Academic literature on the topic 'Castells, Manuel – Information age'

Abstract The present article deals with one of the most elaborated theories of information society, proposed by Manuel Castells. Castells defines the present social landscape as the Information Age, in which human societies perform their activities in a new technological paradigm and argues that this landscape was brought about by the revolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) at the second half of the 20th century. I argue that Castells first and foremost theorizes these new ICT (in the vein of media theorist Marshall Mc-Luhan) and discerns their three main features – network logic, timeless time and space of flows which are visible only in the interaction of media and society. Therefore, Castells’ ICT / media theory serves as a kind of methodological framework for his theory of the information society.

The article reviews Manuel Castells widely considered work The Information Age. lt is criticized as backing off from Castells' earlier urban social and political critique, while retreating his forrner Marxist analysis from any radical political content, both analytically and in its prescription. Instead Castells now moves forward enthusiastically into the description of a hi-tech society he sees as the overwhelming event of the present period, conflated with a loosely defined discussion of globalization. lt ends up, Marcuse argues, not simply in a depoliticized but an anti-political analysis of urban conditions, and thus contributes to an effectively conservative posture on relevant social urban issues and implicitly supports the superficial social democratic „Third Way" rhetoric now dominant in governing circles in England, Germany, and other countries.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2003.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is an interpretation of the New Partnership for Africa's Development paradigm as explained in the policy document released in October 2001, in terms of Manuel CasteIls ' theory of the Network Society. This research is simply structured into three sections: an explanation and criticisms of NEPAD, an explanation of CasteIls ' theory, and a synopsis of correlations between the two. The NEPAD is a development paradigm aimed at the socio-economic development of the African continent. It is envisioned to be a partnership between the developed world and African leadership to lift the continent from the depths of poverty, corruption and exclusion, in which it now finds itself The document was created through a merger of the Omega Plan, the Millennium Action Plan and the ECA Compact. The main proponents of the initiative are Presidents Mbeki, Obasanjo and Bouteflika. Although NEPAD has been well received internationally, it has come under severe criticism from African civil society. Concern has been raised that NEPAD will serve to further consolidate the neo-patrimonial state and existing elite networks through providing the requested funding; in this context the argument for increased foreign direct investment is especially questioned. The authors of the document are especially criticised for excluding civil society from the drafting process. Due to this lack of consultation, it is argued that NEPAD does not reflect the true will of the African people. The neo-liberal undertones of the document, the recognition of the process of globalisation, and Africa's resulting marginalisation as well as the threat this poses for global security are further points of critique that are explored in this thesis. Manuel CasteIls provides an explanation of the new global economy in his theory of the Network Society. He argues that the dominant system today, is a result of the advances in information and communications technology (ICT) as well as the capitalist pursuit of profit. The new global economy is therefore not only the new dominant international economic system, but also the new historical reality. Against this backdrop, he proposes a Technological Marshall Plan which essentially is a call for massive technological investment into Africa to assist the continent to leap-frog the industrial age and connect with the new global economy. There are several points of correlation between NEPAD and Castells. Essentially NEPAD takes the worldview explained by Caste/Is as its point of departure. NEPAD then builds a development strategy in full coherence with the logic of the theory of the Network Society. NEPAD concurs with CasteIls on the role played by ICT in the process of globalisation. The disarticulation of space and time has led to an instantaneous, global expression of social and economic life, specifically in financial markets and the production process. The result is the inclusion of valuable people and assets into the global network, while the devalued are excluded. Both NEPAD and CasteIls argue that the current state of affairs is both morally wrong and economically and politically unstable. It is therefore, as both ague, in the interests of the developed world to engage in this new partnership. This thesis exposes fundamental correlations between the theory of the Network Society and the New Partnership for Africa's Development.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis is 'n interpretasie van die "New Partnership for Africa's Development" (NEPAD) paradigma, soos uiteengesit in die beleids dokument wat in Oktober 2001 uitgereik is, aan die hand van Manuel CasteIls se teorie van die Netwerk Samelewing. Die narvorsing is gestruktureerd in drie seksies: 'n verduideliking van NEPAD en die kritiek daarop, 'n verduideliking van CasteIls se teorie en 'n samevatting van die ooreenkomste tussen die twee. NEPAD is 'n ontwikkelings paradigma, gemik op die sosio-ekonomiese ontwikkeling van die Afrika kontinent. Dit word voorgehou as 'n venootskap tussen die ontwikkelde wêreld en Afrika leierskap, waarin die kontinent uit die situasie van armmoede, korrupsie en uitsluiting gehelp sal word. Die dokument is 'n kombinasie van die Omega Plan, die Millenium Aksie Plan (MAP) en die ECA Compact. Die hoof voorstanders van die initatief is Presidente Mbeki, Obassanjo en Bouteflika. Ten spyte van NEPAD se goeie ontvangs in die internationale samelewing, het die burgelike samelewing van Afrika dit nie sonder kritiek aanvaar nie. Kommer is uitgespreek dat NEPAD net die belange van die neo-patrimoniale staat en die bestaande elite netwerke sal konsolideer, deur die voorsiening van fondse. In die konteks word die vraag vir die vergrote buitelandse direkte investering veral bevraagteken. Die outeurs van die dokument word veral gekritiseer omdat hulle die burgerlike samelewing uitgesluit het uit die ontwerp van die konsep. Juis om die rede word daar geargumenteer dat NEPAD nie die ware wil van die mense van Afrika reflekteer nie. Die neo-liberale ondertone van die dokument, die erkenning van die proses van globalisasie en Afrika se marginalisasie wat gevolg het, as ook die bedreigings wat dit vir globale sekuriteit inhou, is verdere kritiek waarna gekyk sal word in die tese. Manuel CasteIls voorsien ons van 'n verduideliking van die nuwe globale ekonomie in sy teorie oor die Netwerk Samelewing. Hy argumenteer dat die dominante sisteem vandag voorspruit uit die ontwikkeling van informasie en kommunikasie tegnologie, as ook die kapitalistiese strewe na profyt. Die nuwe globale ekonomie is daarom nie net die nuwe dominante internationale ekonomiese sisteem nie, maar ook die nuwe historiese realiteit. Teen die agtergrond stel hy 'n Tegnologiese Marshall plan voor, wat essensiël 'n vraag vir substansiële tegnologiese investering in Afrika is, om die kontinent te help om die industriële tydperk te oorbrug en aan te sluit by die nuwe globale ekonomie. Daar is heelwat ooreenstemmings tussen NEPAD en CasteIls se teorie. Essensiël gebruik NEPAD CasteIls se wêreld beeld as vertrekpunt. Daarna bou NEPAD 'n ontwikkelings strategie in ooreenstemming met die logika van die teorie van die Netwerk Samelewing. NEPAD stem ooreen met CasteIls oor die rol wat IKTs speel in die proses van globalisasie. Die verplasing van spasie en tyd het gelei tot 'n skielike, globale uitdrukking van sosiale en ekonomiese lewe, spesifiek in finansiële markte en die produksieproses. Die gevolge is die insluiting van waardevolle mense en bates in die globale netwerk, terwyl dit die wat in waarde verminder uitstluit. Beide NEPAD en CasteIls argumenteer dat die huidige stand van sake beide moreel en ekonomies verkeerd is, as ook polities onstabiel. Dit is daarom, soos beide argumenteer, in die belang van die ontwikkelde lande om deel te neem aan hierdie vernootskap. Die tesis lig fundamentele ooreenkomste tussen die teorie van die Netwerk Samelewing en NEPADuit.

This chapter concentrates on a new perspective of ‘network society’. It offers a convincing case for the need for a global perspective on the social role of the Internet that will counter the potential for ethnocentric universal claims. The chapter then concentrates on research results in Internet Studies along with the three basic dimensions of the network society theory: time, space, and class. The Internet brings a flat world free of serious social problems. However, its promise as a decentralising and flattening force does not defy empirical examination. The types of ‘space of places’ are explained. The network labor and the new information and communications technology (ICT)-based working class highlight the class-making process and the rare chance of social change. The network society and its many insights and critiques about the contemporary world have remained important since the publication of Manuel Castells' triology in 1996–98.

"This volume brings together excellent scholarship and innovative policy discussion to demonstrate the essential role of higher education in the development of Africa and of the world at large. Based on deep knowledge of the university system in several African countries, this book will reshape the debate on development in the global information economy for years to come. It should be mandatory reading for academics, policy-makers and concerned citizens, in Africa and elsewhere." - Manuel Castells, Professor Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley

Contemporary economic and financial crisis is closely associated with social innovation. This process profoundly influences cyberspace's phenomena within our globalized communications paradigm. The correspondent debate on the articulation of crisis and innovation was reconceptualized by Marx, Nietzsche, Sombart, Schumpeter, David Harvey, etc. However, Manuel Castells elaborated an economic but also communicational explanation, which seems to us closer to the current crisis. Castells uses the notion of “space of flows” created and shared by globalized capitalism, across information and communication networks at cyberspace. The aim of this chapter is to reflect on “information and knowledge flows” in the present crisis conjuncture. For example, within Facebook content privacy is being debated and even engenders reluctance on user fidelity. In fact, social networks shouldn't deliver just information flows but also knowledge flows, which may become central means of production/consumption.

Search engines in general, and Google Scholar in particular, are co-producers of academic knowledge. They have a profound impact on the way knowledge is generated, transmitted, and distributed. This chapter first explores how Google Scholar works as a human-technological system in order to analyze the site's technology in combination with its inscribed usage and its actual use and users. The chapter then scrutinize the complex power relationships of digital networks with Google at its epicenter. Following Manuel Castells's (2009) proposal to “unwire” the construction of academic knowledge through the coded dynamics of search engines, the author examines the larger legal and political-economic implications of the platform's architecture and organized structure. Combining these two layers of analysis should inform an enriched type of information literacy.

Telework, or e-work as it is now more frequently called in Europe, means working outside one’s regular workplace, utilising sophisticated ICT. E-work is an alternative form of organising work, a “love child” of the information society. E-work manifests itself in numerous forms and modes. These various solutions emerge as an evolutionary process along with the technological developments, economic pressures, and changes in socio-cultural patterns such as new information-age lifestyles (e.g., Castells, 1996; Heinonen, 2000). E-work can be carried out at home, in a telework centre or at any other facility. It can also be done as a mobile mode on a train, bus or some other vehicle, as well as at airports, railways and bus stations-in other words on the move from one place to another. Such mobile e-work is primarily increasing, owing to technological and social developments. ICT has become smaller in size, more portable and more efficient.

This article explores key sets of drivers of formation of virtual communities in transition economies with particular reference to recent developments in Lithuania. Information and communication technologies (ICT) centered on the Internet are today widely recognized as one of the driving forces in the transition toward a new economic system. This transition has been especially challenging for European transition economies that are in the midst of a historic restructuring in anticipation of entry into the European Union. These countries are confronting a historic challenge of converging to the economic, technological, and organizational practices and standards of their EU counterparts. ICT applications in the form of e-business provide a unique opportunity for companies in these economies to accelerate learning processes for the facilitation of the adoption and implementation of competitive and sustainable e-business strategies. A key challenge in this respect is how to construct sustainable virtual communities that bridge civil society and organizations of the public sector in ways that support the transition toward an ICT-enabled economic system. The central thesis of this article is that virtual communities are a central component of an emerging economic system that is powered by ICT, is knowledge driven, is organized around electronic and organizational networks that generate knowledge, which transform industries and markets, and is dependent on dynamic and flexible regulatory public institutions. For ICT to diffuse throughout the whole economy in a way that supports virtual community formation, business firms, market conditions, and the culture and institutions of society need to undergo substantial change in a coordinated manner. It is the dynamic interdependence of these conditions that is the source of innovation and value creation in the new knowledge-driven economy. The agenda of research on the dynamics of adoption of new economy practices, innovation, and economic growth, as a result, needs to be expanded beyond the level of the firm. It needs to be built around the dynamic interrelationships between technological transformations, firms’ organizational and knowledge-creating capabilities, emerging market and industry structures, and public institutions (Castells, 2000). The article situates drivers of virtual community formation and the necessity of coordinating their development on three levels: the level of ICT infrastructure, regulatory environment, and market or civic attitudes toward ICT-enabled market transactions. On each of these levels the observations made are conditioned by the definitional parameters of “virtual community.” For the purposes of this article, a virtual community is understood as a set of interwoven relationships built upon shared interests, which satisfies members’ needs otherwise unattainable individually (Rafi, Fisher, Jaworski, & Cahill, 2002). It must be stressed that a virtual community thus defined refers not only to consumers but also businesses and organizational entities of the public sector.

In Castells’ (2001) definition of the information society, the term information refers to a specific form of social organization in which the generation, processing, and transmission of information become the basic source of productivity and power, due to the new technological conditions of a particular period of time. In this information- based society, people are amongst the most valuable and scarce assets of an organization (Murgolo- Poore, Pitt, & Ewing, 2002). It is recognized that members of an organization are of capital importance to its success, and employees are viewed as a key strategic group in obtaining organizational competitiveness (Grunig, 1992; Murgolo-Poore & Pitt, 2001). Employee communication plays an important role in improving organizational efficacy, performance, and competitiveness (Clampitt & Downs, 1993; Morley, Shockley-Zalabak, & Cesaria, 2002). It plays a role in the coordination of tasks, the circulation of information, and in helping employees to identify with organizational objectives and values (Hargie & Tourish, 2004). It even has potential benefits for external customer satisfaction (Piercy & Morgan, 1991; Fisk, Brown, & Bitner, 1993). This confirms the vital role that employee communication plays in organizational success (Murgolo-Poore & Pitt, 2001). Communication with and between employees is a central aspect of organizational life, and it has become even more important as organizations have entered the age of the knowledge economy (Murgolo-Poore et al., 2002). The information society, or knowledgebased era, brings challenges and opportunities to the employee communication process. New technologies are creating new channels of communication within organizations, and they are also modifying the old means of communication. Just as importantly, they are changing the way that organizational communication is now understood. This article presents the main impacts that new technologies (and, principally, the Internet) are having on employee communication, which can help us to understand the magnitude—and the implications—of the changes that have been produced in organizations by the evolution from traditional employee communication to e communication.

The artifacts developed over several ages, such as libraries, encyclopedias, and databases, show the cultural evolution of information systems. Compiling, organizing and visualizing information is a task carried out by mankind for thousands of years. The added difficulty in effectively communicating information in various sectors and services of our society reveals that an efficient communication of information is of the utmost importance in the current network society. The glut of information is directly related to the fact that the information that we are exposed, is not subject to a filtering and organization process. This reveals an urgency to develop strategies that not only prioritize the organization and searching, but also increase the efficiency of the communication process, in order to promote an efficient framework in the user’s cognitive and perceptual field. Therefore the task of designing complex information systems in an accessible manner, currently represents an important goal and an imperative task of the Design/er (Wurman, 2001), (Bonsiepe, 1997; 2000) (Rheingold, 2005), (Thackara, 2006), (Wright, 2008), (Castells, 2010), (Gleick, 2011), (Lima, 2011; 2014), (Meirelles, 2013), (Börner, 2010; 2014; 2015). The publication and the querying of articles, papers, journals, books, are an integral part of the research process. However, the querying and information visualization process in a scientific academic repository often proves to be a hard and inefficient task, because the wide range of results hardly fits in the user’s specific subject. However, if we equate that the knowledge objects are accessed by a significant number of users with a specific interest in a topic, and in the course of their research, each user handles a significant amount of results. It is then possible to consider the existence of a hierarchical and relational structure of evidences that emerges from the relationship established between the users, their specific interests and knowledge in a topic and the querying performed. Therefore, it is fundamental to consider the user’s experience and the leading role that it represents in the information filtering process.This paper aims to present key insights on the information glut problematic and proposes a new approach/system applied to the academic scientific repositories. A collaboration system is designed, in order to filter and visualize the rating flows based in the user’s experience, instead of the usual citation "object" centered approach. The focus of this work is to describe one part of the system, that is the experimental implementation of an interactive hierarchical structure.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/IFDP.2016.3308