"Emerge" is a very interesting choice of word. Why do we think that a property like "interoperability" could be emergent? Has it ever been? Web browser devel

"Emerge" is a very interesting choice of word. Why do we think that a property like "interoperability" could be emergent? Has it ever been? Web browser developers have shown by example that you can come up with a sophisticated standard, including executable code, have everybody implement it on their platform, beat them into compliance with cool validation tests, and even starting with one of the worst possible architectures for performance (sending raw JavaScript code over the wire!) make it perform far better than anyone might have reasonably expected. Meanwhile, operating system vendors are doubling down on proprietary APIs. These days you practically need to use the right programming language for your OS, too. A whole lot of groups seem to have completely missed the web's lesson. Instead of "standardization is great", they heard "HTML/CSS/JS is the ideal substrate for writing applications".