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it be even conceivable to try to impose total precision (Serres 1980, Harvey 1997). Rather than root out all instances of ambiguity, analysts of standardized lists should instead seek clearly and consistently to define the degree of ambiguity that is appropriate to the object in question. |
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2. No such tool can be defined once and for all. They are always the products of continuing negotiation and change. We have noted three spurs for such change. First, there might be a change within one of the communities of practice that has some say in the definition of the tool. Thus, medical specialists might come up with a new test that causes a reclassification of a number of diseases. Second, changes might occur in the bureaucratic background to increase (or decrease) the tool's applicability. We have called this the phenomenon of convergent (or at times divergent) bureaucracy. Third, technical changes might allow for a better match between the actual degree of uncertainty and that permitted by the standard case. Computerization provides such an example. |
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In general, compromises are all that we have when we seek standard bureaucratic forms for dealing with heterogeneous groups of people and circumstances. Rather than seek to impose the one true way, we should become more aware of the properties inherent in these objects. |
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Despite a growing body of evidence from sociology and the history of science, distributed artificial intelligence and distributed cognitive science, images of universal policy and encyclopedic knowledge often invoke the ideal imposition of universal standardization schemes. We argue here that while such standards may emerge in physical systems or under certain sorts of market conditions, for the class of phenomena described above, no universal standard is possible. The number of groups and interests, the different ways they structure information, the moving-target nature of collecting scientific information over time when the science itself is changingall of these factors and more are true of most important classes of problems presenting themselves in wide-scale coordination. It is often difficult to imagine building toolswhose purpose it is to collect precise, uniform, and complete information from a large domain over a long timeand at the same time invoke the necessity of ambiguity, fuzziness, and plastic meanings for their real use. The initial designers of the ICD certainly did not intentionally build such features into their data collection system; on |
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