Information technology use and economic growth

Abstract Economic growth has been slow in the Information Age despite rapid progress in information and communication technology (ICT). The root cause, as pointed out in (David (1990, The American Economic Review, 80, 355–361), is that co-invention of useful applications lags behind invention of ICT. This paper asks why that lag has been so long, and why it has persisted through so much innovation. We look at the history of ICT from the perspective of enabled uses: what applications were enabled