Written using a qwerty keyboard
May. 16th, 2008 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysI got to thinking about de-facto standards yesterday. The sort of industry standards that defines how something should work and which comes about without the intervention of an outside standards body or government legislation. There was a time when car manufacturers each came out with their own ways of operating the throttle, gear change and brake. Then at some point, somebody started using the three pedal accelerator, brake, clutch arrangement that is still used now. Something similar happened in the world of dialup modems where in the early days there were all sorts of control command systems. Then a company called Hayes came up with a product and control system that was so successful that everybody came to use it even after Hayes disappeared. To be effective, a standard has to be flexible. When evolutionary changes like automatic transmission or higher modem speeds and error checking came along these were accommodated within the existing structures.
By now regular readers will be expecting some sort of book review or a comment about the sf genre. But instead all I can relate to you is that I bought a cheap clock radio alarm. See I have noticed that over the years a standardisation in the controls of such bedside alarms has taken place. It is probably as a result of a standard underlying chip set but it seems to me that the controls of these devices seems to pretty much always be the same regardless of the hundreds of brands and case designs that are out there. It wasn’t always so. But it is complicated by the fact that a lot of other devices have alarms in them – phones, TVs etc. There is no standardisation of operation for those – just in the basic bedside clock radio.
The thing is that there is a feature of some of these other non-standardised devices that I have always wanted in a clock radio. I have wanted two alarm times – one for week days and one for weekends. It seems a simple request but it never came along – the standard design didn’t have it so it never appeared. But now I have a cheap clock radio that does have two alarm time settings and yet all the other controls are just like the standard. It is an evolutionary extension to the standard. I am happy.
I suppose I should note why this didn’t, as usual, become mostly about sf despite my best intentions of finding a parallel. The genre does not have standards. There are many de-facto guidelines, trends, components, tropes or whatever in the genre, but they are not standards. For everybody who tries to lay down a set of standards there is somebody who is determined to subvert the form and break the rules. I am happy about that too.
By now regular readers will be expecting some sort of book review or a comment about the sf genre. But instead all I can relate to you is that I bought a cheap clock radio alarm. See I have noticed that over the years a standardisation in the controls of such bedside alarms has taken place. It is probably as a result of a standard underlying chip set but it seems to me that the controls of these devices seems to pretty much always be the same regardless of the hundreds of brands and case designs that are out there. It wasn’t always so. But it is complicated by the fact that a lot of other devices have alarms in them – phones, TVs etc. There is no standardisation of operation for those – just in the basic bedside clock radio.
The thing is that there is a feature of some of these other non-standardised devices that I have always wanted in a clock radio. I have wanted two alarm times – one for week days and one for weekends. It seems a simple request but it never came along – the standard design didn’t have it so it never appeared. But now I have a cheap clock radio that does have two alarm time settings and yet all the other controls are just like the standard. It is an evolutionary extension to the standard. I am happy.
I suppose I should note why this didn’t, as usual, become mostly about sf despite my best intentions of finding a parallel. The genre does not have standards. There are many de-facto guidelines, trends, components, tropes or whatever in the genre, but they are not standards. For everybody who tries to lay down a set of standards there is somebody who is determined to subvert the form and break the rules. I am happy about that too.