Overall I loved this article, in particular the anecdote about construction materials. One sentence jumped out for me.
> These facts should prompt some reflection about the exercise of power in a technological society: Amid concerns about the excesses of market power and government regulation, nobody seems to worry much about the private groups of experts who created 80 percent of the laptop’s standards.
While I think this is overlooked, sure, I don't think this holds very true. I and other engineers I know do worry about which private companies and interests are controlling standards, and what perverse incentives are associated with them.
Recently, there was a big scandal and worry around the NSA creating subvertible weaknesses in technologies deployed worldwide by working on standards committees (a reason academics and the open source community has worked hard to produce alternatives).
Another example that comes to mind are the stardards around Javascript/ECMAScript. During the first few "rounds", there was an anticompetitive effort being waged against browser giants like Microsoft, who were thought to have been pursuing standards choices that favored their market positions.
I'd say there's lower public visibility into these processes, but it isn't like these conversations aren't happening.
> These facts should prompt some reflection about the exercise of power in a technological society: Amid concerns about the excesses of market power and government regulation, nobody seems to worry much about the private groups of experts who created 80 percent of the laptop’s standards.
While I think this is overlooked, sure, I don't think this holds very true. I and other engineers I know do worry about which private companies and interests are controlling standards, and what perverse incentives are associated with them.
Recently, there was a big scandal and worry around the NSA creating subvertible weaknesses in technologies deployed worldwide by working on standards committees (a reason academics and the open source community has worked hard to produce alternatives).
Another example that comes to mind are the stardards around Javascript/ECMAScript. During the first few "rounds", there was an anticompetitive effort being waged against browser giants like Microsoft, who were thought to have been pursuing standards choices that favored their market positions.
I'd say there's lower public visibility into these processes, but it isn't like these conversations aren't happening.