Standards in the industry

I originally blogged this at http://shenanigan.tumblr.com/ and have reblogged it here.

Each industry follows certain standards that are set by certain regulating bodies such as IEEE, MPEG, etc etc. These standards are fine while they are being formed which enables devices or processes to be interchanged without too much effort. It also ensures uniformity ( which was the whole point of introducing a standard in the first place ) across the industry. But as complexity increases, technology changes, standards begin to become redundant. For standards to remain relevant, they have to keep up with the pace with which technology changes. For manufacturing industries, technology changes are slow and spread years apart. Hence, standardising certain procedures is not very difficult. But with the current electronics industry, IEEE and MPEG standards are the rule. Each device swears by it. But the technology changes at such a fast pace, at most times, the standards themselves begin to hinder development in these fields. Also the requirement , economic or otherwise, for newer versions of the device / software has to be backward compatible also create newer problems. At times I feel , standards and rules such as backward compatibility have been introduced to simply delay technology into the market ( which is a crime ).An example which comes to mind immediately is the battle between AM ( Amplitude modulation ) and FM ( Frequency Modulation ) when FM was introduced by Armstrong. Since companies had already invested in the AM technology , they refused to accept that FM was superior and thats where the future was. Armstrong almost went bankrupt fighting these allegations. This delayed the introduction of the FM for a considerable time. And look where the world is today . AM is archaic. The same applies for other devices in the industry. Standards don’t serve any purpose in the electronics industry today. Each standard has its problems and its drawbacks which forces committees to create newer standards, different standards thereby confusing not only novices but also customers in the end. ( Just look at the number of standards that exist in the television world today MPEG, H.264 and other acronyms I can’t even remember)
Standards are a redundancy in the system. This is a plea to remove them.

Or standardise the standards. :)