 of the Venus' flower basket sponge are excep- tional because their structure is 'strikingly similar' to those of com- mercial optical fibers that ferry pulses of light in telecommunication systems, Dr. Aizenberg said. 'Nature came up with exactly the same design millions of years ago,' she said. 'I would be surprised if it's accidental.' How many years it will be before this discovery shows up in the field in the form of real fiber is hard to predict and very easy to follow. Just subscribe to the New York Times reader alert service on the subject and every time something is published or released, it's likely the sub- scriber will get an email about it. Such is the new way things are done with Salter's Internet that "nobody owns and nobody can turn off." STANDARDS COMMITTEE WORK Another fruitful source of knowledge is standards development committee work. You can simply monitor the work output, or you can join and contribute. The structure of all formal standards work is built around volunteerism and openness. A significant amount of energy is devoted to gaining exposure to the work, to potential users or customers in the form of publishing reports, and sharing the work as consensus is reached. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (www.iso.org) and ITU are global stand- ards organizations that have their structure built around delegations PRACTICAL IP AND TELECOM FOR BROADCAST ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS from each member state. The American National Standards Institute is the North American umbrella organization whose rules are followed by SMPTE, IEEE, and other standards development organ- izations in the United States. As new core technology and processes evolve and attract standard- ization attention, knowledge about the details of what it does and how it does it become public, in most cases long before it shows up in a commercially available product. Similar behavior is found in communications world as well as in the broadcast world. Consider for example how many years the Advanced Televisi