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interests. For example, as Twitter expanded into big questions do not yet have good answers,
more countries, it confronted an increasingly large anticipating and considering them now may help
number of demands to remove content. Initially, regulators and policy-makers deal with them going
Twitter responded by removing Tweets worldwide. forward. Some of these big questions are:
If a user in a single country demanded removal
of a Tweet, Twitter would do that for all users, in • How does society address a proliferation of
all markets. However, Twitter eventually decided standards? In several areas, notably e-health,
it would be better to use geolocation to remove there is now a seemingly ceaseless release of
Tweets only for users from the country that made new standards – some of which, no doubt, add
the legal demand. value. Many others, however, are conflicting
efforts. If standards are meant to bring
Sometimes friction, in the form of low levels of interoperability to otherwise incompatible
legal interoperability, may be desirable from a approaches, what happens when the sheer
public policy viewpoint. For example, one of the number of conflicting standards fragments
most important considerations for governments is the market, undermining the original goal
cybersecurity. Leaders are extremely concerned of interoperability? In the consumer goods
about the security implications of highly market, the solution to this problem is
interconnected systems. Interoperability means generally to let the standards compete and
that viruses and targeted cyber-attacks can have let the invisible hand of the market choose
damaging consequences. Government-created among the competing standards. But that
friction at the technical and data layers may be approach can be expensive in time and
controversial. But friction in terms of low levels money. It may also delay in innovation as
58
of legal interoperability across countries may be potential market participants wait to invest
beneficial if it encourages greater diversity of in the winning standard. For these emerging
non-interoperable systems that may serve certain new technologies and systems, are such
defensive purposes. costs acceptable? Or, is there a way to
accelerate the process of choosing the optimal
Legal interoperability is a complex and critical standards?
issue, in part because it has the ability to either
enable upward mobility in the global economy or • How can interop better manage complexity
to reinforce existing power structures, depending and scale? As described above, higher levels
on the choices made. 59 of interop can lead to highly complex systems.
This complexity and scale, however, has many
costs. It can make it hard to identify and
4.7 Important issues for the future correct failures. It can create security risks

and magnify the impact of vulnerabilities.
Interoperability is not an end in itself. And At certain scales, it can even represent a
interoperability doesn’t always have to be form of lock-in, as network effects become
maximized. Instead, private actors and regulators predominant. In many ways, successful
must work carefully to optimize the level of interop can be its own worst enemy. How
interop necessary to meet their objectives, even can interop better mitigate these problems in
though the process is neither easy nor simple. order to capitalize fully on the societal gains of
This chapter has described an interop framework, large-scale interop?
the potential costs and benefits of increased
levels of interop, and a variety of approaches for • How can highly interoperable systems
encouraging interop. Thus, when determining the better communicate with end users? As
optimum level of interop, all of these factors must described in this chapter, end users often
be carefully weighed and balanced. do not know where to turn when something
goes wrong in a highly interoperable system.
With emerging and profound new systems and If a system behaves like a single, cohesive
technologies, it is important to bear in mind unit, that is both a success for interop and an
some of the big questions and challenges that obfuscation to the end user. This presents
confront the Internet of Things and other, future a challenge for interop even under the best
interoperable technologies. Although these of circumstances, where the end-user might

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