Is there an organization responsible for creating these new technologies?
In: Technology
In order for communication technologies such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and USB to work correctly between devices, the manufacturers must make sure that their products behave in a consistent way. Otherwise, anything else that tries to connect to that product won’t be able to communicate correctly. The most common way of ensuring this is to adhere to a technical standard.
A standard is a technical document that contains the entire description of the way that a certain technology should work. If the technology has a connector, like USB or HDMI, then the standard specifies what shape and size it needs to be. If the technology is wireless, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, then the standard must specify the radio frequency and power of the transmissions. How the data is encoded (converted from meaningful information like letters and numbers into electrical signals) is also specified, along with control signals and commands that are used so that devices can set up the link to work for whatever they need it for.
A technical standard can theoretically be written by anybody, but the most common ones are generally created by dedicated standards organizations or groups of companies that collaborate to create one standard for them to share.
It should be noted that not all of these technologies are specified entirely “in one place;” it is common for standards documents to refer to others that came before it, leading to improved or modified versions that fit a certain need or meet different requirements. So not all of these answers will be entirely complete, but they’ll give you an idea of where to start looking if you want to learn more.
* The Ethernet and Wi-Fi standards are both maintained by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE. This is one of the largest standards organizations in the realm of electronics.
* USB was originally specified by a group of seven companies, including Microsoft, IBM, and Intel.
* HDMI had similar origins to USB, in that it was initially created by a group of companies, including Sony, RCA, and Toshiba. Now it is maintained by the HDMI Forum, a group of more than 80 companies.
* Bluetooth was once specified as IEEE 802.15.1, but is now maintained by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.
* 4G and 5G are maintained by the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector, with some support from the IEEE in specifying wired communication standards between wireless transmitters and receivers.
Technical standards, especially widely-used ones like these, are very comprehensive documents that cannot be updated lightly. A great deal of thought must be put into any change to ensure that it will work correctly and reliably, and if a standard changes too frequently, then it becomes useless because it is a moving target.
Standards are updated from time to time, however, as technical capabilities expand and users’ needs change. This is usually done by the organization that created the standard in the first place, unless the responsibility is transferred to another group or if somebody creates a new standard based on a prior one. Take USB, for example, where the USB 3.0 version replaced the 2.0 version with much higher speeds.
There are organizations. The IEEE is one that standartizes electronics for example. They don’t create everything though, they mostly coordinate and write specifications
But these standards can also be started by a single company and then just be used by everyone.
Scientists and engineers create new technologies or improve them. These groups can be funded by governments, private or public corporations, or any combination thereof. Legally it mostly comes down to who owns the patent, but it’s rarely as simple as any one entity ‘creating’ a new technology, because it’s almost always the culmination of many different inventions and discoveries along the way.
For example the CSIRO (Australian government research agency) is widely credited as “inventing” Wireless LAN aka WiFi. What they really did was essentially figure out a lot of the maths and engineering involved in encoding data in radio transmissions fast enough for a local computer network. Radio itself already existed, as did binary encoding, and GPRS (the first widespread mobile data network) was developed around the same time.
Once the technology is developed, the standards and protocols around the use of that technology for a specific application is developed. This can be created and maintained by a dedicated standards group like the IEEE or ANSI, a single company, or more often a conglomeration of multiple companies (including partners and competitors) working together for their mutual benefit.
Latest Answers