Productivity and economic growth are “increasingly dependent upon the application of science and technology, as well as upon the quality of information and management, in the process of production, consumption, distribution, and trade”. This is in contrast to the pre-information era, when advanced economies increased their productivity principally through infusions of capital and labor to the productive process. The importance of science and technology in economics is illustrated by the economic, and eventually political, downfall of the Soviet Union. Soviet productivity advanced regularly until 1971, simply by pumping more capital and labor into a primitive industrial system. However, once the Soviet economy became more complex because of industrialization, it needed to rely on more sophisticated scientific processes to sustain growth. Though the Soviet Union had a great number of top-notch scientists and engineers, the overcentralized nature of the command economy made it increasingly difficult to apply science and technology to industrial processes, and the growth rates plummeted. In contrast, countries that were able to more flexibly integrate science and technology into the production process, such as Singapore and Korea, thrived. In advanced capitalist countries there has been a shift from material production to information-processing activities, both in terms of proportion of Gross National Product (GNP) and proportion of the population employed. This entails not only a shift from manufacturing to service but also a shift within the service sector from noninformation activities (e.g., cleaning floors) to information-processing activities (e.g., computer software writing). The informationintensive industries include health care, banking, software, biotechnology, and media. But even traditional industries, such as automobile and steel, are increasingly relying on information processing in order to produce competitive products.
Digitalization, Informationism and Hegemony of Capitalism
