value-added—but this activity is not recorded in the official statistics. Indeed, there are many activities where individuals act as “prosumers” (a hybrid role as a consumer who is also active as a producer) in the digital world: there is both an element of consump- tion and an element of production in certain activities and the problem is that the production activities of million of users are not covered by the official statistics so that the economic relevance of information & communication technology and the internet, respectively, are not fully understood. Moreover, with increasing online learning—part of which is free online learning—modern digital societies create new platforms of digital value-added and human capital formation, but again, there is very scant statistical coverage of such activities and knowledge about successful learning activities in the field of Massive Open Online Courses is not generally available. In Germany, the Hasso Plattner Institute—a computer science institution at the University of Potsdam—has offered five online courses; roughly 50 000 individuals signed up for these courses,
17 % successfully passed the relevant examinations (HPI, 2013). Here we see important new digital dynamics. If one assumes that a certain percentage of the online time of private households represents value-added the official GDP figures have to be revised upwards; the monetization of one hour of online value-added can use the opportunity cost of time, namely the average GDP per hour (from the official statistics).