Into the Future with Standards

Abstract

Technology is developing at an exponential rate. We may indeed see as great a change in the next 12 years as in the last 120. We will need to produce international standards more quickly to support change, but there is a limit to acceleration because of the need to achieve international agreement. So the detail of product design cannot, in my view, be successfully specified internationally because of the pace of development. The fundamental role of standards today is to define in terms of performance, safety and reliability what has to be regulated for future decades.