Overseas resources funded by government: a world system in the making? Available to Purchase

It would have been both tidy and convincing to have started this paper with statistical tables showing what resources are funded by governments overseas. If I have not done so, it is both because the figures are not readily available, and the task—taking ‘overseas’ at face value—like the universe, is unbounded. Indeed, as defined for the statistics which show we are entering a post‐industrial Information Society, ‘information’ may cover any activities concerned with the processing of symbols rather than of materials. Even if we restrict the term to the provision of specific services by word of mouth, document or computer output, it is still difficult to draw tight boundaries. The OECD struggled unsuccessfully for ten years to reach international agreement on meaningful and useful definitions for statistics on information; hopefully the recent US compilation of Statistical Indicators of Scientific and Technical Communication, will stimulate further efforts in other countries. There is an enormous and urgent job to be done.