Standards on Port 80: Shoreline: issues

Just like the railroad industry needed a standard width between rails on the track, the electrical industry needed to settle their AC/DC issue before it could prosper. For others, it was a matter of life and death.

The need for standards was dramatized in 1904, when more than 1,500 buildings burned down in Baltimore, Md., because of a lack of standard fire-hose couplings. When firefighters from Washington and as far away as New York arrived to help douse the fire, few of their hoses fit the hydrants.

source: U.S. government's National Institute
of Standards and Technology's Founding

The Internet's standards are the protocols, such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and the domain name system for addressing. Without these universally accepted standards, the Internet would simply have no "inter".

What's the problem underneath the problem? What needs to change for the problem to get solved?

The current standards system is based on a level of agreement common among scientists. In this case, it was the computer scientists during the last thirty years who spoke the same geeky dialect of English. Tim Berners-Lee, who wrote HTTP and HTML, heads the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the not-for-profit organization to "develop interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential." So far, Berners-Lee has kept the faith.

Definitions

Established facts

The Issues

Data privacy, filtering, cryptography, interception, freedom of speech, access to information

Who are the players?

What are the prominent issue statements?

Any issue as broad as standards is made up of sub-issues and underlying issues and larger issues.

Help us untangle this complex situation by clearly stating the prominent standards issues in debatable terms.

What are the prominent positions?

Excerpt, summarize, and link to the partisan advocacy positions on standards taken by the players.

The Policies

Examples of publicly posted standards

Citations for articles about standards

Force Analysis

How are standards affected by the driving and restraining forces of the Internet?

driving forces

small, fast, cheap

visual: multimedia

networked: big pipes

embedded: almost invisible

universal: everyone has them; international

ubiquitous: always on, everywhere

intelligent

easy to use

trusted

standardized

The Advanced Network Technologies Division (ANTD), as part of NIST 's Information Technology Laboratory , serves to provide the Networking industry with the best in test and measurement research.

a community-driven set of working groups that are developing standards and best practices for distributed computing ("Grids" and "Metacomputing") efforts including those specifically aimed at very large data sets, high performance computing but increasingly those efforts that industry is calling “Peer-to-Peer.”

restraining forces

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Museum's Weights and Measures

The struggle to achieve weights and measures standardization was central to the progress of industrialization in the United States and to the concurrent maturation of national and international markets.

The story forms an essential part of our country's narrative of scientific advance and economic development.

DYSON SAY ICANN HAS BECOME 'A REAL CESSPOOL'
Esther Dyson, tech celeb and former chair of ICANN (the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), told an audience at the Wharton business school that "ICANN has become a real cesspool," because of its tangled disputes about authority, accountability, and openness. The independent agency is in charge of managing policy for the Internet's name and address systems. "When I was a young student, I thought grow-ups would come and make things work. Now I realize that grown-ups are just kids with wrinkles. I only see juvenile behavior at ICANN." (Public Policy & Management Emory, Jun 2002)

what do you think?

The organisation that oversees the Internet's vast domain-name system is looking to face down grass-roots protesters at its annual meeting in Bucharest this week as it tries to gain greater government-level acceptance.

Starting on Wednesday in the Romanian capital, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will chart its future, one that could see individual Net users getting squeezed out in favour of politicians and businessmen.

A who's who of mobile network companies, wireless handset makers, and IT companies on Wednesday announced the formation of the Open Mobile Alliance.

The industry body will drive the adoption of standards for mobile telecommunication services and guarantee interoperability between mobile products and services,

U.S. lawmakers said on Wednesday that they would step up oversight of the nonprofit group that oversees the Internet's domain-name system, but stopped short of saying the United States should run the controversial body.

Several senators and a Bush administration official said the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, would have to change the way it operates if it wants to continue to oversee the system that allows Internet users to navigate using easy-to-remember domain names like ''www.example.com.''


issues and policies for exploring webs


Customhouse concepts and buzzwords	Charthouse trends and currents	Boardwalk people and communities
Lighthouse information and research	Shoreline issues and policies	Docks systems and processes


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modified: June 18, 2002 by Douglas Anderson http://RicciStreet.net/port80/shoreline/standards.htm

Standards

The Problem