Editing Information Age (section)

==Measuring and modeling the information revolution==
Porat (1976) measured the information sector in the US using the [[input-output analysis]]; [[OECD]] has included statistics on the information sector in the economic reports of its member countries.<ref name=Porat/> Veneris (1984, 1990) explored the theoretical, economic and regional aspects of the informational revolution and developed a [[systems dynamics]] [[simulation]] [[computer model]].<ref name=Veneris1984/><ref name=Veneris1990/>

These works can be seen as following the path originated with the work of [[Fritz Machlup]] who in his (1962) book "The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States", claimed that the "knowledge industry represented 29% of the US gross national product", which he saw as evidence that the Information Age had begun. He defines knowledge as a commodity and attempts to measure the magnitude of the production and distribution of this commodity within a modern economy. Machlup divided information use into three classes: instrumental, intellectual, and pastime knowledge. He identified also five types of knowledge: practical knowledge; intellectual knowledge, that is, general culture and the satisfying of intellectual curiosity; pastime knowledge, that is, knowledge satisfying non-intellectual curiosity or the desire for light entertainment and emotional stimulation; spiritual or religious knowledge; unwanted knowledge, accidentally acquired and aimlessly retained.<ref name=Machlup/>

More recent estimates have reached the following results:<ref name="HilbertLopez2011"/>
* the world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks grew at a sustained compound annual growth rate of 7% between 1986 and 2007;
* the world's technological capacity to store information grew at a sustained compound annual growth rate of 25% between 1986 and 2007;
* the world's effective capacity to exchange information through two-way telecommunications networks grew at a sustained compound annual growth rate of 30% during the same two decades;
* the world's technological capacity to compute information with the help of humanly guided general-purpose computers grew at a sustained compound annual growth rate of 61% during the same period.<ref name="Hilbertvideo2011">[http://ideas.economist.com/video/giant-sifting-sound-0 "video animation on The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information from 1986 to 2010] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120118072720/http://ideas.economist.com/video/giant-sifting-sound-0 |date=2012-01-18 }}</ref>