First blog post! Hello world, and welcome to what I think. This time, why I believe there may be benefits to\u00a0changing the way we deal with standardization in technology.<\/p>\n
The internet was conceived with many hopes in the minds of its creators. Some hoped to cut the extensive costs of owning and using a computer in the mid-sixties. Others hoped for a resilient communication network in the time of Cold War. Still others placed in the internet the hope that resources could be shared quickly among far-flung academic havens on both sides of the United States. For any of these aims to be achieved, there was one basic problem to solve; getting computers to talk to each other.<\/p>\n
As the first network was developed under the guidance of the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency in the 1960’s, the project ran into various problems; how to physically connect the computers, how to avoid overburdening the networked computers with the mammoth task of simply communicating, and, of course, how to translate among the many computer languages. It was this last problem that gave us the first instance of standardization; all four networked computers in the first ‘internet’ communicated with Interface Message Processors, or IMPs, which in turn communicated with each other, all via standardized “headers” on the information, or ‘packet,’ being sent, which told each IMP the destination and origin of the packet. Soon, the hosts themselves would be called upon to learn to work together and create something of a common language in order to communicate.<\/p>\n
In the subsequent years, as the internet as we know it was built, as it grew, fluctuated, and changed, one theme remained relatively present; standardization. Since 1865, the International Telecommunications Union (since 1949 recognized by the\u00a0United Nations), has been producing communications standards for the globe. It was the ITU which brought together the many disparate computer companies under a common global umbrella after the creation of the World Wide Web, a vast magnification of the original standardized headers and cooperative host computers (Overview of ITU’s History). Not only did the ITU create standards, many of the countries of the world created their own bodies to enforce them within their borders; today, the International Organization for Standardization boasts more than 162 countries as members who cooperate to implement\u00a0these standards (About ISO).<\/p>\n
Well.<\/p>\n
So what?<\/p>\n
It seems clear that standard web is a boon for many; creating connections, allowing for international communication, and preventing any one company from winning a monopoly over a specific consumer by forcing them to use only their technology. What could be the problem?<\/p>\n
The problem in my perspective is that we don’t know any other way. From the beginnings of the internet to today, standards have been present, both out of necessity and out of a desire for interconnectedness. As a result we innovate within a set of parameters, parameters which allow us to communicate- think the use of IP dresses for interconnected devices. These standards are constantly under review, to be sure, but the lumbering body of the ITU cannot change fast enough to keep up with the pace of technology. What if there is a better way to share data than through packets? Or\u00a0a better way to build the internet than the somewhat haphazard infrastructure which has grown up around a loose set of building codes?<\/p>\n
In the end, I certainly don’t think that standardization is not overwhelmingly good for the internet. Indeed, the standards themselves are the foundation on which all internet infrastructure runs. But I suppose I am skeptical of what we might be missing out of respect for standards. I believe it would be a worthwhile experiment for some entity, government, academic, or corporate, or some combination thereof, to experiment outside of our network, to develop new means of connection and communication. At the same time, it would be worthwhile to consider a replica of the United Nations’ security council, a small body which governs the use of UN troops and moves much faster than the full assembly, for the creation of internet standards within the ITU, in order to better respond to changing technology. We’ll never know what the internet could be until we try.<\/p>\n
Hannah<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
First blog post! Hello world, and welcome to what I think. This time, why I believe there may be benefits to\u00a0changing the way we deal with standardization in technology. The internet was conceived with many hopes in the minds of its creators. Some hoped to cut the extensive costs of owning and using a computer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hannahjoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}