Systems engineers consider all the standards and technologies and economics necessary to make a project work. They worry, moreover, about how to integrate a complex new technology with the rest of the system. Cellular phones were an ideal case, since the new technology had to (1) work, (2) work affordably, and (3) work seamlessly with the rest of the existing phone network. What the systems people couldn’t do was actually make those projects function the way they dreamed.
