The Information Age

8. February 2009 | From Tino Kressner | Category: Book Review

With the new communication technologies, according to Manuel Castells, a revolution initiated a new era of mankind, whose physical, but especially mental Limitless possibilities can be extended. Information is a crucial raw material from which all social processes and social organizations are formed. As a new challenge is the production and management of knowledge, information and technology for the organization of the whole social structure.

"If the information for our time is what the electricity in the industrial age, so can the Internet with both the power grid or the electric motor to compare, because it has the ability, the power of information across the entire range of human activity to spread. And just as the new technologies of energy production and distribution of the factory and the large group as the organizational basis of industrial society made possible, the Internet is the technological basis for the organizational form of the information age: the network ".

The difference with previous revolutions, the erdumspannende dimension. It affects the whole population and according to Castells, the formation of a world society.

According to Castells, the information society a society structure in which the sources of economic productivity, cultural hegemony and political-military power depend on the collection, storage, processing and production of information and knowledge.

The resulting new of society is the network, which Castells as a kind of space of flows understands. In this room, communicate or interact with individuals, either present or absent. The network itself is divided into three levels. The first level is determined by the electronic switching circuit formed. This limits the space, similar as the railroad tracks in the industrial era did. The second level is characterized by nodes and centers of technological infrastructure fixed. The properties of these nodes are depending on the function of the network varies. The third level concerns the spatial organization of those who control these nodes.

The transition from industrialism to informationalism is given as an information technology revolution are described. It requires a feedback cycle of application of knowledge to knowledge in motion, as the main source of productivity.

Information about Manuel Castells

For whom interesting

The book "The Rise of the Network Society" is aimed at sociologists, political scientists, historians, media and communication scientists and cultural scientists. It provides a comprehensive overview of the company network or the Internet Society and is responsible for all those interesting, looking at the backgrounds of the successful development of the Internet and the Web 2.0 wish to employ.

Causes for the transition of industrial society to information society

Two parallel developments are responsible for the information technology revolution decisively: Information and communication technology. Since the 70s accelerated this trend increasing. The convergence of information and communication technology has allowed the emergence of the Internet.

The transition to the Information Society was sponsored by:

The information technology revolution, consisting of the worldwide dissemination of the computer, telecommunications and the Internet.
The crisis of industrial capitalism and the dissolution of national statism, to decentralized forms of business and politics have led.
Demand of the economy globalization and flexible management.
The efflorescence of social movements which oppose the existing dominance of global systems to defend themselves.
Demand of the society on individual freedom, open communication.
Many communication-to-many communication is possible through new.
With the advent of electronic technology, knowledge and information about "productive forces", giving an "informational capitalism" created.

Accelerate this transition takes place through the communication of new applications and changes in real time. Similarly, the feedback from the consumer communicates in real time. The Internet is every consumer at the same time producer.

Societal changes

The new economy: informationalism, globalization, networking
The new economy is informational, global and organized in networks. The ability to produce knowledge, to process and manage information determines the productivity and competitiveness of all economic units. The production, consumption and circulation at the global level. Productivity is determined by a global network of interaction between business networks created. "Information Eller capitalism" is not to state borders and bound regional markets. The actors are multinational companies and corporate networks that are beyond the political influence their global business.

In today's dynamic, no longer controlled world, the pace of technological change. Mass productions are too stiff and too costly. If the automatic production lines once and is then the product on the market, a competitor may have a better technology already implemented. The desire for individualisation in society and a dynamic market faster justify flexible production systems, specialized smaller companies that are in the realization of a product together. With a network can be interactively on the changes of the market response. The networking of small businesses to individual people are novel network companies (Interfirm networking) with no fixed structure, the project on time.

The Network Company
"[...] The only organization capable of nonprejudiced growth, or unguided learning is a network. All other topologies limit what can happen. [...] Indeed, the network is the least structured organization that can be said to have any structure at all [...] "

A network is flexible and has a quick adaptability. It consists of nodes and flexible connections. If a node that it can easily be replaced by another. They have no heart and are decentralized. Networks have expanded in all directions, they are spreading and "[...] are proving to vertically organized corporations and centralized bureaucracies in the competitive struggle, and in the capacity as a superior. Despite their advantages in terms of flexibility, however, had traditionally networks as opposed to centralized hierarchies a serious problem: They had considerable difficulty in the process functions to centralize resources on specific objectives to focus and a certain task if the network once a certain size and complexity exceeded. Unlike biological evolution in the networks were during most of human history in its capacity as tools behind centrally defined organizations, because they were able to identify resources for centrally defined objectives to mobilize, with streamlined tasks, vertical chains of command and monitoring have been carried out. "With the introduction of computerized information and communication technologies, especially the Internet, the coordination of tasks and handling the performance of complex tasks possible. According to Castells, is working with a decentralized and global, horizontal communication is a "[...] superior organizational form for human action [...]" provided.

Transformation of Labor and Employment
Among the characteristics of the new labor market include: part-time, temporary employment, independence, joint profiles, free staff, informal and semi-formal work arrangements and an unconditional willingness to occupational mobility. The flexible work is the predominant form of acquisition.

The culture of real virtuality
For Castells, the "spirit of informationalism", as he inspired by Max Weber formulated the culture of "creative destruction" to the speed of light, electronic circuits faster, their signals. With the TV and multimedia applications, creates a "culture of real virtuality." All realities are represented by icons, so that virtually every reality is perceived.

Space of flows
The technical and organizational ability, the simultaneity of social practices without geographical proximity to ensure that it places into a global "space of flows" dissolve. Castells describes as flows of capital flows, information, technology, organizational interaction, images, sounds, icons, ... Within a network there are no distances. The offer and the demand is global. Networking companies over cities and country boundaries. (Boundaries) "Places do not disappear, but their logic and their meaning become absorbed in the network." Significance for the spatial structure in the information age are "creative milieus". These form clusters of various types of qualified employees and subcontractors, the technical innovation ahead.

Timeless Time
Leibniz time after the order of succession of things. The measurable, linear clock-time is in the "space of flows" dissolved. The sequence of events is connected to the Internet in disarray, and simultaneously made. It creates a society in everlasting volatility. Castells describes this as the "timeless time".

The state
With the Internet borders are dissolved. People communicate project-related or interest on state boundaries. The nation does not disappear, it transforms itself to the network state. The network state is "[...] a state composed of a complex network of power sharing and decision making processes, negotiated between international, multinational, national, regional, local and non-state forms of political organization exists."

Vs. centralization. Decentralization

With the Internet, centralized information and offers the possibility of decentralized reception and processing of these. People work from anywhere (locally) together on a project (central).

Personalization vs.. Entindividualisierung (networking)

With the release of hierarchies gets the individual more self-responsibility. With the increasing individualization ends the mass audience and with it the mass media. Through new interactive networks are the media to transmit messages of highly differentiated dar.
By extending the information space using new information technologies more and more like humans. People previously imagined a subgroup, have now come together via the Internet masses. The networking of individual minorities can also be viewed as Entindividualisierung. Social minorities such as gays or feminists form virtual communities across borders.
At the same time, this is a danger to the crime. Small local, ethnic crime groups network and can grow to global networks.

Identity in the network society

Castells defines identity as the process of constructing meaning on the basis of a cultural property or set of related cultural properties, the following other sources before determination of the importance of priority will be.

He distinguishes three types of identity: legitimizing identity, resistance, identity and the identity project, where he latter as the main source of social change in the network society. The legitimizing identity has its source in a dominant institutions and is intended to streamline and extend the prevailing structures. The resistance identity is formed out of a sense of alienation and often forms the basis for the project identity.

In the network society is the more personal identity is defined as the ratio to the network as a family, state, tribe, ... were predominantly ethnic communities that are characterized by the same linguistic and cultural characteristics have defined. The identity was determined by the religion, the country and the family in which one is born. In the formation of global networks of interest and project groups, through a common sense donated and preserved. The personal identity is defined through their projects.

At this globalized network society traditionsbehaftete visible counter movements such as Islamic fundamentalism.

Digital Divide and the emergence of a "Fourth World"

Where the exchange of data, knowledge and information to increase productivity it is a social fracture line. Human tasks can increasingly intelligent robots will be automated. As for industrialization as a great machine to replace hundreds of people, send in the information technology revolution intelligent machines to people without the necessary education to unemployment.
The Internet is increasingly becoming a key medium for the economy, education and social interaction. As with the television media calls it a the right information to find out to know where and how must be sought.

Manuel Castells speaks of a "Digital Divide" as a new form of racial inequality. What in the industrial era, the exploitation of the weak was, today is the exclusion of people without the necessary education or technical conditions. People without access to the network, the "Fourth World".

Three Challenges for the Information Age

Manuel Castells calls the information age for the three challenges with which the Digital Divide can be minimized:

Global and free communication for all
Prevention of exclusion from the networks
Dissemination of information and expertise of the production of knowledge

Conclusions and critique

Manuel Castells same models that of a visionary. As one of the first he has the development of the Internet into a philosophical cloak wrapped. In the book "Rise of the Network Society," which in America was published in 1996, even then he describes today's Enterprise 2.0 approaches in which hierarchically-managed companies in horizontal networks are changed. Castells shows how the network society (Web 2.0-) mechanisms for the democratic opinion formation and political decision-making opens up new possibilities. He cautions, however at the same time before a Americanization of European politics.

Castells It remains to answer the question whether the Internet promotes the development of new communities. After over 400 pages, he comes to the conclusion that people on the screen while a parallel life may lead, but by their physical, I was bound.

Conclusively Castells describes the processes of communication on the Internet. With the Internet medium will be no mass culture created, but it will inevitably lead to mass audiences in the individual, often isolated communications separated worlds. This approach is today through the myriad different social networks and groups that are even clearer. Castells sees this trend as a global fabric of individualized, interactive communication, which spontanten, informal information exchange permits.

He has taken the trouble to analyze everything, where the networking logic already concrete shape, as the stock markets, street gangs, drug cartels, television systems and multimedia companies.

The conclusion draws itself Castells until the end of his third volume, which for readers of the first volume is absolutely unfavorable. Something you can forgive this Castells, since he already announced in the preface and the three volumes from the beginning not as separate publications were planned.

The first volume relates to networks, the second refers to the identity and the ego and the third to the historical transformations in the last section of the 20th Century as a result of the first two volumes.

The amount of detail difficult to read much. The monumentality of the whole, these three volumes of approximately 1,500 pages of "Das Kapital" look good. But perhaps it is also precisely why the subsequent work "The Internet Galaxy" again arose a plant, what the real core development - the Internet - and focused on just under 300 pages summarizing. At the end of the reading remains the feeling that you have probably just a historically significant work has read: Because we already live in the network society and we can no longer shirk this. All the more interesting it is the causes and consequences to understand.

Sources and further information
Subjects
Castells, Manuel: The Internet Galaxy: Internet, business and society. Vs Verlag, 2005
Castells, Manuel: The Internet Galaxy. Reflections on Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford University Press, 2001
Castells, Manuel: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, Volume 1: The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1996
Castells, Manuel: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, Volume 1: The Rise of the Network Society. Second Edition, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 2000
Castells, Manuel: The Information Age, Volume 2: The Power of Identity. Leske und Budrich Publishers, Leverkusen, 2002
Internet
Home Manuel Castells: www.manuelcastells.info
Homepage at USC Annenberg: annenberg.usc.edu / Faculty / Communication / CastellsM.aspx
Homepage at University of California, Berkeley: sociology.berkeley.edu / faculty / castells /
The Rise of the Network Society Manuel Castells Globalisierungsepos:
viadrina.euv-frankfurt-o.de / ~ sk/SS99/global/castells_the.html
Review of Manuel Castells: The Internet Galaxy. Www.socialnet.de/rezensionen/2825.php
Review of Manuel Castells: The Information Age: www.perlentaucher.de/buch/8439.html
Mielke, Thomas: network society between analysis and design of social productivity: home.arcor.de / tmielke / nwgespr.html
Telepolis (Fehrenbach, Gabriel): The Theory of euphoria, 9.03.2002:
www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/11/11996/1.html
Telepolis (Castells, Manuel): European Cities, the Information Society and the Global Economy: www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/6/6020/1.html
Zeit.de (Heath Brink, Ludger): As the information we confused, 30.04.2003:
www.zeit.de/2003/19/ST-Castells
3.3 Journal articles
DER SPIEGEL: The World in the 21st Century: SURVIVAL IN THE NETWORK. Page 148, 2000