The stakes have never been higher for interoperability, a topic taken up by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser in Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems. The ability for systems to interconnect is closely related to efficiency. Economic arguments suggest that advancements in interoperability increase competition and innovation. Think of the 19th-century development of a standard gauge interconnecting railroads across the vast expanse of North America or, more than a century later, the standardization that allows us to exchange e-mail across different types of applications and hardware devices. Not surprisingly, companies sometimes prefer proprietary approaches that limit interoperability and lock in users for competitive advantage. But consumers usually want technological systems to be able to seamlessly exchange information.

via The Social Stakes of Interoperability.