Manuel Castells and the Informational Society

M. Castells: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: The Rise of the Network Society (Vol. I) (1996)

1. The Rise of the Network Society

• Castells draws a line between:

1.  the capitalist mode of production; and

2.  the informational mode of development

• the informational or network society remains a capitalistic society, but:
• the knowledge and information have become the motor of development
• 'information acting upon information'
• the informational society is about the restructuring of capitalism after the mid-1970’s
• While the industrial society was oriented towards maximizng output in the factories the informationalism is oriented toward higher levels of complexity in information processing
• Globalization: the strategies of big companies have become global
• This was based on the development of information technology

Factors behind the development of new information technologies:

1.  Macro-research programs and large markets developed by the state

2.  Decentralized innovation stimulated by culture of technological creativity

"The Information Technology (IT) paradigm", features:

1.  Information is the raw material

2.  The effects of new technologies are pervasive

3.  Networking logic

4.  Flexibility

5.  Convergence of specific technologies into a highly integrated system

Examples of how IT changes the society and culture:

2. The informational economy and space of flows

• the process of globalization: Capital required extreme mobility

• Deregulation of markets, new information technologies

• the importance of global competitiveness

• the possibilities for nation states to follow and independent course is seriously undermined by the forces of global economic logic

• The role of state is to provide resources and infrastructures for economic actors

Some limits to globalization:

• there are certain regulations for capital flows, altough they are increasingly loosening

• labour is not truly global; the mobility of labour is undermined by immigration controls and xenophobia

• multinational corporations keep their strategic command centers in their historically defined "home" nations

• the actual operations and structure of global economy concern only segments of economic structures, countries and regions and their position is in a constant state of change

-> uncertainty, instability

The centrality of flows

• the informational society is constructed around flows: flows of capital, information, technology, organizational interaction, images, sounds and symbols

• from space of places to space of flows

There are three layers that constitute the spaces of flows as the key feature of the network society:

1.  The material support of the space of flows is constituted by a circuit of electronic impulses (flow of information)

2.  Space of flows is constituted by its nodes and hubs

3.  The power by dominant and managerial elites in the organization of spaces of flows

3. The social consequences of "the rise of the network society"

• the transformation of work and employment in the informational societies

• the new division of labour:

a) The networkers, the networked and the switched-off workers

b) The deciders, the participants and the executants

According to Castells there are three kinds of class positions in the network societies:

1.  The networkers (the informational elites)

2.  The flextimers

3.  The jobless

• this division replaces the class divisions of earlier societies

• new division is found globally in core as well as in periphery

• increasingly marked social disparities and exceedingly sharp class polarisations

4. The culture of "real virtuality"

• The importance of media: "we live in a media environment and most of our symbolic stimuli come from the media"

Trends in the media culture:

1.  Widespread social and cultural differentiation

2.  Increasing social stratification among the users

3.  Integration of all messages in a common cognitive pattern

4.  The multimedia capture within their domain most cultural expressions (human experience) in all their diversity

• The culture of "real virtuality": reality is virtually perceived