The Rise of the Network Society (Castells, Manuel. Information Age, 1.)

Castells obviously has an understanding of all the disparate theoretical areas that would be encompassed by such a huge endeavor. As the book progresses, Castells is not afraid to move from areas like astrophysics to rural sociology to corporate architecture to programming language to everything else you could think of, often in successive paragraphs. But when describing everything, Castells eventually reaches conclusions on nothing. Bringing together disparate realms of knowledge is one thing, but reaching insights that make sense is much more difficult.

That all makes this book extremely tiresome for the reader. In that exasperating theory-of-everything fashion, Castells can't stop piling on new terminology like real virtuality, technopoles, or milieux of information (terms created by himself or others) that merely illustrate the smashing together of ideas, rather than synthesis. And whenever it's time for an awe-inspiring insight, Castells can only come up with supposedly deep (usually in italics for significance) pontifications like "space is crystallized time" or "a place is a locale whose form...[is] self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity." These are indications of Castells' writing style - never-ending collections of disconnected pieces of data, topped off by windy pronouncements. After so many intensive build-ups, Castells can come up with little for the reader to really chew on.

And get this man an editor, please. Extremely long paragraphs, some more than two entire pages long, illustrate a real lack of control in the writing department. Castells also has the habit of endlessly qualifying his ideas by explaining what he's NOT going to talk about and why he decided to cover what he IS talking about, to the extent that he almost forgets to make his points at all (see the early portions of chapter 4 for a good example of this). And to think that this 500+ page monster is merely the first book in a trilogy on this subject. Castells deserves credit as a polymath with huge interests and ideas. But he is sorely lacking in focus, and effective writing skills. [~doomsdayer520~]


The Rise of Network Society   January 10, 2004
 20 out of 23 found this review helpful

The Rise of Network Society brings up many important issues regarding globalization and what Manuel Castells calls the network society. He argues that the technological revolution that began in the late 70s in Silicon Valley has had a profound impact on all aspects of society. The changes, he argues are most apparent in the new relationships between the economy, state and society that have been formed. He suggests that an increase in the flexibility of management, a decentralization of production and an increased reliance on networking has caused many of the immediate changes taking place. Castells suggests that it is through the decline in the labor movement and the devaluing of the laborers that capital has become an increasingly powerful network. This, he suggests has caused networks such as labor, criminal or mafia groups, and financial markets to be realized on a global rather than local scale. By looking at how new relationships and identities are being conceived of in what he calls the informational age, Castells is able to theorize about the ways in which technology and information have will continue to transform society.
Castells suggests that as distances between places become shorter, time will also be changed. Technologies such as the internet, television and computers have decreased the space between different parts of the world to such an extent that we now have the capabilities to process information in real time. The fragmentation of the local community has led to an increasing reliance on global community organizations or the "net". People can now keep in touch with friends, date and divorce over the internet. This has caused for the increased attention on identity issues, since as Castells suggests, identity has and will continue to be an, or the fundamental aspect of meaning. Identity has been transformed from something you do to what you believe you are. Ideas about the self have become reliant upon global media and technological networks, rather than family and community. The increased reliance on social networks for identity purposes has caused identity to be vulnerable to network shutdowns. With the growing level networks and nodes for transmitting information and imaginations, people are beginning to claim increasingly specific identities that are difficult to share with others, which is sometimes related to the resurgence of xenophobia.
According to Castells, the current social changes that are taking place are due to the technological and informational transformations. Although he plainly negates technological determinism, it seems he infers something similar. He suggests that the information technology revolution that began in the late 20th century is what reshaped capitalism into what he calls "informational capitalism". Informationalism is what he believes has caused the new technological and material basis of the economy and thusly society. He distinguishes between capitalist restructuring and the rise of informationalism, but insures that they are inseparably related.
Castells' network society is based on the assumption that "development" is determined by productivity and productivity is determined by the number of consumable goods that are created with labor and matter. Since technology is what allows for matter and labor to produce consumable goods and add to the growth and development of a region, technology becomes the determining factor of a regions ability to "progress". The more technology a region is able to produce, the increased quantity and quality of products they will be able to manufacture, and the more surplus they will inherit.
Through the globalization of the production and consumption of goods, the energies going into the process have become decentralized and fragmented. This is what Castells suggests is a major factor in the uneven development of differing regions. Since productivity and development depend on symbolic communication, information processing and a technological skill, information and technology become the crucial factors in a developed society. From this, he is able to suggest that the new mode of development is informational. Rather than conforming post-industrialism as a way to describe the current period, Castells argues for what he calls informationalism. He suggests rather than being concerned with economic growth or marketing output as the industrialism was, the informationalism era is primarily concerned with technological development. Increased technological development is clearly expected to take place via increased knowledge.
Castells argues that the government or state is one of the primary motivators of technological progress. He uses Russia as an example of how stasis can cause a lack of technological development and therefore a lack of overall development. He suggests that during the 1980s, capitalism went through a restructuring that produced what he calls, "informational capitalism". He shows how the new capitalism has moved beyond the boundaries and space and time to incorporate a global economy based on technology and knowledge. Castells shows how The Rise of Network Society is based technological innovations and knowledge.


Is information technology the culprit?   February 18, 2003
 2 out of 11 found this review helpful

Many of the observations Prof. Catells made are valid, however the connection between information technology and the social problems are not very strong. The network states, global criminal society, wealth disparity, etc. are more or less the byproduct of globalization.

Yes, information technology accelerates the rate of globalization. But would those social problems exist without information technology? Mostly likely yes. These phenomena are not new, they predate the advent of the Information Age (the World Wide Web and mass adoption of internet is a post-1990 phenomenon). Multinatioal organizations (or globalization) have been around for many decades, same goes for the North-South polical economic paradigm. So, attributing all these social problems to the Information Age (at least that is the impression I got out of it) is a jump and may not be an accurate representation. Information capitalism is just another term for globalization.

Nonetheless, his trilogy does demonstrate the acute problem of a global digital divide, and he suggested some possible solutions in some of his other books.


Network society: Informationalization and globalization   June 11, 2002
 10 out of 15 found this review helpful

This is the first volume of Manuel Castells Informational Age. The trilogy of Informational Age is the de facto classic in the sociology of information. This volume focuses mainly on the economic feature of the network society: informationalization and globalization; the transformation of the enterprise; the flexibility in labor market; interactive media; transformation of space (or, in Giddens term, time-space distanciation).
You might ask whats the relevance to sociology? Naturally, its related to question, whats the substance of sociology of information? Our day to day life cant clearly be distinguished from the economic affairs. Almost all the resources, whether they are material or human, appear as commodity or service which are tradable. Even the culture is organized on the market. Our identity and daily time table are deeply molded by our spot in the labor market. And that, the overall dynamics of social change comes from the economy. The epochal trends, such as globalization, informationalization, have been driven mainly by the economic needs. So the network society cant be grasped without the economics. But you should not conclude that the economics is the whole story. The market alone cant sustained even itself, not to say the whole society. The economy is embedded in the society. The economy and the society are intertwined with each other, but not determined by one another. So their relation could be called as the interaction. But when it comes to IT, the things are more complicated. IT cant act by in itself. IT is the resource to be mobilized by bodily actor. IT represents the epochal change in the environment. IT is not the variable in itself. Therefore we could say that the sociology of information is about the interaction between IT, economy and society. The argument of the field is like this: our activities are increasingly organized around networks. Networks have existed throughout the human history. But IT offers unprecedently elevated material basis. It allows the network pervasively to expand throughout the entire society and the globe. Over decades, we have observed sea change related to IT in economy, politics, and society. Those shifts are the object of the sociology of information.
Castells trilogy is about that sea change. As I said above, the first volume focuses on economic features. But Castells work has some peculiar cast. Castells characterizing informational society as network society makes the globalization be coalesced with informationalization. For this reason, some commentators classify Castells as a theorist of globalization. In fact, this and the second volume of the trilogy could be read as great illustration of globalization. It seems that Castells assumes that informationalization could be distinguished from globalization only on the analytical rationale. So he characterizes informational age as the network society. The term could be applied to both trends.
Before closing the review, I should warn you that if you expect the firm theoretical founding, you should read first Castells Information City, as I mentioned in the review of the authors another book, The Internet Galaxy. For example, Castells coined the term of the mode of development to periodize the informational age. Its not a new mode of production like the capitalism, but a new mode of development which is different from industrialism or Fordism. But anywhere is the trilogy, you cant find such a theorizing. Without that kind of founding, the trilogy cant avoid being read as interesting but bulky sketching out the current affairs.