On my 2008-04-15T21:05:36Z post I set a basic theory of the relationships between choices, standards, ends and means. I do not claim it to be something spectacular just a starting point for looping in.

And on the first round of the loop I want just to review the idea of standard I used.

When I started thinking about that post, my plan was to put standards at the end of the sequence¹, then while I was writing I changed my idea, but at the moment of publishing I was already thinking about time standards and the fact that is quite hard to see them as moral choices, at least this seems to me. They seem much more to be means for achieving convergence and interoperability.

So I started thinking a little more about what is a standard. The starting idea was to think to standard as a base upon which take a decision, or better a base or parameter by which creating a reference for judgement. However I think it’s possible to go deeper into the idea of standards thinking to them as widespread patterns of choices, I mean that setting a standard consists in granting (or at least wishing to grant) different operators taking similar choices in similar contexts. In other words, we have two sets: the set of choices and the set of situations, and let’s suppose that every situation needs some kind of choice and that a choice cannot be operated other then in some contextual situation. Then we need to match choices and situations in a 1:1 correspondence or bijection. Let’s suppose now that the matching works randomly, what makes a standard? Ordering! Firstly some kind of equivalence relationship is set both² in the choice set and in the situation set. Then it is established the bijection that associates distinct equivalence classes in the choice set with distinct equivalence classes in the situation set, et voilà, the standard is done!

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¹ Actually I think it to be more a web than a sequence, but I have to dig more into this… ² Perhaps its possible to approach the problem in slightly different ways (at least from an algorithmic point of view) changing the order of the steps, for example establishing firstly the equivalence relationship among the situations then defining the bijection and then deriving the equivalence among the choices, and so on.