Standards, and the Lack Thereof

Oscar Wilde once said, “There are two great tragedies in life.  One is not getting what you want.  The other is getting it.”

Another paradox of this variety is that there are two things that make engineering a pain.  One is standards, and the other is not having one.  Having a standard means changing the rules isn’t allowed.  Having a standard means if you want to do something new, you may be out of luck.  But not having a standard means having to do nearly everything from scratch.

One of the great benefits of digital fabrication will be that the tension between standards and creativity will be relaxed dramatically.  If standards can be implemented with software, they cost less to change.  If the plastic objects we use can be replaced with new versions by downloading a file and hitting a button, the cost of changing a standard drops dramatically.  Switching from English to Metric units becomes a matter of downloading a different version of a file, or, worst case, writing a new one.

It will still be an annoyance to switch between standards for screw caps and snap-together joints, but with digital fabrication, it’s practically a software upgrade.