Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and NetworksHow did openness become a foundational value for the networks of the twenty-first century? Open Standards and the Digital Age answers this question through an interdisciplinary history of information networks that pays close attention to the politics of standardization. For much of the twentieth century, information networks such as the monopoly Bell System and the American military's Arpanet were closed systems subject to centralized control. In the 1970s and 1980s however, engineers in the United States and Europe experimented with design strategies to create new digital networks. In the process, they embraced discourses of 'openness' to describe their ideological commitments to entrepreneurship, technological innovation, and participatory democracy. The rhetoric of openness has flourished - for example, in movements for open government, open source software, and open access publishing - but such rhetoric also obscures the ways the Internet and other 'open' systems still depend heavily on hierarchical forms of control. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Telegraph | 25 |
American Standards | 58 |
Standardization and the Monopoly Bell System 1880s1930s 58 | 95 |
Critiques of Centralized Control 1930s1970s | 131 |
International Standards for the Convergence of Computers | 161 |
Other editions - View all
Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks Andrew L. Russell No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
accessed September 25 AESC AESC’s AIEE American Engineering Standards American Standards Association ARPA Arpanet AT&T AT&T Archives Auerbach Bachman Papers Bancroft Gherardi Bell System Business Cambridge CCITT centralized control century Charles Babbage Institute CLNP companies competition computer industry Computer Networks consensus standardization cooperation created critique culture Cyclades datagram early economic Electric Engineering Standards Committee federal Folder global History of Computing IBM’s ideology IETF IFIP industrial standardization Information innovation international standards Internet engineers Internet standards process INWG John Jon Postel Louis Pouzin manufacturers McKenzie Collection meeting monopoly ofthe Open Standards Open Systems Interconnection operating oral history interview organizational organizations OSI’s P. G. Agnew packet packet-switched Policy political problems proposal Protocol reference model researchers September 25 slugs specific strategy switching technical Technology Telecommunications telegraph telephone tion University Press users Vint Cerf virtual circuits York Zimmermann