It has been argued in Chapters 3 and 4 that information technology has both facilitated and inhibited access to information. On the one hand, it has greatly increased the ease of storing, sorting and retrieving data; on the other, it has increased the cost of doing so and made that cost more easily quantifiable. By putting a complex technology with an expensive infrastructure between information and its potential users, it has introduced a new obstacle in the chain of supply. In a later section of this chapter, we shall explore this at the level of information supply to individuals, but it is perhaps most starkly illustrated by considering these issues in the context of states, and, in particular, the nations of the Third World and central and eastern Europe. This exploration must, however, begin with some more general considerations, for in Chapters 3 and 4 we have assumed that information has an economic or fiscal value. The time has now come to attempt a closer definition of that concept.

The value of information

Information is a commodity which is bought and sold. However difficult it may be to define how it acquires value, the fact of the commodification of information cannot be denied. So far, however, we have largely dealt with the financial aspects of the supply of information rather than the value of the information itself. Books, journals and computer software have a price attached to them at which they are bought and sold. We can assign costs to the construction and maintenance of telecommunications networks, computer hardware, and so on. We can calculate the cost of processing information, in terms of the time involved in obtaining, recording and retrieving it, a cost which would normally be a combination of paying for the time of those involved and the cost of the materials, equipment and consumables they use. None of this, however, really addresses the question of the value – if any – which can be assigned to information.

The problem lies in part in the definition of information itself. Dictionary definitions typically suggest that it is a subset of knowledge acquired, deliberately or accidentally, by study or experience. For some purposes, this is adequate: information is simply a part of the total stock of human knowledge. We can, however, take the matter a little further.