Fortunately, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser have thought about the wider implications of this and many other threads of interoperability – threads that reach into every corner of our lives. Interop is a thorough, thoughtful and timely analysis of where we are, how we got here and where we might be headed if we want to get the maximum benefit from interoperability without paying too high a cost in the process. Standards, for example, can have a hugely beneficial effect in the promotion of innovation, but generally this is most advantageous where they are open enough to enable a free market. Standards that are overly restrictive can slow and stifle the impact of new thinking on the technical environment and the marketplace.
via Times Higher Education – Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems.