Single-purpose specifications were all well and good in the past. But as ICT structures and societal needs become more complex, new processes and end results will be needed: not just "standards", but "commonalities".
In this article, we review how the standard setting methods of today evolved in the past, the forces that are reshaping how we create standards in the present, and seven trends that will have a dramatic impact on standard setting in the future.
Today, standards are set by vendors at the top and imposed on end-users at the bottom. The increasingly complex realities of a wired world will sometimes make this an ineffective approach that will ill serve vendors and end-users alike. In this article, we introduce the concept of the Personal DataSphere, and ask whether the end product of its inevitable development ...
"MyDoom", "Sircam", "Nimda" - who makes these names up? And why isn't there a naming convention to do it faster?