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Abstract
The information economy is one of the key concepts invented to explain structural changes in the modern economy. It has given rise to theories on society, conceptual frameworks for policy, and statistics for measurement. This paper analyzes the history of the concept of information and its role in public discourses about the economy and society through the lens of statistics. It argues that the preoccupation with the growth and management of scientific publications was the very first step toward the construction of the concept of the information economy. Over history, the concept evolved from an understanding of information as knowledge, to information as commodity, or industrial activity, then information as technology. An international organization, the OECD, is discussed as emblematic of the conceptual and statistical work conducted on information over the period 1949–2005.
Notes
1. Beniger, The Control Revolution.
2. OECD, Gaps in Technology.
3. Godin, ‘The Value of Science.’
4. Shannon and Weaver, Mathematical Theory.
5. Godin, Measurement and Statistics.
6. This third framework actually competes with another one: the knowledge‐based society or economy. Although this latter framework, which first emerged in the 1960s, contributed to the literature on information, particularly beginning with the idea of information as commodity, it is not discussed here. The knowledge‐based society carries a very broad definition of knowledge, which includes science, technology, innovation and education. References to information per se are mainly to information and communication technologies, and the framework is concerned with a lot more than information, and in this sense cannot be strictly identified as a framework on information. See Godin, ‘The Knowledge Economy;’ Godin, ‘The Knowledge‐Based Economy.’
7. Organization for European Economic Co‐Operation.
8. King, ‘The Productivity Movement.’
9. EPA, Technical Information and the Smaller Firm; EPA, Technical Information and Small and Medium Sized Firms; EPA, Technical Services.
10. OECD, The Function of OECD.
11. OECD, Economics of Research and Development.
12. OEEC, Investment in Education; OECD, Policy Conference on Economic Growth.
13. Ibid., 3.
14. Ibid., 5.
15. OECD, Sectoral Reviews of Scientific and Technical Information Facilities.
16. OECD, Ad Hoc Group for Scientific and Technical Information Policy, 2.
17. OECD, The Function of OECD, 2.
18. OECD, Sectoral Review of Scientific and Technical Information.
19. OECD, Résumé of the Principal Action. See also OECD, Scientific and Technical Information and the Policies of Governments, 4.
20. OECD, Ad Hoc Group for Scientific and Technical Information Policy, 2.
21. OECD, Scientific and Technical Information and the Policies of Governments: Revised Synopsis, 2.
22. OECD, Scientific and Technical Information Systems and Policies, 7.
23. OECD, Scientific and Technical Information and the Policies of Governments: Revised Synopsis, 2.
24. OECD, Scientific and Technical Information Systems and Policies, 2.
25. OECD, Scientific and Technical Information and the Policies of Governments: Revised Synopsis, 2.
26. Ibid, 5.
27. OECD, Scientific and Technical Information Systems and Policies, 12.
28. OECD, Information Activities of Some Major International Organizations.
29. OECD, Organigrammes des systèmes nationaux d’information.
30. Canada (1970), Ireland (1972), Switzerland (1973), Spain (1973), Germany (1975).
31. OECD, The Economics of Information.
32. OECD, Minutes of the 7th Session. Once finalized, the survey would be transferred to the statistical division of the Directorate for Scientific Affairs, and its results provide a chapter in the biennial report on R&D.
33. OECD, Measurement of Scientific and Technical Activities, The Frascati manual is a methodological document aimed at national statisticians for collecting data on R&D. It proposed standardized definitions, classifications and a methodology for conducting R&D surveys. The Frascati manual essentially developed three sets of guidelines. First, norms were proposed for defining science as ‘systematic’ research and demarcating research from other activities so these other activities could be excluded: research/related scientific activities, development/production, research/teaching. Second, the manual suggested classification of research activities according to (1) the sector that finances or executes the research: government, university, industry or non‐profit organizations and, in relation to this latter dimension, (2) the type or character of the research, which is either basic, applied or concerned with the development of products and processes, (3) the activities classified by discipline in the case of universities (and non‐profit organizations), by industrial sector or product in the case of firms, and by functions or socioeconomic objectives in the case of governments. Finally, the manual suggested basic statistics as indicators for policy purposes.
34. OECD, Scientific and Technical Information Policy Group: Summary Record of the 7th Meeting, 15.
35. OECD, Plan of Action.
36. OECD, Survey of Scientific and Technical Information Activities, 2.
37. OECD, Scientific and Technical Information Policy Group: Summary Record of the 7th Meeting, 5.
38. OECD, Survey on Scientific and Technical Information Activities, 5.
39. OECD, Scientific and Technical Information Policy Group: Summary Record of the 9th Meeting, 16.
40. Ibid., 6.
41. OECD, Information Statistics and Policy.
42. Finalized in 1971. See Wolfe, The Economics of Technical Information Systems.
43. OECD, Economics of Information Progress Report.
44. OECD, Proposed Standard Practice.
45. With regard to the industrial sector, it was suggested excluding radio and television because ‘little scientific and technical information is transferred’. Despite the recommendation, this industry would be included in the measurements of the 1970s.
46. OECD, Notes on the Meeting of Countries.
47. OECD, Collection of Statistical Data; OECD, Economics of Information: Summary Record.
48. OECD, Notes on the Meeting of Countries, 6.
49. OECD, Economics of Information: Summary Record.
50. Ibid., 3.
51. OECD, Statistics, Time Series and Indicators.
52. OECD, Steering Group on Indicators for STI.
53. A second manual was also envisaged on costs/effectiveness, but never developed. See OECD, STINFO: Summary Record of the 24th Meeting, 6; OECD, STINFO: Summary Record of the 25th Meeting, 7.
54. The framework was already used at OECD in studies on R&D, where the surveys were aligned with the System of National Accounts by way of the Frascati manual, and studies on education, which relied on the then‐new theory on human capital.
55. Price, ‘Quantitative Measures’; Price, ‘The Exponential Curve’; Price, Science since Babylon; Price, Little Science. In 1971, the OECD commissioned a study on forecasting growth in scientific and technical information (see Anderla, Information in 1985) which served as a basis for a workshop held in 1973, in which Price participated (see OECD, Information in 1985).
56. The first important conferences on the subject were: Royal Society, The Royal Society Scientific Information Conference; US National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings.
57. Bernal, The Social Function of Science, 292–308; Bernal, ‘Provisional Scheme’.
58. Ibid., 117. This is the first occurrence in the literature of the term chaos in this context.
59. Price, Science since Babylon, 124.
60. Ibid., 104.
61. Price, ‘The Exponential Curve of Science’, 524.
62. Machlup, The Production’, 15.
63. Ibid, 8.
64. Ibid., 21–22.
65. OECD, Draft Proposals for a Change; OECD, Proposed Developments; OECD, New Activities.
66. Porat and Rubin, The Information Economy.
67. Porat, The Information Economy, 1.
68. Ibid., 2.
69. Ibid., 2.
70. Ibid., 27–28.
71. Ibid., 65.
72. Ibid., 119.
73. Ibid., 154.
74. OECD, Information for a Changing Society, known as the Piganiol report; OECD, Report of the Ad Hoc Group on Information, known as the Whitehead report; OECD, Report of the Coordination; OECD, Information Technology; OECD, Task Force on Information; OECD, First Report of the Ad Hoc Group on Information.
75. OECD, STINFO: Summary Record of the 18th Meeting; OECD, A New Approach, 15.
76. OECD, Conference on Computers/Telecommunications Policies.
77. Parker, Social Implications of Computer/Telecommunications Systems.
78. OECD, Conference on Computers and Telecommunications Policy.
79. OECD, Information, Computer, Telecommunications: A New Approach.
80. OECD, Draft Mandate of the ICCP Group; OECD, Final Mandate of the Working Party on ICCP.
81. As well as the Computer Utilization Group, created in 1969, and a Panel on Information Technology and Urban Management. A Panel on Data Bank continued on its own for few more years.
82. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the First Session.
83. In 1978, the Secretariat General’s budget proposal suggested elevating the status of the group to a Division in the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry. See OECD, Draft Summary Record of the Fourth Session, 3. Then, in 1980, the French delegate, supported by several countries, proposed that a committee be set up (on the ‘informatization of society’). See OECD, High Level Conference, 34. In 1981, the CSTP proposed elevating the working party to a committee. The working party became a committee on its own (no longer attached to the Committee on Science and Technology Policy) in 1982.
84. OECD, Macro‐Economic Analysis.
85. Ibid., 3.
86. Ibid., 4.
87. Ibid., 7.
88. Ibid., 12.
89. OECD, Mandate of the Group of Experts on Economic Analysis.
90. OECD, Working Party on ICCP: Draft Summary Report.
91. OECD, Preliminary Project Outline.
92. Ibid., 1.
93. Ibid., 2.
94. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the Second Session.
95. Porat, Building a Primary. See also Porat, Policy Uses.
96. OECD, Definitions and Data. The final guidelines can be found in OECD, Work Programme for Deriving.
97. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the Third Session.
98. Wall, A Preliminary Analysis.
99. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the Third Session, 5.
100. OECD, Information Activities, Electronic and Telecommunications Technologies: Impact.
101. Ibid., 3.
102. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the Fourth Session, 3.
103. Germany, Austria, Canada, United States, Finland, France, Japan, United Kingdom and Sweden.
104. OECD, Information Activities, Electronic and Telecommunications Technologies, 12.
105. See chapter 2 of OECD, Information Activities, Electronics and Telecommunications, Vol. 2.
106. OECD, Proposal for the Development of a Statistical System, 1.
107. OECD, Proposed Scope of Project, 3.
108. Ibid., 4.
109. OECD, Information Technology Statistics.
110. OECD, Proposal for the Development of a Statistical System.
111. OECD, Plan de travail.
112. OECD, Proposed Scope of Project, 4.
113. OECD, Draft Scope and Structure, 4.
114. Ibid, 5.
115. Available in OECD, Australian Proposal, 33s.
116. OECD, An Inventory. The analysis revealed that current classifications (on industries – STIC – and on trade – STIC) were not sufficiently detailed and did not cover the whole field of ICC activities: ISIC was last revised in 1968; STIC was better because it was product‐oriented, but did not cover software.
117. OECD, Update of Information Sector Statistics. Published as OECD, Trends in the Information Economy. Four new countries participated: Australia, Denmark, Norway and New Zealand.
118. OECD, Draft Questionnaire.
119. OECD, Questionnaire on ICC‐Based Goods.
120. OECD, Results of the Mini‐Survey; OECD, Revised Questionnaire. All in all, three data collection exercises were conducted (the database covered 1982–1989; data for the years 1986 and 1989 include services).
121. OECD, Trade in ICC‐Related Products. See also OECD, Report of the ICC Trade Database; OECD, The Treatment of International Trade.
122. OECD, Group of National Experts on Statistics for ICC: Summary Record, 4.
123. OECD, Revised Proposal for the Development of a Manual, 2.
124. Ibid., 2.
125. Ibid., 5.
126. OECD, Detailed Discussion Paper.
127. OECD, A Framework.
128. Ibid., 4.
129. ‘Though social questions are of undoubted importance, given the limited aims of the present proposal the focus will be on economic issues alone’. OECD, Revised Proposal for the Development of a Manual, 3.
130. OECD, Meeting of Volunteer Experts.
131. OECD, Ad Hoc Group of Experts on Statistics for ICC: Summary Record.
132. Ibid., 2.
133. Ibid.
134. Ibid.
135. The database was criticized for the sparseness of the data and the classifications used (not adapted to the developments in the field). OECD, Activities of the OECD Sectoral Groups.
136. OECD, A Draft Medium Term Plan.
137. OECD, Summary Record of the Meeting of Experts on the Consequence of the TEP Indicators.
138. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the 9th Session, 3.
139. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the 7th Session, 3.
140. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the Fifth Session, 17.
141. OECD, Summary Record of the Second Session, 10.
142. OECD, Meeting of Experts on Statistics for ICC: Summary Record, 3.
143. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the Eighth Session, 10.
144. Indeed, the Committee for Scientific Affairs had changed its name in 1972 to the Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy.
145. For published reports, see: OECD, Technical Change; OECD, New Technologies; OECD, Technology and the Economy.
146. Freeman et al., Unemployment and Technical Innovation; Freeman, ‘Information Technology;’ Freeman, ‘The Challenge;’ Freeman and Perez, ‘Structural Crises.’
147. OECD, Socio‐economic Implications.
148. OECD, Economic Implications of Information Technologies: Draft Summary Record of the First Session.
149. To the OECD, the term information economy refers to the implications of information technologies on the economy, on firms’ performance (productivity, profitability, employment), while the information society refers to the social consequences of technologies (modes of behavior, relationships in and between communities) (OECD, A Framework Document, 7). ‘Tomorrow’s economy will be, to a great extent an information economy and society will be increasingly an information society. That is information will contribute in great part to the value added of most goods and services and information intensive activities will increasingly be carried out by households and citizens’ (OECD, The ICCP Ad Hoc Statistical Panel, 2).
150. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the Thirteenth Session, 8.
151. OECD, Economic Implications of Information Technologies: Draft Summary Record of the Second Session.
152. Miles, The Statistical Analysis; Miles, Mapping and Measuring; Miles, Statistics and the Information Age.
153. Miles, The Statistical Analysis, 2.
154. OECD, Indications and Analysis. Published as report no. 31 in the ICCP Red series: OECD, Usage Indicators.
155. OECD, Proposal for a First Special Session; OECD, Report on the Special Session.
156. OECD, Micro‐ and Macroeconomic Impacts of National IT Policies; OECD, Micro‐ and Macroeconomic Impacts of IT and National Information Technology Policies.
157. Ibid, 5.
158. Ibid, 6.
159. OECD, The Productivity Impacts. Some of the papers from the conference were published in the journal Economics of Innovation and New Technology 3, nos. 3–4, 1995.
160. OECD, STI Work on Technology, Productivity, and Employment. Report published as OECD, Technology, Productivity and Job Creation.
161. Godin, ‘The New Economy.’
162. OECD, EIIT Review Report.
163. OECD, Working Party on Information Technology Policy: Draft Mandate.
164. There were already plenty of discourses and initiatives at other levels of governments. For influential documents, see the EU Commission’s Bangemann report (European Commission, Europe and the Global Information Society) and the US initiative for the Information Super Highway (Task Force on Information Infrastructure, Global Information Infrastructure).
165. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the 26th Session, 3.
166. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the 27th Session, 5–6.
167. OECD, GII‐GIS: Statement of Policy Recommendations, 2.
168. Ibid., 3.
169. OECD, GII‐GIS: Policy Requirements; OECD, GII‐GIS: Policy Recommendations.
170. OECD, Mandate and Activities of the Working Party; OECD, Mandate, Terms of Reference and Name; OECD, Proposed New Mandate.
171. OECD, OECD Workshops.
172. OECD, Global Information Infrastructure, 9; OECD, GII‐GIS: Policy Requirements, 23.
173. OECD, The ICCP Statistical Panel.
174. OECD, Summary Record of the Ad Hoc Meeting on Indicators.
175. OECD, Policy Relevant Indicators, 9.
176. OECD, Summary Record of the Second Ad Hoc Meeting on Indicators for the Information Society, 9.
177. OECD, Defining the Content Sector.
178. OECD, Summary Record of the 3rd Ad Hoc Meeting, 3–4.
179. OECD, NAICS.
180. OECD, The Electronic Content Sector.
181. OECD, The Content Sector.
182. OECD, Summary Record of the 4th Meeting, 5–6.
183. OECD, Content as a New Growth Industry.
184. Confidential interview, 12 July 2004.
185. OECD, Draft Summary Record of the 37th Session, 7.
186. OECD, Summary Record of the Second Ad Hoc Meeting, 2.
187. OECD, Summary Record of the Meeting of the Working Party, 7.
188. OECD, WPIIS Work Programme, 2.
189. OECD, A Framework Document.
190. OECD, Guide.
191. Ibid., 10.
192. Ibid.
193. Ibid., 6.
194. Ibid.
195. Ibid., 12.
196. Ibid.
197. OECD, Summary Record of the Meeting of the Working Party, 8.
198. OECD, WPIIS Work Programme and Terms of Reference, 2.
199. OECD, Policy Relevant Indicators, 9.
200. OECD, Response by the Secretariat, 16.
201. ‘Il paraît aujourd’hui normal, en matière de systèmes statistiques, de se placer d’emblée dans un cadre de cohérence comptable inspiré de la comptabilité nationale.’ OECD, Plan de travail.
202. OECD, The Statistical Information System.
203. OECD, Update of Information Sector, 3.
204. OECD, Record of the NESTI Meeting.
205. OECD, Understanding Bibliometrics.
206. Okubo, Bibliometric Indicators.
207. Godin, Measurement and Statistics.
208. OECD, OECD Proposed Guidelines. General distribution under catalog number OECD/GD (92) 26.
209. US Department of Commerce, Technological Innovation.
210. Webster, Theories of the Information Society.