And those types of universal standards arrive by a process not unlike evolution - everyone who wants to has a crack at the problem and the solutions compete for

And those types of universal standards arrive by a process not unlike evolution - everyone who wants to has a crack at the problem and the solutions compete for a painful decade or two. Eventually a winner emerges from the top few frontrunners, and by 2040 only networking historians remember ALOHAnet or token ring networks. However, you can't top-down design a universal standard. With sufficient skill, patience, and wisdom, you may be able to design a standard that's good enough to be widely applicable. Humans have free will, though (in practice, at least, no matter what you think about the philosophical question). A standard only becomes universal when everyone chooses to adopt it.