Stats for nerds
1recommend
4mentions
2people
2019–2021years
25% recommend75% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Meta:
If anyone wants to know the history of ISO, its predecessors, and the history of writing public standards, see Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting Since 1880 by Craig Murphy and JoAnne Yates (ISBN 9781421440033):
> Private, voluntary standards shape almost everything we use, from screw threads to shipping containers to e-readers. They have been critical to every major change in the world economy for more than a century, including the rise of global manufacturing and the ubiquity of the internet. In Engineering Rules, JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy trace the standard-setting system's evolution through time, revealing a process with an astonishingly pervasive, if rarely noticed, impact on all of our lives.
> This type of standard setting was established in the 1880s, when engineers aimed to prove their status as professionals by creating useful standards that would be widely adopted by manufacturers while satisfying corporate customers. Yates and Murphy explain how these engineers' processes provided a timely way to set desirable standards that would have taken much longer to emerge from the market and that governments were rarely willing to set. By the 1920s, the standardizers began to think of themselves as critical to global prosperity and world peace. After World War II, standardizers transcended Cold War divisions to create standards that made the global economy possible. Finally, Yates and Murphy reveal how, since 1990, a new generation of standardizers has focused on supporting the internet and web while applying the same standard-setting process to regulate the potential social and environmental harms of the increasingly global economy.
* https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/engineering-rules
Edit: Presentation from one of the co-authors:
> Craig Murphy, Betty Freyhof Johnson ’44 Professor of Political Science, gives a book talk with insights into the realm of global standard setting that has shaped global industries such as technology, trade, construction and the environment. He reveals the ways in which the committees of global stakeholders, which include manufacturers, users, and unaffiliated engineers collaborated to develop these standards of compliance, and the impact of these standards on human livelihoods worldwide.
- > The original comment still makes sense: none of the fees paid to access the final document go to the original authors.
And? If the authors didn't think they got any benefits—or rather, the companies employing the authors and paying them—didn't think they got any benefit, then they wouldn't make the work on ISO standards part of their job.
Just because the benefit is non-financial does no mean there is not benefit.
People have recognized that having common standards is a general benefit to society. For a history of this see Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting Since 1880 by Craig Murphy and JoAnne Yates (ISBN 9781421440033):
* https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/engineering-rules
ISO has bills and overhead to cover, just like anyone else. Just because some of its work is covered by 'donated' effort doesn't mean all of it can.
(I wouldn't object to having ISO standards being freely available, it's just that I can see some reasons for why they are not.)
- > Edit: clarify that ISO is not paying for the work being done on the standard, instead of that "writers usually do all the work for free".
And? If the authors didn't think they got any benefits—or rather, the companies employing the authors and paying them—didn't think they got any benefit, then they wouldn't make the work on ISO standards part of their job.
Just because the benefit is non-financial does not mean there is no benefit.
People have recognized that having common standards is a general benefit to society. For a history of this see Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting Since 1880 by Craig Murphy and JoAnne Yates (ISBN 9781421440033):
* https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/engineering-rules
ISO has bills and overhead to cover, just like anyone else. Just because some of its work is covered by 'donated' effort doesn't mean all of it can.
(I wouldn't object to having ISO standards being freely available, it's just that I can see some reasons for why they are not.)
- I'm only vaguely aware of this myself, though there are a few places I've learned to look.
A history of the Brooklyn Bridge and its builder notes, apparently as a form of admiration, that he designed every detail down to the nuts and bolts. Thing is, that's because he had to. There were no standard fasteners. (The book doesn't detail this, it's just a passing reference I happened to catch.) David McCullough's The Great Bridge: https://www.worldcat.org/title/great-bridge-the-epic-story-o...
Herbert Hoover, as US Secretary of Commerce, instituted the National Bureau of Standards (now the NTIS, I think), which among other things standardised weights, measures, and yes, fasteners. Rather hagiographically addressed here: http://lcweb2.loc.gov:8081/ammem/amrlhtml/inhoover.html
Joanne Yates has written on such thrilling topics as the evolution of the interoffice memo and standarisation of business communications (and though I'm writing tongue in cheek, I really do find the work fascinating), and has been working on a book on standards and their evolution. I've not read it but it may be of interest. Engineering rules : global standard setting since 1880 https://www.worldcat.org/title/engineering-rules-global-stan...
Simon Winchester has a book on machining and measurement, also not read, though based on his previous works it should be excellent. The Perfectionists: https://www.worldcat.org/title/perfectionists-how-precision-...
There was a fairly popular book on containerised freight shipping that came out within the past five years or so called The Box That Changed the World which looks at the standardisation of containerisation: https://www.worldcat.org/title/box-that-changed-the-world-fi...
Somewhere someone commented that one of the computer containerisation standards was simply a bunch of people coming to an agreement as to how to organise and and do things. My history with Linux has taught me that various packaging formats and systems (and the infrastructure surrounding them) have profound consequences and impacts, for users, adminstrators, and software producers.
I wish I could point to a single source and say "read this", but I'm really not aware of one presently.
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