Standards

by Jeffrey Pomerantz, Jason Griffey

An engaging introduction to standards, the invisible infrastructure that shapes the built and digital environments of the modern world.

Standards are the DNA of the built environment, encoded in nearly all objects that surround us in the modern world. In Standards, Jeffrey Pomerantz and Jason Griffey provide an essential introduction to this invisible but critical form of infrastructure—the rules and specifications that govern so many elements of the physical and digital environments, from the color of school buses to the shape of shipping containers.

In an approachable, often outright funny fashion, Pomerantz and Griffey explore the nature, function, and effect of standards in everyday life. Using examples of specific standards and contexts in which they are applied—in the realms of technology, economics, sociology, and information science—they illustrate how standards influence the development and scope, and indeed the very range of possibilities of our built and social worlds. Deeply informed and informally written, their work makes a subject generally deemed boring, complex, and fundamentally important comprehensible, clear, and downright engaging.

Genres: Nonfiction

242 pages, Paperback

Published March 4, 2025

About the author

Jeffrey Pomerantz is an information scientist. He was most recently Associate Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he developed and taught the MOOC “Metadata: Organizing and Discovering Information,” and a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington.

Reviews

[Fionntán · Rating 3 out of 5]

A standard enough affair.

[Rob Tarling · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for my product management role at the Archives of Ontario, particularly in the context of interoperability between systems.

Starting right from the basics, Pomerantz and Griffey explain how standards underpin much of modern life, often without us really noticing. I particularly liked their view of standards as shared knowledge.

From an archival perspective, the book reinforced several important principles:

> Interoperability: Standards enable information to be exchanged and understood across different systems, but compliance alone doesn't guarantee interoperability.
> Information independence: Archival metadata, structures, and relationships should remain independent of the applications used to manage them.
> Long-term preservation: Standards help ensure that digital information remains meaningful and accessible as technologies change.
> Vendor independence: Open, well-documented standards can reduce technological dependency and make future system replacement easier.
> Governance: Standards evolve and require ongoing maintenance, version control, and institutional oversight.

My main reservation is that the book is much stronger at explaining the significance of standards than at helping readers apply them.

Nevertheless, this is a well-written introduction to an important subject.

For me, its greatest value was not in introducing new ideas, but in reinforcing a fundamental principle: standards are not simply technical specifications. They are essential infrastructure for preserving knowledge, enabling interoperability, and maintaining institutional independence over time.

4 stars.

[Ezequiel Martínez Vázquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una exposición amena y por momentos jocosa de un tema árido. El análisis sobre las implicancias geopolíticas de los estándares es particularmente interesante, así como la comparación de estándares de consorcio, de jure y de facto. El libro sufre, sin embargo, tiene un defecto bastante grosero: errores técnicos garrafales en algunas de sus explicaciones sobre los estándares de internet y distribución eléctrica. Realmente es una vergüenza que un libro del MIT no tenga una revisión técnica elemental.

[Phoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

read for work - an accessible, interesting introduction to this technical format.