Passage Summary: Fax machines are useless if they can't talk to each other, so the industry struggled until everyone agreed to use the same system.

Reasoning: Fax machines require inter-connectivity; competing formats hindered the industry until standardization occurred.

Analysis: The stimulus establishes a rule for 'network' technologies: they require compatibility to be useful. We are looking for a proposition that follows from the idea that commercial success for such machines depends on cooperation rather than just competition. The most supported inference will likely be that without a common standard, the technology's utility is fundamentally crippled.