New Economy Index Home
Introduction
SECTION I
What's New About The New Economy?
Industrial and Occupational Change
New Industries and Jobs
Skills and Wages
Globalization
Trade
Foreign Direct Investment
Dynamism and Competition
Gazelles
Competition
"Coopetition"
The Churn Economy
Product and Service Diversity
Speed
The Information Technology Revolution
Microelectronic Proliferation
Cost of Computing
Cost of Data Transmission
SECTION II
New Economy Outcomes: Impacts on Americans
SECTION III
Foundations for Future Growth
Explaining the Productivity Paradox
The Knowledge Economy
Nine Myths About the New Economy
Data Sources
Endnotes
The Authors
THE
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION
Data Transmission Costs Are Plummeting
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? One of the chief enablers of the New Economy is instantaneous global communications: the ability to easily send and receive data-everything from documents to video and multimedia-inexpensively. One measure of progress in that direction is the cost of data transmission.
THE TREND: The cost to transmit one bit of data over a kilometer of fiberoptic cable declined by three orders of magnitude between the mid-1970s and the beginning of the 1990s, allowing more data to be transmitted over longer distances at lower prices.
Technologies for transmitting data are also getting more and more powerful. For example, technology recently developed by Lucent transmits 3.2 terabits -which is approximately equal to 90,000 volumes of an encyclopedia- per second.
THE DATA:
Index Home | Introduction
SECTION I | SECTION II | SECTION III
Productivity Paradox | Knowledge Economy
Nine Myths | Data Sources | Endnotes | The Authors
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI)
Technology, Innovation, and New Economy Project
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