Hello all, After reading the recent discussion on railroad gauges deriving from ancient standards, I am curious if anyone is doing work looking into technical standards. I'm writing my undergrad honors thesis on technical Internet standards, and the need for public interest involvement in the standardization process, viewing this as a subset of the "technical is political" or "code is law" body of work. Although my thesis is predominantly policy-oriented, I'd really like some theory to work with, aside from market failures and civic governance. Chasing citations back and forth has not turned up a whole lot in this area. If anyone has any suggestions for literature that delves into examining the larger impacts of specific technical design decisions, from any perspective (sociology, psychology, policy, etc) I would really appreciate it. Thanks for your help, /allan ... et surtout||Allan Friedman n'oubliez pas||Center for Social and Policy Studies de tomber||Swarthmore College amoureux||allan@friedmans.org http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~allan "For the umpteenth time that evening, he wished computer code responded to threats of physical violence..."