Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- List of acronyms
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Ideological Origins of Open Standards I: Telegraph and Engineering Standards, 1860s–1900s
- 3 Ideological Origins of Open Standards II: American Standards, 1910s–1930s
- 4 Standardization and the Monopoly Bell System, 1880s–1930s
- 5 Critiques of Centralized Control, 1930s–1970s
- 6 International Standards for the Convergence of Computers and Communications, 1960s–1970s
- 7 Open Systems and the Limits of Democratic Design, 1970s–1980s
- 8 The Internet and the Advantages of Autocratic Design, 1970s–1990s
- 9 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
8 - The Internet and the Advantages of Autocratic Design, 1970s–1990s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- List of acronyms
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Ideological Origins of Open Standards I: Telegraph and Engineering Standards, 1860s–1900s
- 3 Ideological Origins of Open Standards II: American Standards, 1910s–1930s
- 4 Standardization and the Monopoly Bell System, 1880s–1930s
- 5 Critiques of Centralized Control, 1930s–1970s
- 6 International Standards for the Convergence of Computers and Communications, 1960s–1970s
- 7 Open Systems and the Limits of Democratic Design, 1970s–1980s
- 8 The Internet and the Advantages of Autocratic Design, 1970s–1990s
- 9 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
The standards elephant of yesterday - OSI.
The standards elephant of today - it’s right here.
As the Internet and its community grows, how do we manage the process of change and growth?
Open process – let all voices be heard.
Closed process – make progress.
Quick process – keep up with reality.
Slow process – leave time to think.
Market driven process – the future is commercial.
Scaling driven process – the future is the Internet.
We reject: kings, presidents and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and running code.
– David D. Clark, “A Cloudy Crystal Ball,” 1992By all accounts, David Clark’s plenary address at the July 1992 meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was a transformative moment in the history of networking. There was a palpable tension in the sessions leading up to Clark’s talk, which occurred at the end of the final session on the fourth day of a contentious i ve-day meeting. Clark, a senior research scientist in MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science, had been a leading member of the Internet technical community since 1976. Clark’s title, “A Cloudy Crystal Ball,” suggested uncertainty, but his “alternate title” – “Apocalypse Now” – better encapsulated the tone of his remarks. He used the occasion to cajole Internet engineers into paying more attention to technical problems that threatened the Internet’s continued growth and success. Like many people in the audience, Clark worried about the strains that the commercialization of the early 1990s was placing on the technical capabilities of the Internet. However, he was more deeply concerned by fundamental problems with the security of the Internet, as one of his slides made plain: “Security is a CRITICAL problem. Lack of security means the END OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Open Standards and the Digital AgeHistory, Ideology, and Networks, pp. 229 - 261Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
References
, “Privatizing the Internet: Competing Visions and Chaotic Events, 1987–1995,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 32 (2010): 10–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Launching the DNS War: Dot-Com Privatization and the Rise of Global Internet Governance (PhD dissertation, University of Miami, 2006)Google Scholar
, “The Internet Engineering Task Force,” in , , and , eds., Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1999), 50Google Scholar
, “Today’s Cooperative Competitive Standards Environment and the Internet Standards-Making Model,” in and , eds., Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995)Google Scholar
, “Habermas@Discourse.Net: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace,” Harvard Law Review 116 (2003): 749–873CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Jr., The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering Anniversary Edition (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 40–50Google Scholar
and , Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar
, “A Rape in Cyberspace: How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society,” The Village Voice (December 23, 1993)Google Scholar
, “Constructing Legitimacy: The W3C’s Patent Policy,” in , ed., Opening Standards: The Global Politics of Interoperability (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011)Google Scholar
and , Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon, 1962–1986 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)Google Scholar
, “Protocols for Interconnected Packet Networks,” Computer Communication Review 18 (October 1980): 10–11Google Scholar
, Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 315–330Google Scholar
, “The Role of the Government in the Evolution of the Internet,” Communications of the ACM 37 (August 1994): 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ”Expanding AI Research and Founding ARPANET,” in , ed., Expert Systems and Artificial Intelligence: Applications and Management (Indianapolis, IN: Howard W. Sams & Company, 1988), 229Google Scholar
and , “The Hidden Lives of Standards: Technical Prescriptions and the Transformation of Work in America,” in and , eds., Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), 95–144Google Scholar
, “Why the Arpanet Was Built,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 33 (2011): 4–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “OSI Reference Model – The ISO Model of Architecture for Open Systems Interconnection,” IEEE Transactions on Communications 28 (1980): 425–432CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Transport Protocols for Department of Defense Data Networks: Report to the Department of Defense and the National Bureau of Standards Committee on Computer-Computer Communication Protocols (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1985)Google Scholar
, “Moving from DoD to OSI Protocols: A First Step,” Computer Communication Review 16 (April/May, 1986): 2–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Seeding Networks: The Federal Role,” Communications of the ACM 39 (October 1996): 11–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , “The Art of Standards Wars,” California Management Review 41 (1999): 8–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Economics of Standards Wars,” Review of Network Economics 3 (2004): 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and , “Coordination versus Differentiation in a Standards War: 56K Modems,” RAND Journal of Economics 37 (2006): 887–909CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983)Google Scholar
, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969)Google Scholar
and , “The ISO Reference Model and Other Protocol Architectures,” in , ed., Information Processing 83: Proceedings of the IFIP 9th World Computer Congress (New York: North-Holland, 1983), 34Google Scholar
, The Elements of Networking Style, And Other Animadversions on the Art of Intercomputer Networking, 2nd ed. (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2000; 1st ed. Prentice-Hall, 1985)Google Scholar
and , Coordinating Technology: Studies in the International Standardization of Telecommunications (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 229–262Google Scholar
, The Open Book: A Practical Perspective on OSI (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 591–592Google Scholar
, Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall PTR, 1992), 191Google Scholar
, Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002)Google Scholar
, Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009), 25–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, IPv6: The New Internet Protocol (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall PTR, 1998), 2Google Scholar
, Open Systems Standardization: A Business Approach (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall PTR, 1997), 257Google Scholar
, Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Casting the Net: From ARPANET to INTERNET and Beyond (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995), 123Google Scholar
, “The Emergence of the Internet: Collective Invention and Wild Ducks,” Industrial and Corporate Change 19 (2010): 1521–1562CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Federal Networking Standards: Policy Issues,” StandardView 2 (1994): 218–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Why Then Did the X.400 E-mail Standard Fail? Reasons and Lessons to be Learned,” Journal of Information Technology 28 (2013): 63–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Patterns in Network Architecture: A Return to Fundamentals (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall PTR, 2007)Google Scholar
, Jr., “The Benevolent Dictator,” in Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011)Google Scholar
and , “Standards Processes and Objectives for the National Information Infrastructure,” in and , eds., Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995), 7–10Google Scholar
and , National Information Infrastructure Initiatives: Vision and Policy Design (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997)Google Scholar
, , and , “Developing Information Infrastructure: The Tensions between Standardization and Flexibility,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 21 (1996): 407–426CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Markets, Standards, and the Information Infrastructure,” IEEE Micro (December 1993): 36–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Network Neutrality: Words of Power and 800-Pound Gorillas,” International Journal of Communication 1 (2007): 701–708Google Scholar