Communications/Transmissions Problems

Abstract

It is often observed that a major problem with computers is the look of standards. In a way, the reverse of that is true: there are too many standards, and the standards problem is the lack of u single, uniform standard or set of standards to which all must conform. Unlike the telephone industry, which operates under standards set by and, essentially, imposed by AT&T under the 1934 Communications Act, the computer industry has no de jure standards, but has a great many de facto standards. Moreover, this is true for both the hardware and software industries. (For practical purposes, and particularly with respect to standards, these are at least semiautonomous industries, although each needs the other and they exist in a somewhat symbiotic relationship.)

Communications via modern high-tech methods has become a science unto itself, but there are many problems still to be solved, some of them due primarily to the lack of a single set of standards.