Introduction

Andrew L. Russell

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139856553.003

1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014

Andrew L. Russell

Show author details

Andrew L. Russell: Affiliation:
Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The architects of the twenty-first-century digital age proclaim that openness is their foundational value. Their work is exemplified in movements that embrace open science, open access publishing, open source software, open innovation business strategies, open education, and so on. President Barack Obama’s “Open Government Initiative,” announced on his first day in office in 2009, captured the collective spirit of these efforts: “We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government.”

The ideology of openness, as it is articulated and practiced in the early twenty-first century, would have surprised the critic and historian of technology Lewis Mumford. In his 1964 essay, “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics,” he wondered: “Why has our age surrendered so easily to the controllers, the manipulators, the conditioners of an authoritarian technics?” The advocates of openness, however, have not surrendered so easily. Instead, they sense the dawn of a radical, almost utopian transformation in which power hierarchies are flattened, secret activities are made transparent, individuals are empowered, and knowledge itself is democratized. They welcome innovation, thrive on diversity and change, insist on the sanctity of autonomy and freedom, and have an unqualified disdain for authority, restrictions, and gatekeepers.

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: Open Standards and the Digital Age
History, Ideology, and Networks
, pp. 1 - 24

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139856553.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

David, Paul A., “Understanding the Emergence of ‘Open Science’ Institutions: Functionalist Economics in Historical Context,” Industrial and Corporate Change 13 (2004): 571–589CrossRef Google Scholar

Weber, Steven, The Success of Open Source (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar

Suber, Peter, Open Access (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012)Google Scholar PubMed

Chesbrough, Henry, Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003)Google Scholar

Peters, Michael A. and Britez, Rodrigo G., eds., Open Education and Education for Openness (Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2008)Google Scholar

Mumford, Lewis, “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics,” Technology & Culture 5 (1964): 1–8CrossRef Google Scholar

Nye, David E., “Shaping Communication Networks: Telegraph, Telephone, Computer,” Social Research 64 (1997): 1067–1091Google Scholar

Castells, Manuel, The Rise of the Network Society (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996)Google Scholar

Friedman, Thomas L., The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005)Google Scholar

Galambos, Louis, “Recasting the Organizational Synthesis: Structure and Process in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries,” Business History Review 79 (2005): 1–37CrossRef Google Scholar

Galambos, Louis, The Creative Society – And the Price Americans Paid for It (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012)Google Scholar

Eckes, Alfred E. and Zeiler, Thomas W., Globalization and the American Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar

Gray, John, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (New York: The New Press, 2000)Google Scholar

Legrain, Phillipe, Open World: The Truth About Globalization (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004)Google Scholar

Goldsmith, Jack and Wu, Tim, Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar

Morozov, Evgeny, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New York: Public Affairs, 2011)Google Scholar

Ensmenger, Nathan, “The Digital Construction of Technology,” Technology & Culture 53 (2012): 753–776CrossRef Google Scholar

Hughes, Thomas P., “The Evolution of Large Technological Systems,” in Bijker, Wiebe E., Hughes, Thomas P., and Pinch, Trevor, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989), 51Google Scholar

Winner, Langdon, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedelus 109 (1980): 121–136Google Scholar

Carlson, W. Bernard, “The Telephone as Political Instrument: Gardiner Hubbard and the Political Construction of the Telephone, 1875–1880,” in Allen, Michael Thad and Hecht, Gabrielle, eds., Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001)Google Scholar

Lessig, Lawrence, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999)Google Scholar

Abbate, Janet, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999)Google Scholar

Williams, Raymond, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 153–157Google Scholar

Geertz, Clifford, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar

White, Hayden, “Method and Ideology in Intellectual History: The Case of Henry Adams,” in LaCapra, Dominick and Kaplan, Steven L., eds., Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982)Google Scholar

Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1992), viiiGoogle Scholar

Kasson, John F., Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776–1900 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999)Google Scholar

Ninkovich, Frank, “Ideology, the Open Door, and Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History 6 (1982): 185–208CrossRef Google Scholar

Sjoblom, Gustav, “Control in the History of Computing: Making an Ambiguous Concept Useful,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 33 (2011): 88–90CrossRef Google Scholar

Foucault, Michel, “What Is Critique?” in Ingram, David, ed., The Political (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1978), 192–193, 208Google Scholar

Raunig, Gerald, “What Is Critique? Suspension and Recomposition in Textual and Social Machines,” Transversal (2008)Google Scholar

Eagleton, Terry, The Function of Criticism (New York: Verso, 2006)Google Scholar

Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1976 [1942])Google Scholar

Nissenbaum, Helen, “How Computer Systems Embody Values,” Computer (March 2001): 118–120Google Scholar

Morgan, Edmund S., ed., Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764–1766 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 45–49Google Scholar

Darnton, Robert, “An Early Information Society: News and Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” American Historical Review 105 (2000): 1–35CrossRef Google Scholar

Botein, Stephen, “‘Meer Mechanics’ and an Open Press: the Business and Political Strategies of Colonial American Printers,” Perspectives in American History 9 (1975): 127–225Google Scholar

Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1967)Google Scholar

Morgan, Edmund S. and Morgan, Helen, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995/1953)Google Scholar

Adams, John, “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law,” Adams, Charles F., ed., The Works of John Adams, III (Boston: Little and Brown, 1851), 447–464Google Scholar

Koeppel, Adolph, The Stamps that Caused the American Revolution: The Stamps of the 1765 Stamp Act for America (Manhasset, NY: Town of North Hempstead American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, 1976)Google Scholar

Warner, Michael, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1990), 32Google Scholar

McCorison, Marcus A., “Forward,” Bailyn, Bernard and Hench, John B., eds., The Press & the American Revolution (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981), 2Google Scholar

Sugita, Yoneyuki, “The Rise of an American Principle in China: A Reinterpretation of the First Open Door Notes Toward China,” in Jensen, Richard, Davidann, Jon and Sugita, Yoneyuki, eds. Trans-Pacific Relations: America, Europe, and Asia in the Twentieth Century (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Press, 2003), 3–20Google Scholar

Williams, William Appleman, “Open Door Interpretation,” in Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy: Volume 2, Deconde, Alexander, ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978), 703–710Google Scholar

Williams, William Appleman, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, (New York: WW Norton & Company, 1972 [1959]), 45–57Google Scholar

Israel, Jerry, Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905–1921 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971)Google Scholar

Bacevich, Andrew J., American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar

Bergson, Henri, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1935 [1932])Google Scholar

Popper, Karl, The Open Society and its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945)Google Scholar

Shackle, G.L.S., “The Multiplier in Closed and Open Systems,” Oxford Economic Papers 2 (May 1939): 135–144CrossRef Google Scholar

Parsons, Talcott, “The Kinship System of the Contemporary United States,” American Anthropologist, New Series, 45 (1943): 22–38CrossRef Google Scholar

Rosenblueth, Arturo and Wiener, Norbert, “The Role of Models in Science,” Philosophy of Science 12 (1945): 316–321CrossRef Google Scholar

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von, “The Theory of Open Systems in Physics and Biology,” Science New Series 111 (1950): 23–29CrossRef Google Scholar

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von, “An Outline of General System Theory,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 1 (1950): 139–164Google Scholar

Scott, W. Richard, “Ecosystems and the Structuring of Organizations,” in Hedges, Larry V. and Schneider, Barbara L., The Social Organization of Schooling (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005), 37Google Scholar

Maurer, John G., ed., Readings in Organization Theory: Open-Systems Approaches (New York: Random House, 1971)Google Scholar

Pondy, Louis R. and Mitroff, Ian I., “Beyond Open System Models of Organization,” Readings in Organizational Behavior 1 (1979): 3–39Google Scholar

Rousseau, Denise M., “Assessment of Technology in Organizations: Closed versus Open Systems Approaches,” The Academy of Management Review 4 (1979): 531–542Google Scholar

Scott, W. Richard, Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981)Google Scholar

Williamson, Oliver E., “Review of Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems by W. Richard Scott,” Journal of Economic Literature 20 (1982): 585–586Google Scholar

Hutcheon, N. B. and Kent, S. R., “Influence of Size, Function, and Design on the Standardization of Components,” Modular Quarterly (1966): 20–21Google Scholar

Russell, Andrew L., “Modularity: An Interdisciplinary History of an Ordering Concept,” Information & Culture: A Journal of History 47 (2012): 257–287Google Scholar

Nora, Simon and Minc, Alain, The Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981)Google Scholar

Houldsworth, Jack, “Standards for Open Network Operation,” Computer Communications 1 (1978): 5–12CrossRef Google Scholar

Libicki, Martin, Standards: The Rough Road to the Common Byte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy, 1994), 11Google Scholar

Cargill, Carl, Open Systems Standardization: A Business Approach (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Paladin Consulting, 1997), 70Google Scholar

Critchley, T. A. and Batty, K. C., Open Systems: The Reality (New York: Prentice Hall, 1993), 10–15Google Scholar

Piscitello, David M. and Chapin, A. Lyman, Open Systems Networking: TCP/IP and OSI (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993), 5Google Scholar

Kelty, Christopher M., Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008)CrossRef Google Scholar

Nelson, Matthew, ed., “Open Libraries: More Than Just Open Books or Open Doors,” Oregon Library Association Quarterly 16 (2010)Google Scholar

Zittrain, Jonathan, The Future of The Internet – And How to Stop It (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008)Google Scholar

Farrell, Joseph and Weiser, Philip J., “Modularity, Vertical Integration, and Open Access Policies: Towards a Convergence of Antitrust and Regulation in the Internet Age,” Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 17 (2003): 85–134Google Scholar

Neuman, W. Russell, McKnight, Lee, and Solomon, Richard Jay, The Gordian Knot: Political Gridlock on the Information Highway (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 94–112Google Scholar

Shewart, W. A., “Nature and Origin of Standards of Quality,” Bell System Technical Journal 37 (1958): 1–22CrossRef Google Scholar

David, Paul A. and Greenstein, Shane, “The Economics of Compatibility Standards: An Introduction to Recent Research,” Economics of Innovation and New Technology 1 (1990): 3–41CrossRef Google Scholar

U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Global Standards: Building Blocks for the Future (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992)Google Scholar

David, Paul A., “Standardization Policies for Network Technologies: The Flux between Freedom and Order Revisited,” in Hawkins, Richard, Mansell, Robin, and Skea, Jim, eds., Standards, Innovation and Competitiveness (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995)Google Scholar

Schmidt, Susanne K. and Werle, Raymund, Coordinating Technology: Studies in the International Standardization of Telecommunications (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998)Google Scholar

Bowker, Geoffrey and Star, Susan Leigh, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999)Google Scholar

Sumner, James and Gooday, Graeme J. N., “Introduction: Does Standardization Make Things Standard?” History of Technology 28 (2008): 1–13Google Scholar

Timmermans, Stefan and Epstein, Steven, “A World of Standards but not a Standard World: Toward a Sociology of Standards and Standardization,” Annual Review of Sociology 36 (2010): 69–89CrossRef Google Scholar

Busch, Lawrence, Standards: Recipes for Reality (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011)Google Scholar

Noble, David F., America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar

Layton, Edwin T., The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Cleveland, OH: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1971)Google Scholar

Moskowitz, Marina, Standard of Living: The Measure of the Middle Class in Modern America (Baltimore; The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)Google Scholar

Russell, Andrew L., “Industrial Legislatures: The American System of Standardization,” in International Standardization as a Strategic Tool (Geneva: International Electrotechnical Commission, 2006)Google Scholar

Katz, Michael L. and Shapiro, Carl, “Systems Competition and Network Effects,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 8 (1994): 93–115CrossRef Google Scholar

John, Richard R., “Recasting the Information Infrastructure for the Industrial Age,” in Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. and Cortada, James, eds., A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar

Weiser, Philip J., “Law and Information Platforms,” Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law 1 (2002): 1–35Google Scholar

Usselman, Steven W., “Public Policies, Private Platforms: Antitrust and American Computing,” in Coopey, Richard, ed., Information Technology Policy: An International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar

Yates, JoAnne and Murphy, Craig N., The International Organization for Standardization (ISO): Global Governance through Voluntary Consensus (New York: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar

Cargill, Carl, “Evolution and Revolution in Open Systems,” StandardView 2 (1994): 3–13CrossRef Google Scholar

Band, Jonathan, “Competing Definitions of ‘Openness’ in the NII,” in Kahin, Brian and Abbate, Janet, eds., Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995)Google Scholar

Krechmer, Ken, “Open Standards Requirements,” International Journal of IT Standards and Standardization Research 4 (2006): 43–61CrossRef Google Scholar

Maxwell, Elliott “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness,” Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization 1 (2006): 119–176CrossRef Google Scholar

West, Joel, “Seeking Open Infrastructure: Contrasting Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation,” First Monday 12 (June 2007)CrossRef Google Scholar

Updegrove, Andrew, “ICT Standards Today: A System Under Stress,” in DeNardis, Laura, ed., Opening Standards: The Global Politics of Interoperability (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011)Google Scholar

Campbell-Kelly, Martin and Garcia-Swartz, Daniel D., “The History of the Internet: The Missing Narratives,” Journal of Information Technology 28 (2013): 18–33CrossRef Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Why this information is here

This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this chapter is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.