Vol. 34 No. 3 (2016): Data, information and knowledge in Economics

Thanks to the revolution in information and communication technologies, we are at the beginning of an era in which collecting, transmitting and storing huge amounts of data (both structured and unstructured) has become more accessible never. Currently it is estimated that the total data stored in electromagnetic devices on the planet is in the vicinity of a Yottabyte (more than 1,000 million Petabytes), but very soon that figure will be laughably small. Data is transforming companies, society and transforming us as individuals. Even personal computers are capable of performing analyzes in which several tens of millions of data are involved. The data, however, are not enough by themselves. Like any raw material it is necessary to process them to increase their value. It is necessary to transform them into information to make them a source of wealth and knowledge.