IPv6: standards controversies around the next-generation Internet

摘要

Information and communication technology devices can exchange information only if they adhere to agreed upon technical rules, or protocols, that provide structure to the binary code underlying digital information exchange. These technical standards, on the surface, might appear not socially significant. Yet, as historian Ken Alder, writing about the political economy of the emerging metric system during the French Revolution, explains:rn[A]t the core of'universal standards' commonly taken to be products of objective science lies the historically contingent, and further... these seemingly 'natural' standards express the specific, if paradoxical, agendas of specific social and economic interests.