1st Edition
Standards, Emergence, and Complex Outcomes The Missing Link between Cause and Effect
Preface; Part I: Motivation and Conceptualization; 1. Conceptualizing the Problem; 2. Assent up the Fitness Landscape: How the American West Was Won; Part II: History Through the Lens of Complexity Theory; 3. Standards, Norms, and Emergence in Social Settings; 4. Platforms: Springboards for Evolutionary Outcomes; 5. Standards and Phase Transitions in the Middle Ages; 6. Standards and Evolution in a Complex World; Part III: Standards: The Building Blocks of Complex Outcomes; 7. Complex Monetary Outcomes—Winners, Losers, and the Standards Determining Them; 8. Standards, Modularity, and Innovation; 9. How Standards Engender Trust; 10. Crafting Identity With Standard Memes and Symbols; 11. The Artist as Standards Bearer; Part IV: Standards and Complexity: Summing It Up; 12. Standards, Emergence, and Complexity—Piecing the Puzzle Together.
Biography
D. Linda Garcia is Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University, where she taught courses on Technology and Society, Networks and the Creative Process, Global Standards, Networks and International Development, and The Networked Economy. She also worked for many years at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which conducted bipartisan, interdisciplinary research assessing advancing technologies to determine how to maximize their benefits while minimizing their negative consequences. Among the studies that she contributed to were those having to do with transportation, acid rain, radioactive waste, educational technologies, and telecommunication and computer technologies.
