Information costs

Author

Stefan Zhelyazkov

Description

The amount of information available through out the globe has risen drastically. The Internet allows everybody to share pieces of data and access others'. The orientation towards mass customization and rapid development of new technologies, allows those that possess the right information at the right time to be extremely successful. At the end it turns out that the data, which can be translated into knowledge, can the difference between success and failure.

Enablers

Client-Server Architecture - The trend from personal computers has shifted back to services provided by central hubs/servers; providing access for everybody.
Low cost of data processing - the rapid development of processing equipment has overcome the average processing needs of a normal user. Today the costs of computing byte per second are extremely low; thus large quantities of data can be processed relatively cheap.
Data storage capacity - The growth of storage capacity enables the maintaining of more and more information. There are solutions offering hard drives with storage capacity of more than one terabyte.
Ability to access information from anywhere in the world - More and more networks become connected to the Internet, thus sharing their resources with the whole world. People can access their office computers even if they are one continent away.

Inhibitors

Availability - the moment the data is shared on global level it looses a lot of its value.
Irrelevance/inconsistency/faulty sources - Due to the quick rates of information spreading, often it is not easy to verify the validity of the data and fake information can have significant impact (rumors in the Internet). Sometimes it is hard to distinguish valuable from invaluable information.