'A Vast Machine': Standards as Social Technology

摘要

In 1839, John Ruskin articulated his dream of a global weather observing system (1): The Meteorological Society ... has been formed not for a city, nor for a kingdom, but for the world. It wishes to be the central point, the moving power, of a vast machine. ... It desires to have at its command, at stated periods, perfect systems of methodical and simultaneous observations; it wishes its influence and its power to be omnipresent over the globe ... to know, at any given instant, the state of the atmosphere on every point on its surface. Today, Ruskin's "vast machine" is largely complete, built from parts―satellites, instantaneous telecommunications, and computers―that Ruskin could never have imagined. Data from a network of sensors on land, at sea, in the atmosphere, and in outer space are assimilated by computers in real time and redistributed to national weather services across the planet.