International Journal of Communication
ABSTRACT:
The question of “how much information” there is in the world goes back at least to the time when Aristotle’s student Demetrius (367 BC–ca. 283 BC) was asked to organize the Library of Alexandria in order to quantify “how many thousand books are there” (Aristeas, ca. 200 BC). Pressed by the exploding number of information and communication technologies (ICTs) the recent decades, several research projects have taken up this question more systematically since the 1960s. In the eight articles of this Special Section, authors of some of the most extensive of those inventories discuss findings, research priorities, advantages, and limitations, as well as methodological and measurement differences in their approaches. As guest editor of this Special Section, I start by providing some of the main conclusions that I draw from this exercise. The goal of these conclusions is to offer the reader a quick overview about the current state of the art, as well as some of the recurrently mentioned challenges (a much more detailed and balanced description of the challenges will be found within the different articles). I also review the historical context of the most well-known and extensive of these inventories, which will provide the reader with the necessary background in the art and science of information quantification.
