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This book is an account of the economic and social dynamics
of the new age of information. Based on research in the USA, Asia, Latin America,
and Europe, it aims to formulate a systematic theory of the information society
which takes account of the fundamental effects of information technology on the
contemporary world. The global economy is now characterized
by the almost instantaneous flow and exchange of information, capital and cultural
communication. These flows order and condition both consumption and production.
The networks themselves reflect and create distinctive cultures. Both they and
the traffic they carry are largely outside national regulation. Our dependence
on the new modes of informational flow gives enormous power to those in a position
to control them to control us. The main political arena is now the media, and
the media are not politically answerable. Manuel Castells
describes the accelerating pace of innovation and application. He examines the
processes of globalization that have marginalized and now threaten to make redundant
whole countries and peoples excluded from informational networks. He investigates
the culture, institutions and organizations of the network enterprise and the
concomitant transformation of work and employment. He shows that in the advanced
economies production is now concentrated on an educated section of the population
aged between 25 and 40: many economies can do without a third or more of their
people. He suggests that the effect of this accelerating trend may not be mass
unemployment but the extreme flexibilization of work and individualization of
labor, and, in consequence, a highly segmented social structure. The
author concludes by examining the effects and implications of technological change
on media culture ("the culture of real virtuality"), on urban life,
global politics, and the nature of time. Written by one
of the world's leading social thinkers and researchers, The Rise of the Network
Society is the first of three linked investigations of contemporary global,
economic, political and social change. It is a work of outstanding penetration,
originality, and importance. Manuel Castells, born
in Spain in 1942, is Professor of Sociology and of Planning, and Chair of the
Center for Western European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley,
where he was appointed in 1979. He has been professor of sociology at the Universities
of Paris and Madrid, and a visiting professor at the Universities of Chile, Montreal,
Campinas, Caracas, Mexico, Geneva, Copenhagen, Wisconsin-Madison, Boston, Southern
California, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Amsterdam, Moscow, and Hitotsubashi.
He has published 17 books, including The City and the Grassroots, winner
of the 1983 C. Wright Mills Award, and The Informational City. He was appointed
in 1995/96 to the European Commission's High Level Expert Group on the Information
Society. He is a member of the European Academy. |
