The Triumph of Standardization

...an offensive against the unpredictability, unpunctuality, general waywardness and cussedness of living nature including man.—E. F. Shumacher

Over the past three centuries, a main feature about civilization which can be discerned by anyone with any sort of clear-sighted view is its widespread standardization. Yes, centralization and hierarchy in all forms of organizations most evident by the continual existence of the State has increased to massive levels inflicting nearly every corner of society, this is largely because of a uniform control over the unstandardized natural order of things. I as well as many others, have direct experience with this dehumanizing practice whether from schooling, the legal system, medicine, political organization, agriculture, religion, entertainment, urban planning, and other components engrained in the civic culture. So much of what has been pushed on us and even accepted without further questioning comes from a obedience to universal standards, which are then applied to the majority as democracy instructs everyone to do so.

The history of institutionalized standardization begins in a merchant background, notably the commercial activities in the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the early civilizations of the Old World. Here the local merchants came up with standards for units of measurement in order to facilitate commerce, especially with luxury items and bulk goods that needed precise accounting. This would eventually be spread toward the Near East, very likely setting the precedent of mathematical studies that the Persians would develop in conjunction with the Greeks and Egyptians. Standardization has been mostly viewed as a technical concern, which is definitely something useful and important—technology is dependent on it; although now these practices encompass a great deal of life, fundamentally altering the social landscape.

Much of what is understood by a community and learned about a particular subject or manners of doing things, is part of the "vernacular order" as James C. Scott call them. If you're in the surf lineup, certain spontaneous rules arise as surfers must abide by the scarcity of waves and the skill levels of surfers; there is no imposed form of system which is learned before one goes in the water, the same way children don't learn the rules of grammar before they learn how to use language. This is different than the more institutionalized or planned order which tries to suppress the spontaneous workings of society. To the modern person, this way of being has become somewhat endangered, unless of course you're from the North Atlantic culture where much of these universal standards is rooted in and being spread through the globe.

Perhaps presently society is witnessing a reversal of this triumph, as decentralized technologies are being developed to be a more refined version of the internet. The goal of the original proponents of the web was a means to distribute information without a top-down methodology, it was suppose to be the answer to increasing industrialization and assembly line production taking over the vernacular order. Let's see if this new phase in technology and the crypto-revolution will finally reduce standardization to its appropriate level.

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