Standards are all around you and important to function.
User Interface
  Early Standards - The QWERTY typewriter 
Computer system Standards
  Fax machine data transmission 
Some history:
 In 1984 I was AT&T's representative the the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
 Committee X3V1 - Standards for Office Systems, which had evolved for standards 
 like typewriter keyboards to email standards and then user interface Standards
 for graphical terminals and personal computers.
 
 In 1990 Bill Gates told Robert X. Cringely, "Setting de facto standards is the way
 to make money in technology"
 For years Microsoft enjoyed more than 90% of the market of several categories for PC software.
  
 The ANSI committee I was on, which included Xerox who really perfected the
 Graphical User Interface (GUI) with Alto (Their prototype system) and Star which were 
 copied/licensed by Apple who really made it popular in 1984,
 and in 1990 Microsofts Windows 3 (The first viable/popular version of Windows).
 
 AT&T, IBM and Xerox tried to establish standards for the GUI, the rest of the
 committee (HP, ...) didn't want to be constrained and didn't support it.
 Apple attended some meetings but didn't join the committee.
 Microsoft didn't even show up.