Network Society Manuel Castells

network society manuel castells

Overview

The Network Society is our society, a society made of individuals, businesses and state operating from the local, national and into the international arena.

Publisher Center for Transatlantic Relations
Year 2005
Pages 434
Filesize 1.9 MB
Format PDF

Summary

Network Society explores the patterns and dynamics of the network society in its policy dimension, ranging from the knowledge economic, based in technology and innovation, to the organizational reform and modernization in the public sector, focusing also the media and communication policies. The Network Society is our society, a society made of individuals, businesses and state operating from the local, national and into the international arena. Although our societies have many things in common they are also the product of different choices and historical identities. In this volume we chose to focus both what we have considered to be already network societies and also those who are going through a transition process. Accepting the invitation from President Jorge Sampaio to discuss the knowledge economy and the network society from a policy point a view was a challenge that we and the different authors that have contributed to this book believe was worth it.

Policy is usually a strategic choice in order to deal either with uncertainty or with the reality already faced by populations or countries, in our times policy making is becoming increasingly important and at the same time more difficult.

What defines the collective research effort presented in this book is the conviction that the difficulty is probably more a result of the change, and consequently the need to understand what that change is, rather than of an increasingly difficulty of issues and problems. This volume is a small contribution for a better understanding of our societies, both those in transition and those already on the doorsteps of a network society.

The perspective of this book is cross cultural. A perspective drawn, not just by the diversity of geographical origins of its participants, but due to the very own thematic and the geographical scope that we tried to achieve. This is a book that focus on the transition societies of Portugal, Spain—and its different autonomies, Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. This is also a book where the comparison of those transition societies with societies, where the network relations that characterize informational societies, is present. So this book focuses on informational societies like the US, Finland, UK and several other members of the more developed countries in the European Union and how policy is being developed.

Contents

Part I: The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy

  • Chapter 1: The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy – Manuel Castells
  • Chapter 2: Societies in Transition to the Network Society – Gustavo Cardoso

Part II: The Knowledge Economy, Technology, Innovation, Productivity, Competitiveness: The New Productive Economy

  • Chapter 3: Information, Technology and the World Economy – Dale W. Jorgensen and Khuong M. Vu
  • Chapter 4: Innovation, Technology, and Productivity: Why Europe Lags Behind the United States and Why Various European Economies Differ in Innovation and Productivity – Luc Soete

Part III: Organizational Reform and Technological Modernization in the Public Sector

  • Chapter 5: Central Issues in the Political Development of the Virtual State – Jane Fountain
  • Chapter 6: Uses of Internet and Mobile Technology in Health Systems: Organizational and Social Issues in a Comparative Context – James Katz, Ronald E. Rice, and Sophia Acord
  • Chapter 7: E-Learning and the Transformation of Education for a Knowledge Economy – Betty Collis
  • Chapter 8: Reshaping the State and Its Relationship with Citizens: The Short, Medium, and Long-term Potential of ICTs – Geoff Mulgan

Part IV: Media, Communication, Wireless, and Policies in the Network Society

  • Chapter 9: The IPTV Revolution – Jonathan Taplin
  • Chapter 10: Television and the Internet in the Construction of Identity – Imma Tubella
  • Chapter 11: Geeks, Bureaucrats, and Cowboys: Deploying Internet Infrastructure, the Wireless Way – François Bar and Hernan Galperin
  • Chapter 12: Free Software and Social and Economic Development – Marcelo Branco

Part V: The Network Society: Global and Local

  • Chapter 13: Internet and Society in a Global Perspective: Lessons from Five Years in the Field – Jeff Cole
  • Chapter 14: E-topia: Information and Communication Technologies and the Transformation of Urban Life – William Mitchell

Part VI: Policies of Transition to the Network Society

  • Chapter 15: Challenges of the Global Information Society – Pekka Himanen
  • Chapter 16: Policies of Transition to the Network Society in Europe – Erkki Liikanen
  • Chapter 17: ICT as Part of the Chilean Strategy for Development: Present and Challenges – Carlos Alvarez
  • Chapter 18: The European Way to a Knowledge-Intensive Economy—The Lisbon Strategy – Maria João Rodrigues

Afterword:

The Network Society and the Knowledge Economy: Portugal in the Global Perspective – Jorge Sampaio

Extract

Our world has been in a process of structural transformation for over two decades. This process is multidimensional, but it is associated with the emergence of a new technological paradigm, based in information and communication technologies, that took shape in the 1970s and diffused unevenly around the world. We know that technology does not determine society: it is society. Society shapes technology according to the needs, values, and interests of people who use the technology. Furthermore, information and communication technologies are particularly sensitive to the effects of social uses on technology itself. The history of the Internet provides ample evidence that the users, particularly the first thousands of users, were, to a large extent, the producers of the technology.

Author

Manuel Castells is the Wallis Annenberg Chair Professor of Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He is also Research Professor of Information Society at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) in Barcelona, professor Emeritus of Sociology and of Planning, at the University of California at Berkeley and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Title Network Society Manuel Castells
Subtitle From Knowledge to Policy
Author
Publisher Center for Transatlantic Relations
Date 2005
Pages 434
Country United States of America
ISBN none
Format PDF
URL Download Manuel Castells and Gustavo Cardoso Network Society Manuel Castells pdf