[Sigia-l] AIfIA Goals 2004 Survey Results

[Donna M. Fritzsche]

The standards that David and Livia bring up have any important 
element in common - the solutions that are being employed (the now 
accepted standards) are completely adequate for completing the task 
at hand.  While innovation in the areas of numeric representation and 
the use of screws and nails might be nice, they are pretty good at 
accomplishing the task at hand and there are definite economies of 
scale with respect to their use.  There probably has not been much 
debate for years over the right way to accomplish these tasks.

In our field, we cannot even define the goals or breadth of the field 
without debate - the idea of standards for a field without clearly 
stated and agreed upon objectives is not quite sane.  Additionally, 
innovation is very important to this field - principles can guide 
innovation, standards applied too strictly will squash it.

Donna


David H asked:
Can it be that there are good standards and bad standards?

For example, standardizing on arabic numerals. This is the standard in
our society. We don't use roman or hebraic numerals. I could one day
start using roman numerals for fun at the end of movies for copyright
information, or putting it on the cornerstone of a building, but these
are harmless and fun. But for every day use, it is pretty much agreed
that arabic numerals using a base-10 system is the way to go. Is that a
bad thing? Stay focused. Don't worry about the lack of standards around
numbers in other ways, when to use a comma or a period kinda thing. Oh
Wait, maybe we should. ..
two hundr
At 8:46 AM -0600 12/19/03, Livia Labate wrote:
>: Adherence to standards requires an understanding of the
>: standards themselves and the reasons for them.
>
>Does it? I have used screws and nails all my life but only last year I
>read this fabulous piece on their standards (the article I recommend
>every time the standards issue comes up -
>http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/standards_pr.html) The point
>is, it had no impact on my usage of the nails and screws. My previous
>ignorance on the matter had no interference with the application of the
>standards.