THE NORTHWEST INFORMATION ECONOMY The Pacific Northwest is moving fronz a land-based econo1ny to an information-based econonzy DAVID LANSKY The Northwest was, and is, the last area of the country to be colonized by the European information culture. The great milestones of Northwest broadcast history-from Roosevelt's turn of the switch at Bonneville Dam in 1934 to the massive coverage of Mt. St. Helens in 1981-have involved the relationship between the people and the land. Even today, some of the most sophisticated computer systems in our region involve tracking natural resource indicators such as watershed levels and polar satellite images. Our information economy revolves around the land. We want to understand it, exploit it, and conserve it. The entire economy of our region has been based in natural resources, and our information economy continues to mirror that dependency. The Northwest's primary information sector includes businesses and organizations devoted to the processing and distribution of information: the postal service, the telephone utilities, computer service companies, market research firms, filmmakers, publishers, libraries, printers, ahd so on. Based on 1985 employment figures, close to 30% of all employed people in the Pacific Northwest work in these primary infor.mation industries, exactly the same rate as that found for California in a recent study. Information processing and dissemination is certainly a big business in the Northwest, with an enormous impact on how we live and work. For the most part, our information industries are local or David Lansky is Acting Director of CUE. This article is a revision of an article originally appearing in The Northwest Information Directory,© 1986 by Fred Mei;er Charitable Trust Page 4 RAIN Fall/Winter 1986 regional service companies-the cable franchises, newspaper publishers, communications companies. Washington State has witnessed a boom in software development companies, and is the home of Microsoft, Inc., a $150 million business. The Puget Sound area also houses the Boeing Computer Services company, a $10 million Boeing Aircraft spinoff which supports hundreds of clients nationwide with computer timesharing services. In Oregon, the "Silicon Forest" shelters a dozen computer hardware manufacturers of varying sizes, including Tektronix's 20,000 employees and Floating Point's $50 million array processor business. In recent years, both Washington and Oregon have made major commitments to attracting foreign information industry companies, and large Japanese firms such as Sharp, Hitachi, and Fujitsu have located in the Northwest. As Table 1 shows, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho have also developed domestic information-production businesses. With the exception of these few-but important -computer harqware and software producers, the Northwest's primary information economy is transaction-based. The region claims few prominent publishers, nationally recognized research centers (except for Washington's Battelle Institute), or database developers. Most of our primary information industry is concerned with servicing a local economy which continues to depend on natural resource processing for much of its sustenance. As elsewhere in the industrialized world, all economic activity in the Pacific Northwest depends increasingly on access to timely, accurate, and relevant information. Government planners, bank managers, hospital administrators, assembly line supervisors, and
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