Yeah, the innovation would be to not make everything in-band. Which implies proper file formats for source code for example. I know, that is blasphemy against 7bit ASCII.
It's like the telephone networks of old. They eventually realized that that is not so good. The computer world is still in its analog telephone phase. ;-)
It's like the telephone networks of old. They eventually realized that that is not so good. The computer world is still in its analog telephone phase. ;-)