In 1956, Malcolm McLean loads 58 trailers onto a converted tanker in the port of Newark. The container is not yet standardised. Each shipowner has its own dimensions, fastening systems, cranes. The container exists. The market does not.
ISO 668 is published in 1968. Fixed dimensions: 20 feet, 40 feet. Standardised corner fittings. Standardised stacking. Overnight, a container loaded in Shanghai can be unloaded in Rotterdam, placed on a train in Duisburg, and delivered by truck to Munich without anyone opening the box. Levinson (2006) documents what follows: the cost of maritime transport drops by 95%. International trade explodes. Globalisation as we know it is a direct consequence of a dimensional standard.
The standard did not describe an existing market. It created it. Ports rebuilt themselves around the container. Ships were redesigned. Roads, bridges, tunnels were calibrated to let a 40-footer pass. The physical infrastructure of the planet conformed to a specification.
The same pattern repeats. TCP/IP (1974) does not describe an existing network, it creates the Internet. The GSM protocol (1991) does not describe a mobile market, it makes it possible. The PDF format (1993) does not describe a document, it defines what an electronic document can be. In each case, the standard precedes the use. The norm is anterior to what it norms.
MacKenzie (2006) shows that the Black-Scholes model did not describe the options market. It produced it. Before the model was adopted, prices did not follow the formula. Afterwards, they conformed to it. The model performed the market in Callon's sense (1998): it does not represent economic reality, it constitutes it. The formula became true because it was adopted, not because it was correct.
Doctrine
A standard is not a description. It is an act of foundation. It does not say what is. It says what will be. Everything that comes after conforms or disappears.
The standard is the purest form of technical retro-causality. It posits the result before the process. The market, the infrastructure, the use: everything flows from a specification that precedes them.
Vecteur ouvert
Every standard in force is a prophecy that has been fulfilled. The question is how many alternative standards, equally coherent, were not adopted, and what markets, what infrastructures, what worlds they would have produced.
