The more general question -- Did standardization produce
stultification? -- is quite provocative though. Really, there are two
questions here:

(1) Has progress in Lisp slowed dramatically since CLtL1? (And this is
really what Baker and McCarthy meant by standardization -- the
ascension of Common Lisp.)

(2) Did CLtL1 *cause* this slowdown?

IMO, the answer to (1) is "yes" and the answer to (2) is "no." The
*real* reason progress slowed -- again, IMO -- was the dramatic drop in
both interest in and funding for Lisp following AI Winter, which began
around........1984. If this is correct, then standardization was
probably critical in keeping the dwindling community together.

This brings up an interesting question: Is the binding constraint of
the standard, which was critical during the 1980s and 1990s, gonna
choke the community now that it is again showing signs of growth?

It's a real question. One possibility is that as the community grows,
so will a parallel movement to open, clean up, modify, and extend the
standard. A harbinger of this is the CLRFI process, which is currently
trying to bootstrap itself. Another possibility is that the community
will split in a healthy way, with business users adhering closely to
the standard in the interests of portability, and with academics again
experimenting with new features and birthing new dialects.