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Access is a catalytic process that enables interactions, contacts and exchanges among people, businesses and nations. An analytical framework to define the drivers and benefits of Access and to quantify the impact of Access on economic growth and personal well-being was created in 2006 by the Center for Science, Technology, and Economic Development at SRI International (formerly known as the Stanford Research Institute) in its study, “The Power of Access” (also titled, “How Greater Access Is Changing The World: A Landmark Study on the Relevance of Access to People, Businesses and Nations”). SRI International, based in the United States is one of the world's largest contract Research institutes. As outlined in the study, the Access framework is comprised of the Access Model, which expresses the function of Access as an econometric equation; the “Access Cycle”; and the "Access Index," which ranks 75 nations based on their performance in 22 metrics, including transportation infrastructure; telecommunications networks; trade policy; and news, media and information services.

SRI’s original study and subsequent research was sponsored by FedEx Corporation, which has incorporated the Access concept into its corporate thought leadership. FedEx Corporation ( is a Logistics services company based in the United States. In its broadest implications, Access is a framework that draws together and builds upon ideas found in the writings of varied theorists and commentators, including Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat and the work of Marshall McLuhan. Thomas Lauren Friedman (born July 20, 1953) is an American journalist columnist and author The World Is Flat A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is an international bestselling book by Thomas L

The study provides governments, businesses and investors with a diagnostic picture of the types of infrastructure available or needed to increase Access.

Contents

SRI’s Thesis

SRI released its first report on Access on May 23, 2006 in Washington D. C. The Executive Overview of the report describes Access as “a catalytic process that enables interactions, contacts, and exchanges among people, businesses, and nations. While markets represent platforms for transactions to take place, access provides the means for markets to operate. Access indicates ability – the ability to accomplish a broad range of actions, from attaining physical presence to communicating, and from acquiring to using. ”

Advances in transportation and communication technologies, beginning with the steam-powered locomotive (1804) and telegraph (1835) and continuing through advanced logistics (1970s), overnight delivery (1973) and the Internet (1990s), have led to dramatic increases in Access. Logistics is the management of the flow of Goods, Information and other resources including Energy and people between the point of origin and the point The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks The report’s authors write that “this march toward continuously greater access is accelerating. ” Furthermore, they assert that increases in access inevitably lead to economic expansion, higher levels of personal fulfillment and satisfaction, and, most importantly, a growing hunger for connections and openness. The report explicitly declares that “Access is critical for economic survival and growth,” while implying that Access inevitably promotes openness and transparency if not held back by social or political factors.

The Access Function

Access can be written as a formula, in which the independent variables of time (T), space (S) and information (I) collectively establish the degree of Access (A):

f (T, S, I) = A Greater Access is generated by reducing the space between the entity seeking Access and the thing (physical or informational) being sought; by reducing the time needed for its transport or communication; and by increasing the amount of information available about it.

Access also conveys benefits through these variables: Greater Access increases available time by reducing the time needed for transport or communication; it increases the amount of usable space in which individuals or corporations can function (e. g. , from local to global markets); and greater access to information aids in decision making by reducing the level of uncertainty.

Graphed over time, the amount of Access in the world has increased exponentially since the Industrial Revolution (the age of steamships and railroads) and the communications revolution of the 19th century (i. The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture manufacturing and transportation had a profound effect on the A steamboat or steamship, sometimes called a steamer, is a ship in which the primary method of propulsion is steam power, typically driving a Propeller "Railroad" and "Railway" both redirect here For other uses see Railroad (disambiguation. e. the telegraph, telephone, undersea cables, and radio). Basic principle A traditional landline telephone system also known as "plain old telephone service" (POTS, commonly handles both signaling and audio information A submarine communications cable is a cable laid beneath the sea to carry Telecommunications between countries Radio is the transmission of signals by Modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible Light. “Individuals once had access only to those things within walking distance,” the report states. “As a result, their choices and capabilities were severely constrained by lack of access. A major reason for the emergence and growth of villages and towns was the desire of inhabitants to gain access – access to others, to security, to specialized trades, and to other factors associated with human commerce and interaction. ”

But, “as transportation systems, technologies, and communications capabilities evolved and networks expanded in breadth and sophistication, degrees of access continuously increased. Technology is a broad concept that deals with a Species ' usage and knowledge of Tools and Crafts and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt These changes led to the creation of advanced civilizations and, eventually, to the integration of all societies into a global society. A Civilization is a society in which large numbers of people share a variety of common elements A society is a Population of Humans characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive Culture and Institutions ” In this respect, Access would seem to be a beneficiary of the Network Effect originally expressed as Metcalfe’s Law, which states that the value of a network increases exponentially with each new member.

The Impact and Beneficiaries of Access

SRI created another econometric equation to measure the impacts of Access as a function of participation by, choice available to, and improvement affecting human society. Econometrics is concerned with the tasks of developing and applying Quantitative or Statistical methods to the study and elucidation of economic principles The beneficiaries of Access, as defined by the report’s authors, are

The report outlines the benefits themselves as:

Using these variables, SRI then rendered the impact of Access as another equation, in which P stands for level of participation, C stands for amount of choice available, and _ stands for improvement in the status quo:

Impact = f people (P, C, _) + f businesses (P, C, _) + f nations (P, C, _)

The cumulative impact and benefits of Access is the sum of benefits delivered to each group. Those benefits include greater personal choice and empowerment; broader market reach, growth and competitiveness, innovation, a stronger supply chain; and greater national and international cohesion. Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, Social or economic strength of individuals and communities The term innovation means a new way of doing something It may refer to incremental radical and revolutionary changes in thinking products processes or organisations A supply chain or logistics network is the system of organizations people technology activities information and resources involved in moving a product or service from

“While every generation has witnessed improvement in access,” the report states, “and future generations are expected to have even more access than we have now, people today benefit from a unique level of access to physical things, to information, and to each other. The expectations, behavior, and power of access are exerting profound changes in the ways in which people, businesses, communities, and nations operate, giving rise to both considerable challenges and major opportunities. ”

The Access Index

To quantify the degrees and impacts of Access, SRI created the Access Index, a list of 75 nations ranked from the most accessible to the least, using a scoring system devised by SRI researchers and drawing upon publicly available information from sources including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the countries themselves. The World Bank is an internationally supported Bank that provides financial and technical assistance to developing countries for development programs (e The International Monetary Fund ( IMF) is an International organization that oversees the Global financial system by following the Macroeconomic

In order to analyze and measure the potential impact of Access on nations, the research team selected 22 criteria, which they grouped under four headings:

Drawing upon empirical data that fell under each of these headings, nations were awarded a total point score and ranking for each nation reflecting their cumulative degrees of Access. The overall ranking is the one published here.

Three complementary indexes measure the opportunities Access provides to people, businesses and nations overall. These three “opportunity” indexes gauge the extent to which different groups of potential Access beneficiaries are able to leverage and use Access to improve their current condition and future prospects. Each of these categories was then broken down again into four sub-categories in which each nation was also ranked. (SRI notes: “In this series of reports, the terms ‘nation’ and ‘country’ are used to describe economies that are generally recognized by international organizations as operating autonomously. As used in these reports, neither term is meant to imply sovereignty or independence of a particular economy included in the reports. ”)

For example, while Hong Kong tops the Access Index overall, it did not finish first in any of the three sub-categories. Hong Kong ( officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is a territory located on China 's south coast on the Pearl River Delta, and borders Those were:

The report’s authors correlated these rankings with each nation’s economic performance data and found that:

Other nations worth noting include:

The Access Cycle

The SRI report expresses Access generation and expansion as a perpetual cycle.

As time, space and information converge toward perfect Access, people, businesses and nations derive increasing benefits, including greater participation and choice, and new levels of opportunities for participants.

The resulting growth, fulfillment and higher expectations heighten demand for greater Access, which in turn stimulate the investment and innovations that further increase Access.

Access, The “Flat World” and Related Theories

Many of the premises and conclusions of the Access framework encompass and build on the ideas of thinkers as varied as Marshall McLuhan and Thomas L. Friedman. Ranging far beyond the initial report and study, both SRI and FedEx have subsequently commissioned further research and interviews buttressing this concept, including those collected in an annual business publication, Access Review.

In its expanded form, Access incorporates a number of both competing and complementary theories that have attempted to explain globalization and information-based, post-industrial economies. The word theory has many distinct meanings in different fields of Knowledge, depending on their methodologies and the context of discussion. Globalization (or globalisation) in its literal sense is the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones A post-industrial society is a society in which an economic transition has occurred from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy, a diffusion Some of these theories include:

See also

External Sources

SRI Access Research

Center for Science, Technology, and Economic Development

Access Review

© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
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