The process of survival was driving the beginnings of discovery, creating language so that such discoveries could be passed on, and education so that they could be made aggregate. Necessity is a Mother. A mixed material-informational value chain existed in the Industrial period, as man had learned how to take his simple tools to make more complex tools, using them to add more and more 'value,' levels of complexity. This complexity forced specialization, and herein lay the foundations of the modern dedicated informational value chain. These stages merit some explanation.
Data becomes information through a process of filtering, an exclusion process.
In mathematics, this is set theory, where the concepts of 'belonging' and representation open a can of worms. Gregory Bateson called information 'any difference that makes a difference,' and he was quite correct. These are all functions of the decision-making process. The final stage is the evolution from knowledge to wisdom, a deeper comprehension of the concepts, systems, relationships, interactions, and integration. There is no large scale function, no part of the political economy providing value-add in the process.