Originally published at: Standards Make the World - Summer of Protocols
Technical standards are the quiet rules that give shape and direction to civilization. Alongside private organizations and public institutions, standards bodies form a third and critical function in modern society. When theyāre well designed, standards can become enabling technologies, like the Internet or shipping containers. Studying the past two centuries of standards-making helps make theā¦
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Thereās some sort of evolutionary jump between standards and protocols. I still havenāt been able to wrap my mind around what exactly that is.
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Maybe standards are just professional protocols.
Standards work emerged alongside Taylorism and the professionalization of science and engineering. They have a sort of coevolutionary dependence on commerce and industry.
Both protocols and standards constrain the variability of somethingā¦ Protocols seem necessarily process-oriented, whereas standards can be about objects or things, as well as processes
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Standards as sets of physical constraints that shape/enable their corresponding protocols
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still chiming in with āa standard doesnāt have to be a protocol and a protocol doesnāt have to be a standardā.
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Doesnāt have to be physical, right?
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Maybe āmaterialā or āstructuralā is the word Iām looking for (something that could also encompass code etc)ā¦or this could just be the distinction between hard vs soft protocols thatās been discussed.
cf Lang p.6 āThe commingling of terms hides their utility.ā
standards feel more like filters than protocols ex. āis according to (standard)ā and maybe makes it more commingling-able
protocols feel more like channels than standards ex. āthrough (protocol)ā
there might be overlaps in conception ex. āfollowing (standard)ā and āfollowing (protocol)ā
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Standards show the benchmarksācould be subjective because these can be a mix of our belief systems, best practices, and we set up these standards for how we think of something and work in a certain way, and why so. Protocols sound more like a set of rules to define the flow of context, of information, of decision models, of any progress from A to B.
Standards are models, protocols are contracts
Nice. About āstillā: what was the context in which this was first mentioned?
Iām writing a couple of essays on standards and protocols as part of the Autonomy and Cohesion series.. I would appreciate any thoughts, ideas, and pointers regarding comparing standards and protocols. Itās clear that some protocols are standards, but disregarding that, what do you find as important differences beyond the fact that time/sequence seems to be intrinsic for every protocol and not for every standard?
It definitely succeeded in making standards seem more exciting.
I was particularly interested in the ācommercial diplomacyā idea. It outlined the failure mode of when large interests ārent seekā via standards. I couldnāt help but internalize this as āstandards captureā (a la āregulatory captureā, āaudience captureā and āelite captureā*).
- *a meme? Ash Ketchum with a poke-ball roster of all these captures
This made me think of a feature of protocols that might be covered under ālegitimateā, but felt more like āorganicā or ārepresentativeā. They must be made sufficiently in the interests of the people that will actually use them and/or will be affected by them.
Iāve heard of a few examples of dominant players creating thorough āstandards racketsā, by owning the standard, a large entity that needs to use the standards (to encourage adoption) and the means of judging the standards (e.g. in the case where it requires certain types of data), and causing all sorts of shenanigans. Carbon was mentioned in the essay and I think there are probably some good examples in various climate regulations, but donāt know of any specifically.
Protocols: steps of a process to achieve a determined outcome
Standards: tests to determine whether something (including processes) have a determined quality (fair, safe, constitutional, etc.).