Castells' Network Society

I was trying repeatedly to post this last evening, but was not having any luck, so hopefully this go at it will go a little more smoothly. Is anyone else having problems with Blogger lately or is it just me?

Disclaimer: To be perfectly honest from the get-go with this entry, I had a difficult time understanding some of the theories discussed by Castells in particular, so some of the questions and concerns that I'm bringing up here might be a little cursory/obvious to other people, but I'm still in the process of wrapping my head around some of these concepts, so I'm still trying to hang in there with these readings as best I can.

An Introduction to the Information Age - Manuel Castells

This was a fairly concise explanation of Castells's theory on the information society, and I shared many of the of the concerns that were brought up later by Garnham in his critique of Castells's argument. I do feel that his theory is at times contradictory when it comes to the role that technology plays in driving many of the changes that he sees coming with the culture of real virtuality. For example, his concept of "timeless time" is extremely abstract to me, and it seems unclear rather he feels this is a necessary evil of where our society has gone or, rather, a malicious byproduct of power being put into the wronghands with corporations and other organizations that are using networks to create powerful oligopolies.

To me the very idea of "timeless time" is a little bit ridiculous, although I see where Castells is coming from with it. I think there has certainly been a shift where people now value speed above other things, but at the same time, five minutes is still five minutes and I think that he is greatly overexaggerating the extent to which this is a "new" phenomenon. I don't see it as a creation of new "forms" of time (145), but rather a change in how time is generally used by citizens. I also think that the extent to which our "network society" is structured around function is also overexaggerated. Capitalism, the market, and global economies have all been around for a while, and I think the principles remain the same behind them, even if the means have changed.

The Information City, The New Economy, and the Network Society - Manuel Castells

Going into greater detail than the introduction, this selection focused on some of the fundamentals of Castells's "New Economy." Labor, productivity, and innovation are the three main values that are emphasized, and around all of this, he looks at the role that the modern city plays with our new society.

I think that some of Castells's views on the city were particularly short-sighted, for example when he emphasized that cities present excellent opportunities for both jobs and schooling for children (161). Although the argument for jobs is documented with some statistics, the education argument is completely out of the blue and, I would argue, false. Education within larger cities tends to be fairly underdeveloped, and I would hardly see this as a huge "opportunity" for our future generations.

Additionally, the idea of the global market opening up doors to more competition is a bit curious to me, given that this would be facilitated only by implementing networking structures that only more economically-advanced organizations and companies could afford in the first place. As Garnham later pointed out, this would likely result in the $$$ going into the hands of fewer competitors, rather than more, as seen with Garnham's examples of media conglomerates. This is hardly de-massification, as Castells argues.

Information Society Theory as Ideology - Nicholas Garnham

It seemed as though Garnham's main gripe with Castells's theory was his emphasis on technological determinism, and this was certainly a main issue that I felt Castells struggled with, sometimes using it as an advantage with his dialogue, and other times citing it as a disappointing pitfall of our current society's situation. He also emphasizes that this was a direction that our society was generally heading as it was, rather than a completely new revolution of sorts.

Main of my main points of interest were already discussed in relation to the above pieces by Castells, but I would say that I did think there were times when Garnham himself went a bit too far with a gloomy outlook of corporate invasion. When it comes down to it, this technology can have a very positive influence for individuals looking to start companies from the ground, and there is a huge subculture of smaller, independent businesses that could never be without the tools provided by the so-called network society. Many of these businesses are not located within heavily-concentrated urban areas, as argued by Castells, but are taking place in smaller locales. This does bring in Castells's idea of the flexi-worker, a type of worker that is working increasingly part-time or for themselves, but I think that it is a point worth questioning.