Standards, protocols, and language

Q. How do standards impact our ability as communicators to reach our target audiences? When might we choose to deliver information that does not conform with standards?


The article, “Internet standards, protocols, and language,” leads to think that how important the standards are and how hard they are set up. Simply speaking, the standards are just a kind of rules so as to fluently communicate with other people who live away. Think about the academic conference, for instance. To participate in it for new outstanding research, a lot of scientists or experts come from all over the country. If a researcher read his or her research without any announcement of language in advance and any equipment for interpretation, it is no longer useful for some participants who cannot understand the language of the researcher. That is, standards play a key role to connect one to others effectively. The barriers can be the language, any specific skills, or knowledge. Standards make the significant holes on the huge walls, such as these barriers above, and through these holes, we can reach any place or any target without any serious confusion.

Of course, standards always keep working at any place and any time. Especially, if the concern with the exception is for security, standards might be ignored. When I did military service about 7 years ago, one of my duties was to deal with confidential document. Because of the tasks, I had to work for myself and to learn some unfamiliar skills. One of them was to understand the system of fax machine I would use. Because my camp was independent so as to control and supervise many other units (or camps) secretly, the system of transmitter, such as fax machine, has to be obviously different from ones of unites as well as other nonmilitary communities. Therefore, we needed our own system, not standards that were used generally.