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Protocol Town Hall with David Lang | Standards Make the World

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David Lang presents his Summer of Protocols research on standards-making, drawing on his experience co-founding OpenROV and later developing the Bristlemouth underwater connector standard at Sofar Ocean. He argues standards fall into distinct types (safety, interoperability, performance, contractual) and traces three historical waves of standards-making per Yates and Murphy's 'Engineering Rules,' proposing that a 'disruptive model' of standards creation—where outsiders build working solutions first and backfill institutional approval later, as seen with CubeSats, MIDI, and BioBricks—is replacing the traditional top-down consortial model.

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