Nearly 40 percent of the American workforce is devoted to this pursuit. Businesses, government and society depend upon it.
Actionable information fuels the global economy.
The vast global information service infrastructure that is now emerging on the backbone of the Internet could connect every office, vehicle, mobile handset and stationary device together in a gigantic web of information service producers, brokers, distributors and consumers. The global information infrastructure may depend on computers, networks and interoperable software, but the main ingredient is information. During the past decade the Web has accumulated an array of information resources. Search engines can't keep up with it. The URL is the mechanism that keeps it all linked together.