of how these standards processes shaped the way that the standards were made.  I found that the standards game and having John Day speak to the class were extremely helpful at this as to understand how negotiation and personal interest shapes the standards process.  Negotiation takes an understanding of the other person and their position far deeper than what is often gained at a committee table.  Understanding what the best type of standard is for a given problem under constraints such as time and safety is important as not to waste time failing. 

Before this class I had not thought much about the political side of standards.  A standard like any other asset a company may own is part of the strategy when competing for market dominance.  One would hope that the standard is good for innovation and the general public, but after taking this course it is clear that this ideal case is rare.  Even scientific standards committees suffer from this as it is near impossible to not attempt to best represent the interests of your employer.  Standards need to be updated and maintained as the fields that contain said standard and their relationships change.  The standards process is prone to corruption (as is anything inherently political) and those who oversee the process must be vigilant

I enjoyed having two lecturers in the class and thought that brought unique perspectives into discussion.  I thought the later lectures in the course were more helpful being those that focused on a single topic e.g. common core and pollution in west virginia.  Having a single reading I felt made the topics go more in depth.  One thing I think would be helpful would be for us to blog about the topic of the week which could be brought into that weeks discussion.  I also think that a list of what you want us to get out of each reading would be helpful as the readings can be quite long and it is sometimes easy to get lost in the details.  Overall I really enjoyed the course and feel it is and will continue to be useful in the way I think about the world.