Edited by Benjamin M. Compaine and William H. Read

Our motivations for compiling this volume were two-fold. We think it useful for readers to know the context for this book.

The immediate impetus was the 70^th birthday of Anthony Oettinger, the co-founder and intellectual force behind the Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy. In 1995 Anne Branscomb, a friend as well as colleague of Tony’s, suggested to a group of friends and associates of his that it would be appropriate to celebrate Tony’s 70^th birthday in 1999 with several events: a conference, a dinner and a book. The two of us volunteered to edit a book in that spirit.

The timing was right, as we had been talking about doing a book together. This was the second "fold." Each of us has taught courses under titles such as "Strategic Issues in the Management of Technology" or "Information Technology and Policy," for which we could not find an appropriate basic text for our students. We had to pull together collections of articles into "course packets," at considerable cost and time. We knew there were other faculty in the same position. We also knew that there were many other professionals in the management, regulation, or analysis of information companies who could use both a nonengineer’s understanding underlying the digital world as well as insights into its implications for corporate and government policymakers.

This, then, is the book that we fashioned to be both a tribute to Tony Oettinger’s work as well as a comprehensive primer on information resources policy. We believe the two objectives are complementary.

The contents of this book are principally from research that spans nearly two decades of the Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy. They are supplemented with original chapters from prominent professionals and academics. In a still developing discipline, some contemporary judgments regarding the resources of the information age are certain to change. Others are more stable. To strike a balance between the two, which implicitly means a balance between abstract concepts of enduring value and writings on particular subjects illustrated with specific examples, the editors have resorted to partitioning.

Thus, the first chapter in each section of the book is what we have dubbed an "evergreen" work. Whether newly written or authored years ago, these chapters contain perspective and principles that have not nor are likely to get outdated. Some of the remaining chapters are also contemporary, others have an enduring quality. But over time we expect that the evergreen chapters will stay consistent from edition to edition, while the "contemporary" chapters will be changed as topics become resolved and new ones become current.

This approach further explains what may strike readers as a curious artifact in some of these articles: the relatively ancient data cited in some of the chapters. In a few cases tabular data may be no more current that the early 1980s. While our first impulse was to update these, we made a decision to reprint these articles as they were originally written. We judged that the analysis, forces or trends that these data were provided to support when written have held true up to the time of this publication, even as the details may have changed.

Since its founding at Harvard by Anthony G. Oettinger and his associate John LeGates in 1972, the Program on Information Resources Policy has been monitoring and analyzing developments in a variety of fields that it has defined (admittedly loosely) as the "information industries." Defining the nature and scope of the information industries -- a field marked by ambiguity and turmoil -- has been a continuing problem for the Program, for policymakers, and for the information industries themselves. While many of the Program's research projects over the years have focused on developments within a specific traditional information industry, such as broadcasting, telephone, or cable TV, the Program has continually emphasized the interaction among the different information technologies, markets, and types of government intervention. The Program's principals speak frequently, therefore, about merging technologies and new conflicts among traditional industries.

In organizing the Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy, Oettinger and LeGates sought to create knowledge, both competent and impartial, on controversial information-related matters. Their idea of success was that this new knowledge would be of high quality and that it would be trusted by any party to a controversy, anyone with stakes in the outcome of the controversy, or, for that matter, by any bystander.

Combining competence and impartiality is not easy. But Oettinger, LeGates and their colleagues have done it with great success for a quarter century -- and the two of us are pleased to have been involved in a small measure -- and their impact and influence has been global in scope. Central to their objective of not only stating their impartiality in the policy realm but maintaining the appearance of impartiality, the Program created a unique funding mechanism. Because it dealt in areas of high stakes of corporate and political self-interests, it successfully sought out a broad base of financial support. Competing industries and competitors within those industries are contributors. The Program has never undertaken a specific study at the behest of any contributor, did no proprietary research, nor allowed an organization or industry to fund a specific research project. It did not allow any player to contribute a sum large enough to cripple the Program should that sum of funding be withdrawn for any reason.

Not all players bought into this procedure. But enough did see the merit in having a policy "think tank" whose output could always be viewed as impartial by any standard. This book stands as a testimony to what has been achieved.

As changes in technology markets and public policy reshape the traditional information industries, those industries must be viewed as part of a larger world, one that the Program has termed the information business. That is why this is but the first edition of the Information Resources Policy Handbook.

A Map of the Information Business

The information business is a complex of companies and government agencies involved in the acquisition, packaging, processing, storage, transmittal, and distribution of information. The size and scope of the business in economic terms is the subject of Chapter 11.

The information business map in Figure P-1 is a less conventional approach to describing the complex of businesses that make up the information business. It displays the operating boundaries of players in the information business along product-service and form-substance axes. The map has been useful for illustrating the corporate and regulatory churning underway in the information business in recent years, and serves to highlight areas that invite further attention from financial analysts, public policymakers, and corporate strategists.

The mapping technique (see Chapter 10) can be used to illustrate a variety of relationships and developments in the information business, including:

1. The jurisdictional boundaries of regulatory agencies;

2. The strategic positioning of companies in the information business in relation to regulatory boundaries and competitors' positions;

3. Operations and planning within individual organizations;

4. Some basic forces and trends driving changes in the information business; and

5. The historical evolution of the information business.

The information business map is not a fixed matrix but a dynamic model, and will continue to evolve in response to changes in the information business. Mapping the Information Business was one of the seminal research projects of the research program, which is why we introduce it here and include a chapter on the subject.

Although Tony Oettinger has been the guiding intellectual force behind this work, he has attracted over the years a cadre of collaborators, associates, reviewers, and support staff. We have already referred to John LeGates, who has been the Managing Director of the Program since its inception. We hesitate to name names as so few can be mentioned. But a short list would include John McLaughlin and Oswald Ganley as long time Program directors. Claire Bishop was there at the start as Tony’s secretary and emerged as the Program’s Administrator. We are all also saddened that the moving force, Anne Wells Branscomb, died in 1997, as the plans she initiated were starting to take shape.

We are grateful for the opportunity to assemble a unique body of work that addresses the question, "In the age of information, what should an educated person understand about the resources that are involved in the worldwide shift toward information-intensive economies and societies?" We trust that the knowledge in this book will be useful to our readers in either your personal life or in your institutional role, as the age of information continues to evolve.

Benjamin M. Compaine and William H. Read

June 1998

Copyright © 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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