Toward Global Measurement of the Information Society: a U.S.-China Comparison of National Government Surveys

Our current experience of globalization is founded on the broad and transnational use of digital technologies. Scholarship regarding this use, however, is often limited to the national scale at best. As a result, we risk drawing parochial conclusions that trail behind actual social life. This paper demonstrates how to use today’s “invisible college” (de Solla Price 1963, 1986, Lievrouw 1990) together with the power of the digital itself to surmount this problem and help achieve global science which can then inform global— and in turn national—policy, especially with regard to standardization.