Global Information Technology Report 2013

Just out, the World Economic Forum's The Global Information Technology Report 2013: Growth and Jobs in a Hyperconnected World.

Since 2002 this annual report has "accompanied and monitored ICT advances over the last decade as well as raising awareness of the importance of ICT diffusion and usage for long-term competitiveness and societal well-being."

The Report includes its much touted and anticipated Networked Readiness Index. More on this from the Executive summary: 

"In terms of the results (see the Networked Readiness Index Rankings provided on page xix), two groups of economies dominate the NRI: Northern European economies and the so-called Asian Tigers. Among the Northern European countries, four out of the five Nordic economies featured in the NRI—Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (in rank order)—continue to feature in the top 10. Iceland, the last of the Nordics, is not too far behind, at 17th place. The performance of this group in terms of readiness is particularly outstanding. All five Nordics feature in the top 10 of this subindex. Within this subindex, on the infrastructure and digital content pillar, four countries occupy the top
positions. As highlighted in the previous edition and in this Report, the gap between those countries and the ones in the Southern and Eastern parts of Europe is profound. A second group of economies that posts a remarkable performance are the Asian Tigers: Singapore, Taiwan (China), the Republic of Korea, and Hong Kong SAR. All boast outstanding business and innovation environments that are consistently ranked among the most conducive in the world. The Tigers also stand out for their governments’ leadership in promoting the digital agenda, and the impact of ICTs on society tends to be larger in these economies."

This is a huge report, 384 pages worth of detailed country by country data.  The Readiness Index is quite detailed with a variety of factors feeding into the ranking. These include efficiency of legal systems for resolving disputes, intellectual property protection, electricity production, mobile network coverage, cellular and broadband tariffs, quality of math and science education, adult literacy rates, households with personal computers, business to business computer usage and many more. 

Tracking Telecom Issues

The Telecommunications Industry Association, TIA, has a very useful, information-packed website. Though this is a member-site of over 600 telecommunications companies from around the world, it also serves up a fair amount of free content to the general public. Look for the annual Standards and Technology Annual Report (STAR) (which they've been posting since 2001).

You can also follow what's going on at the FCC with the TIA Legislative Tracker and the TIA Regulatory Tracker. The June 2011 Regulatory Tracker, for instance, boasts 198 pages of up to date information on regulatory policy.

And while TIA's 2011 ICT Market Review & Forecast may be prohibitively expensive, the previous year's report is free for download, as are older white papers and the like. So even at the TIA Store most items are free.

April CommQuote

Authors Joanne Roberts and John Armitage, in a recent article appearing in the December 2008 issue of Prometheus, compel us to think about the knowledge economy, a much bandied around concept related to the production and transmission of knowledge-based goods and services, in terms of its binary, the ignorance economy. I've strung a few quotes together from that article which I realize is cheating a little but still close enough to the spirit of our monthly rendezvous with quotable-things-related-to-communication. This article can be found in Penn's e-resources.

"Unlike the knowledge economy, the ignorance economy is not, or at least not yet, a common expression used amongst economists, managers, and policymakers. ...Nevertheless, we want to argue, the knowledge economy is precisely rooted in the production, distribution, and consumption of ignorance and lack of information. ...Indeed, as we shall see below, the knowledge economy is necessarily engaged in the speedy obsolescence of knowledge and thus in the expansion of ignorance....it is our contention that ICTs lead to a growth in ignorance. First, increasing amounts of knowledge are being codified and embedded in information management systems, databases, websites and so on. While this makes the information easily retrievable for those with access to the technologies (and we must remember that many even in the advanced nations have limited or no access), it also leads to the discarding of important tacit elements of knowledge that are not amenable to codification. ...Jean-Noël Jeanneney raises this concern in relation to Google's library project, arguing that its unsystematic digitization of works predominantly written in English and from a few partner libraries ignores the complexity of the world's cultural heritage. The result of such codification projects is the loss of valuable knowledge and the development of path-dependency in terms of future creativity and innovation."

--Joanne Roberts and John Armitage (from "The Ignorance Economy," Prometheus, Volume 26, Issue 4, pp. 345-347).