Strategic Computing and Communications Technology Group H: Standards Final Report
In the introduction, the authors posed two theses:
The first thesis is well supported in the case studies discussed in this paper. It seems not to matter whether a standard was created by an Industry Standards Body, mandated by law, or left to market forces. What matters is how an industry or company use these standards to execute a business strategy. If the strategy is sound and the execution crisp, more often than not the standard will flurish.
The second thesis has less factual substantiation but seems to be supported
by strong conjecture. The United States government is a large and unwieldy
organization. To expect such an organization to be able to keep pace with
the fast moving technology industry is pure folly. The US government should
recognize this fact and avoid a policy of creating technical standards.
The US government did an excellent job with VHDL, by allowing a working
and viable product to be developed first, and basing the standard on the
product.
The future of technology will be strongly influenced by standards.