Standards & Platform Control

standards-platform-control measures structural power over the channels and rules of the knowledge structure — who codifies the technical standards others must conform to, who shapes the foundational protocols others must interoperate with, and who gatekeeps the platforms others must access. The structural question is: who controls the channels and sets the rules everyone else's technology must conform to? — not who has the largest user base.

This is the most cleanly structural metric in the Knowledge set — all components map directly onto Strange's definition of controlling the channels and terms of knowledge:

• the channel-control definition: power conferred "on those controlling in any way the channels by which knowledge, or information, is communicated" (Strange 1994, p.121)
• conformity to standards: technical change "necessitating adaptive conformity to some agreed standards and system of management" (Strange 1994, p.126)
• the gatekeeper mechanism: control over a communications system means "the bank's head office becomes the gatekeeper, controlling access to the system… still exclusive" (Strange 1994, p.134) — Strange's own example extends to SWIFT (Strange 1994, p.134)
• the negative/exclusion lever: knowledge-structure power "lies as much in the negative capacity to deny knowledge, to exclude others" (Strange 1994, p.119)
• rule-laying analogue: "[laying] down legal and administrative processes and precedents that make it hard for others to challenge" (Strange 1994, p.29)
• the structural-authority root: power is conferred on those "occupying key decision-making positions in the knowledge structure" and "acknowledged by society to be possessed of the 'right', desirable knowledge" (Strange 1994, p.121) — a standards body is exactly such an acknowledged decision-making position
• the unquantifiability caution governing the qualitative platform component: knowledge power "is also unquantifiable. The indicators that can be found are only the roughest of guides" (Strange 1994, p.119)