Scaffolding the New Web : Standards and Standards Policy for the Digital Economy

PREFACE -- FIGURES AND TABLES -- SUMMARY -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- GLOSSARY -- INTRODUCTION -- THE PLACE OF STANDARDS -- WHAT MAKES A STANDARD STANDARD? -- THE POTENTIAL IMPORTANCE OF STANDARDS -- LESSONS FROM FIVE CASE STUDIES -- STANDARDS FOSTER OPENNESS -- BUT STANDARDS HAVE TO SOLVE PROBLEMS, BOTH TECHNICAL AND SOCIAL, TO SUCCEED -- THE INTERNET AND WORLD WIDE WEB HAVE SHIFTED THE FOCUS OF INTEROPERABILITY -- LIGHT STANDARDS CONTINUE TO DO BETTER -- BUT THE ENCAPSULATION OF THE REAL WORLD INTO STANDARD SEMANTICS IS LIKELY TO BE DIFFICULT -- THE EMERGING CHALLENGE OF COMMON SEMANTICS -- LET THE MARKET DECIDE -- HAVE DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES EACH DECIDE -- ASSUME INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE WILL MEDIATE AMONG VARIOUS VOCABULARIES -- DEVELOP STANDARD ONTOLOGIES INTO WHICH STANDARD TERMS ARE MAPPED -- CONCENTRATE ON THE KEY WORDS -- CODA -- STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTIONS -- THE IETF -- ISO, ITU, AND ECMA -- THE WORLD WIDE WEB CONSORTIUM (W3C) -- THE WIRELESS ACCESS PROTOCOL (WAP) FORUM -- OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE -- A TYPOLOGY -- THE PLACE OF STANDARDS -- THE PATENT TRAP -- STANDARDS AS A POLICY TOOL -- NISTÌS EVOLVING ROLE -- FOR FURTHER RESEARCH -- CONCLUSIONS -- THE WEB AS WE KNOW IT -- HTML: THE HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE -- HYPERTEXT BEFORE THE WEB -- The World Wide Web Is Born -- And Then the Browser Wars Began -- JAVA -- The Java Strategy -- JavaÌs Formal Standardization -- CONCLUSIONS -- THE EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE -- XML AS A MARKUP LANGUAGE -- GETTING TO XML -- XML AND E-COMMERCE -- WHAT THE WORDS MEAN -- MANAGING PROLIFERATION -- XML AS A STANDARDS ABSORBENT -- HOW XML MAY FAIL -- Other Standards for E-Commerce May Arise -- Too Much Capital May Have Been Sunk into TodayÌs X12- and EDIFACT- Based EDI -- XML Is Still Too Complex -- It May Get Caught in the Browser Wars -- It May Get Caught in the Java Wars.