The role of scientific communication in the process of technological innovation

Currently inundating the United States is a variety of guidebooks to the future of information. Daniel Bell's, The Coming of the Post Industrial Society was preceded by Fritz Machlup's discussions of the ‘new society’ in the first edition of The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Other contributions which discuss the notion of the information or service‐based society to come include Edwin Parker, W. W. Rostow, Peter Drucker, and Ken Boulding. The argument here is that the scientific and technical information and communication industry is a small but significant part of the total knowledge sector economy which will certainly dominate the future of the developed world.