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automation
Standards: Why the are necessary, why participants fights, and how are they set?
Standards are essential for advances in computing, communication and automation because without standards interaction among machines or even among software packages for a single machine is impossible. Firms have mixed motives in setting standards. Firms frequently try to set proprietary standards to get customers locked into using their products. However, if each firm were to adopt its own standard, communication between equipment from different vendors would be difficult. In a growing market, one way that standards are set is that participants tend to follow the dominant firm or coalition of firms. Standards expand the market and allow the small firms to seek niches knowing their specialty can be meshed with other equipment. As future managers you should be aware that in markets where there are no standards, equipment can become obsolete overnight if new standards are adopted.
Why do we use the binary number system and what are its economic implications
It is much cheaper to have a single computing and communication technology which will compute and communicate numbers, text, symbols, voice and all types of images than require separate technologies for each. In the marketplace, the boundary line between communications and computer companies is becoming fuzzy. Future competition in the combined computer-communications industry will be fierce. One of the reasons for the breakup of the phone system is AT&T's desire to penetrate the computer market. To counter AT&T's move, IBM has entered the communications market. Neither has had much success in the other's territory.