[governance] FW: [csisac-members] MEASURING the Internet Economy

[michael gurstein]

And here is my reply to Milton which went to the same list :).

-----Original Message-----
From: michael gurstein [mailto:gurstein at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 9:28 AM
To: 'Milton L Mueller'; 'csisac-members at csisac.org'
Subject: RE: [csisac-members] MEASURING the Internet Economy

Hi Milton,

-----Original Message-----
From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 7:36 PM
To: michael gurstein; csisac-members at csisac.org
Subject: RE: [csisac-members] MEASURING the Internet Economy

Michael
I appreciate your enthusiasm and look forward to participating in the
meeting with you. 
As a social scientist I do have trouble with some of your assertions. I have
no problem when you point to the inadequacy of GDP measurements or the
System of National Accounts. What bothers me is that you seem to have
already hard-wired into your mind what you want to find, and you are just
casting about for some method or definition of "measurement" that will
produce the results you want. Here's an example:

> The value of such an argument from a civil society perspective I
> think, is that it links overall economic activity (GDP) with the 
> Internet, and links the Internet with the production of social capital 
> which in turn becomes something of a backdoor way of arguing that 
> investment in ICT should be as much focused on education, health, and 
> social support as it is on bits and bytes--hardware and 
> software--something I'm assuming we all agree with but also something 
> which is not taken as a necessary given by those folks managing 
> current economic policies.

WE MAY BE GETTING INTO THE NETHER REGIONS OF EPISTEMOLOGY HERE, BUT THE
GENERAL CONSENSUS AMONG THOSE DOING THESE KINDS OF MEASUREMENTS IS THAT YOU
FIND WHAT YOU MEASURE RATHER MORE OFTEN THAN YOU MEASURE WHAT YOU FIND
(PARTICULARLY WHEN IT COMES TO THE "SOCIAL" SCIENCES RATHER THAN THE
"PHYSICAL" SCIENCES BUT EVEN THERE, THERE IS VERY CONSIDERABLE ON-GOING
DISPUTE). THE LITERATURE ON THIS IS TRULY ENORMOUS AND IS THE BASIC QUESTION
UNDERLYING MOST OF THE PHILOSOPHY (AND NOT INCIDENTALLY THE SOCIOLOGY) OF
SCIENCE.


I am eager to see challenging new ideas about how to measure or what to
measure, but I don't see any here. Indeed, I don't see the above as an
argument about measurement at all. What I do see is a normative policy
argument that "investment in ICT should be as much focused on education,
health, and social support as it is on bits and bytes--hardware and
software." (Oddly, the policy conclusion is not all that controversial.
Western democracies have invested vast sums in education and research, and
everyone knows it's feeding into the Internet economy in important ways and
I don't know of anyone who believes that it's all about hardware and
software exclusively - although those things do get prioritized, I admit.)

I'M NOT NECESSARILY LOOKING FOR NOVELTY IN EITHER HOW TO MEASURE OR EVEN
WHAT TO MEASURE BUT RATHER IN THE FRAMEWORK UNDERLYING THE MEASUREMENTS
THEMSELVES... AS FOR EXAMPLE THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT MADE VERY CLEAR, THE
PROCESS OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTING IS STRUCTURED SO THAT WOMEN'S DOMESTIC WORK,
BECAUSE IT DOESN'T LEAD TO MEASUREABLE PRODUCT OUTCOMES DOESN'T APPEAR AS
WORK AT ALL THUS AS A POLICY CONSEQUENCE WOMEN HAVE HAD TO FIGHT VERY
STRONGLY TO HAVE THEIR "WORK" RECOGNIZED WITHIN NATIONAL POLICY AND FOR
EXAMPLE HAVE ACCOMMODATIONS MADE FOR INCLUDING THIS WORK WITHIN THE
FRAMEWORK OF NATIONAL PENSION SCHEMES. MY ARGUMENT IS THAT THE INTERNET IS
BOTH BUILT ON AND BUILT INTO SOCIAL CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT AND THUS IF ONE IS
CONCERNED, AS THE OECD HERE SEEMS TO BE, TO HAVE ACCURATE MEASURES OF "THE
INTERNET ECONOMY" THEN ITS MEASUREMENT SCHEMES NEED TO EVOLVE TO ACCOMMODATE
THOSE ACTIVITIES THAT ARE SUPPORTIVE OF THE CREATION OF SOCIAL CAPITAL.


To my mind, the whole point of good measurement techniques is that we don't
know in advance the results they will produce; they tell us something new -
and something real - which may or may not conform to what we want to find.
Indeed, any system of measurement that is deliberately designed to confirm
our pre-existing political views is a disgusting form of self-delusion and
propaganda. So the real trick is to figure out new ways of "how" to measure
new things that are unmeasured that actually work. 

SEE ABOVE... 


Think of Galileo peering into the telescope he invented for the first time,
and looking at the moon and other planets, which helped lead to the
rejection of the geo-centric concept of the universe. He did that because he
was after the truth, not because he wanted to overthrow Christian cosmology.
He may have ended up doing that, but that was a secondary consequence of
honest inquiry.

NOW YOU REALLY ARE GETTING INTO EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE PHILSOPHY OF (SOCIAL)
SCIENCE.  MOST SCHOLARS DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN NATURAL PHENOMENA SUCH AS WHAT
GALILEO WAS OBSERVING AND SOCIAL PHENOMENA SUCH AS WHAT WE ARE DISCUSSING.
THE ISSUES OF "REALISM" IN MEASUREMENT IN THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES IS ITSELF A
SUBJECT OF VERY CONSIDERABLE RESEARCH/DEBATE Q.V. KUHN, PUTNAM, FEYERABEND
ET AL... THE ISSUES OF MEASUREMENT IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IS SUBJECT TO THE
SAME DEBATES BUT WITH A HUGE AMOUNT OF GREATER COMPLEXITY AND DARE I SAY
THAT CIVIL SOCIETY HAS BEEN A LEADER IN POINTING OUT THE UNDERLYING BIASES
OF CURRENT MEASUREMENT STRUCTURES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND EVEN MORE
IMPORTANTLY IN LINKING THIS TO THE POLICY IMPLICATIONS THAT RESULT FROM
THESE BIASES--CF. THE PREVIOUSLY NOTED FEMINIST CRITIQUE, BUT ALSO THE
ENVIRONMENTALIST CRITIQUE, THE EMERGING SUSTAINABILITY CRITIQUE AND SO ON.


Many economists are a more sophisticated about these issues than you give
them credit for. Are you familiar with the earlier debate on some of the
measurement issues of the information economy? The first economist to really
pursue this was Fritz Machlup, an Austrian economist who became fascinated
with measuring what he called "the knowledge economy." This was 1962 or
thereabouts. How did he get to that point? He was trying to figure out
whether society was investing too much or too little on education. You might
take a look at that. Here is a Google books link:
http://books.google.com/books?id=kp6vswpmpjoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Machlup
+Production+and+distribution+of+knowledge&hl=en&ei=r5ZdTvHaEKbK0AG8zMXQAg&sa
=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false 

CERTAINLY, NO QUESTION... I'M NOT SUGGESTING THAT ECONOMISTS AREN'T
SOPHISTICATED BUT I AM SUGGESTING THAT WE AS CIVIL SOCIETY NEED NOT (AND
PERHAPS SHOULD NOT) ACCEPT AS A GIVEN WHAT ECONOMISTS CHOOSE AS THEIR
WORKING ASSUMPTIONS/STRUCTURES OF MEASUREMENT AND SO ON.  AND AS I SAY
ABOVE, ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT (INTELLECTUAL) CONTRIBUTIONS THAT CIVIL
SOCIETY HAS MADE IS PRECISELY CHALLENGING THOSE ASSUMPTIONS IN THE AREAS I
HAVE POINTED.  

MY QUESTION HERE IS WHETHER WE, AS CS CONCERNED WITH "THE INTERNET" AND ITS
USES AND EFFECTS, ARE IN A POSITION TO MAKE A SIMILAR CHALLENGE... 


Your own comments however, point to one of the seemingly inherent
contradictions of economic measurement. You want to argue for increased
investment in health, education, social support, and by "investments" I
believe you mean real money, quantifiable sums of cash. Am I right? You are
not saying that we should all think favorable thoughts or aim harmonious,
warm vibes at our schools.. You want us to put tangible resources into them.
But at the same time you seem to be arguing that monetary measures are
worthless as indicators of value. Or maybe I am not getting your position. 

I'M NOT SURE FROM WHERE YOU IMPUTE THE ABOVE STATEMENT.  MONETARY
TRANSACTIONS ARE ONE MEASURING STICK AMONG OTHERS. ONE OF THE EXTREMELY
INTERESTING COROLLARIES OF THE CS INNOVATIONS I'VE POINTED TO ABOVE IS THAT
CLEVER FOLKS HAVE BEEN ABLE TO PUT MONETARY VALUES ALONGSIDE MANY OF THE
CONCEPTUAL INNOVATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN ARGUED FOR--THERE IS A WHOLE
LITERATURE ON MEASURING WOMEN'S WORK FOR EXAMPLE, BUT ALSO ON ENIVORNMENTAL
ACCOUNTING ETC.ETC. THE PROBLEM IS, IF YOU TAKE A LOOK AT THE DEBATES
SURROUNDING THESE INNOVATIONS, THE ECONOMISTS/STATISTICIANS ARE TOO BOUND UP
IN IDEOLOGY TO ACCEPT EVEN THESE MEASURES WITHIN THEIR NARROW PARAMETERS
(BASICALLY THEY DON'T WANT TO ACCEPT THE POLICY IMPLICATIONS THAT
FOLLOW--AND THAT OF COURSE, IS WHERE MEASUREMENT INTERFACES WITH POLICY AND
POLICY BECOMES POLITICS...


This is a well-recognized problem in economics, actually. Everyone knows
that there are all kinds of things that are valuable and important but are
outside of the price system and thus difficult or impossible to measure.
Until and unless these activities/things somehow engage in or touch upon the
exchange economy, we simply don't know how to inter-subjectively calculate
or measure their value. This is not some capitalist plot, it's just a basic
fact about the human condition. You can't objectively assess the value of
something except by looking at what people are willing to give up to get it.
And when the unit of exchange is non-monetary (horses, cowrie shells,
flowers, land, songs) it's really hard to make sense of it at the scale of a
national or international economy. So money, as homogenous and fungible
units of value shared by millions of people in an integrated transnational
economy, becomes the basis for such measurements. 

YES, BUT SO WHAT, SEE ABOVE...


If you can think of some simple way around this problem, more power to you.
You'll get the Nobel prize. But please don't trivialize the difficulty of
this problem, or attribute it to a conspiracy of evil neoliberals. (In fact,
Chinese and Soviet Marxists are famous for putting the most emphasis on the
production of physical goods and touting such statistics as proof of the
superiority of socialism). 

MOST CERTAINLY, AND YOU'VE COMPLETELY DEFEATED AN ARGUMENT I WASN'T (AND
WOULDN'T) MAKE.

BEST,

MIKE

--MM

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