The Rise of the Network Society

So what are the defining characteristics of the so-called information revolution - the lines of continuity and discontinuity from the industrial age?   

[this needs to be integrated into the anti-/capitalism section] 

The Information Technology Revolution

Castells tries to comprehend 'The Information Technology Revolution' (any revolution) as a rare interruption in the usual smooth chain of historical events (from, Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell 1996). Many commentators have tried to characterise this current 'revolution', as a fundamental transformation and paradigm shift from the mode of production to the mode of information (Poster, 1995) likened to the momentous impact of the industrial revolution itself. Castells is sympathetic to this, describing it as 'a pattern of discontinuity in the material basis of economy, society and culture' (1996: 30) but is keen to emphasise that The Rise of the Network Society needs to be understood from a plural and global perspective to best reflect the multidimensionality of change (1996). Thus, he wishes to move beyond the distraction of 'prophetic hype and ideological manipulation' (1996:30) and continue a critical trajectory that does not wish to merely celebrate the diversity or scale of change, but to understand it - in order to be in a position to be able to effect change. Castells thinks that change is only possible if understood 'from a plural perspective that brings together cultural identity, global networking, and multidimensional politics' (1996:28).

Without question, networks are growing exponentially in ever increasing numbers and taking new forms. However, despite the temptation of think of these transformations in terms of a new age, for Castells, it is crucial to understand them through the dynamic intersection of technology, society and historical change. He is also careful to distance himself from the mistake of technological determinism. In a footnote, he explains the interaction between society and technology as dialectical: 'Technology does not determine society: it embodies it. But neither does society determine technological innovation: it uses it' (1996: 5). Instead, he describes the interaction in terms of complex patterns. Thus he accounts for the intervention of the state in both stagnating and accelerating technological change and development (historically, Japan is famously seen as a classic example of this; after the Meiji restoration of 1868 allowed a state-led modernisation programme and more significantly after the second World War, it moved from isolation to a position of highly developed technological advancement in a very short space of time - described in Castells, 1996: 11-12). This is one way of emphasising the role of the controlling institutions (state or otherwise) that organise the productive forces that shape the intersection of society and technology, under advanced global capitalism. To labour the point, this means that the technological revolution has both shaped and been shaped by the restructuring of capitalism on a global scale - 'globalisation'. 

Hence capitalism has evolved into its more advanced form by embracing technological change, and done so whilst making sure it protects its own best interests. On the other hand, Castells argues that Statism (his term for the alternative system of social organisation to capitalism) unsuccessfully tried to adapt itself as it did not assimilate information technologies sufficiently well (he is describing Soviet statism and 'perestroyka'; he contrasts this with the more successful Chinese statism in which a form of state-led capitalism was adopted as its model, 1996: 13-14).

If this sounds like a crude distinction, it should be explained that he is drawing upon the sociological theory that makes the distinction between pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial periods. Furthermore, he points to the crucial analytical distinction between modes of production (capitalism and statism) and modes of development (industrialism and informationalism) (1996: 14); in other words, informationalism, as he calls it, is the result of the restructuring of capitalism's mode of production to a mode of information. (note: This presupposes that society is organised around production, human experience and power relations - and reveals Castells's project as broadly informed by Marxist thinking in trying to understand the logic of capital). This historical approach aptly describes the lines of continuity (capitalism) and the lines of discontinuity (informationalism) that characterise late-capitalism and the appropriateness of the terms with which to describe it such as techno-capitalism (Castells would say 'informational capitalism,' 1996: 18). This pinpoints the problem many commentators have with a too severe a model of change - from one mode to the other. This is too-often described as the distinction between industrial and post-industrial economies which is far too crude for our purposes. Rather, development is both discontinuous and continuous according to this model (make sure I am consistent with this argument as this is a key point for the thesis). The current technological mode is discontinuous from the industrial mode but the overall logic is continuous. With dialectical style, he says: 'The rise of the network society... cannot be understood without the interaction between these two relatively autonomous trends: development of new information technologies, and the old society's attempt to retool itself by using the power of technology to serve the technology of power.' (1996:52).   

The distinction (paradigm shift) that Castells points to is the change in the ways in which technological processes are organised; from a mode of development focussed on economic growth and surplus-value (industrialism) to one based on the pursuit of knowledge and increased levels of complexity of information (informationalism). New technologies have enhanced the effectiveness of global capitalism, enabling it to become more flexible, adaptable, faster, efficient and pervasive. 'Thus, informationalism is linked to the expansion and rejuvenation of capitalism, as industrialism was linked to its constitution as a mode of production' (1996: 19), although this has been expressed differently according to cultural and historical circumstance of course. Castells expands on the cross-cultural aspects crucial to an understanding of global capitalism (for instance in his analysis of the differences between the G-7 group; 1996: 208-216), but for my part, I am interested in the more general principles and tendencies of global networking and multidimensional politics. 

By placing technological developments in a social context, and recognising that much of these developments stem from the 1970s and the United States in particular, certain questions emerge about capitalism itself. Roger Bromley (in 'Radical Philosophy' no.97, Sept/Oct 1999) explains the political context of Castells' work in more detail: 'In the modern world there have been two major modes of production, capitalism and statism. Castells understands capitalism in broadly Marxist terms. Considered as a mode of production, capitalism is based on the commodification of labour power, the private ownership of the means of production and hence the private appropriation of the surplus, with production organized for exchange subject to the demands of accumulation. Statism (Castells's term for the mode of production dominant in the state socialist or communist bloc) is based on the partial decommodification of labour power and state control over the means of production and appropriation of the surplus, with production oriented towards maximizing the power of the state over society and the determination of social objectives by the state.' In the 1970s according to Castells, a major global economical crisis necessitated restructuring on a global scale. Capitalist restructuring attempted to escape the social and political restrictions imposed by state-controlled industrial forces, by going global. In this way, information technologies were utilised and expanded to facilitate this organisational and productivity growth through the development of multinational corporate activity.

Ultimately only to dispute both versions of events as too straightforward, Castells asks: 'was the new technological paradigm a response by the capitalist system to overcome its internal contradictions? Or, alternatively, was it a way to ensure military superiority over the Soviet foe, responding to its technological challenge in the space race and nuclear weaponry?' (1996: 51). Not convinced with either account, he argues that the new technological system can be 'traced to the autonomous dynamics of technological discovery and diffusion, including synergistic effects between various key technologies' (1996: 51) and this is partly why the geographical and economic context is crucial (take the seedbed of Silicon Valley as one such location or the more dispersed networks of American research universities - and this is why the University of Plymouth is well and truly off the map). But it is also crucial to reiterate that 'the reproduction of such conditions is cultural and institutional, as much as economic and technological' (1996: 38). Metropolitan location or not, and levels of state or corporate investment are only important in as much as they allow the conditions for the creation of synergy. Hence newness in terms of cultural, institutional or ideological setting proves to be a distraction from far more determining factors. Moreover, the information technological revolution is contingent on specific cultural, historical, and spatial conditions that set and loop its future evolution. This continues to gravitate towards the States and results in an: 'acceleration of technological innovation and a faster diffusion of such innovation, as ingenious minds, driven by passion and greed, constantly scan the industry for market niches in products and processes. It is indeed by this interface between macro-research programs and large markets developed by the state, on the one hand, and decentralised innovation stimulated by a culture of technological creativity and role models of fast personal success, on the other hand, that new information technologies came to blossom.' (1996: 60)   
 

technology

Castells defines technology fairly conventionally as 'the use of scientific knowledge to specify ways of doing things in a reproducible manner' (quoting Brooks, 1996:30). To the usual list of converging information technologies of computing, microelectronics and telecommunications, he further adds biology (1996: 30) - making a far broader definition of the term reproduction and leaving it as an effective metaphor for the regenerative processes of digital technologies. At the core of technological revolutions (as the predominant figure of change), changes are 'characterised by pervasiveness, that is by their penetration of all domains of human activity... [and] they are process-orientated, besides inducing new products... (quoting Kranzberg and Pursell, 1967, in Castells, 1996: 31). 

He proceeds to describe one important central feature of the current revolution in the phenomenon of feedback loops. 'What characterises the current technological revolution is not the centrality of knowledge and information, but the application of such knowledge and information to knowledge generation and information processing/communication devices, in a culmulative feedback loop between innovation and the uses of innovation' (1996:32). In this, he is emphasising the increased speed in which new technologies are introduced, then used, then used in new ways, which in turn leads to the development of new technologies. Thus 'users and doers may become the same' and more importantly, 'computers, communication systems, and genetic decoding and programming are all amplifiers and extensions of the human mind' (1996:32). However, although the mind and machines appear to be increasingly integrated, and despite the embedded logic of the technological system, they still interact within highly controlled cultural and social contexts (Note the keyword 'interact' here as something that illustrates the loop and the exchange of ideas, problems and solutions). For an example of this resistance to technological determinism, one only has to look at the highly selective zones that global communications actually reach to make apparent another form of logic of technological revolutions operating as much through exclusion as inclusion. The 'speed of technological diffusion is selective, both socially and functionally. Differential timing in access to the power of technology for people, countries, and regions is a critical source of inequality in our society' (1996: 33) as much evident at a local level as globally (and this local issue is easily overlooked). Despite these speedy but uneven changes across the last two decades, continued dominant groups and imperialist ambitions are maintained despite the undoubted revolutionary potential. 

Castells interest is in the nature of this revolution that he defines as 'accelerating and unprecedented technological change' (quoting Mokyr in Castells, 1996: 35). By this, he refers not just to the speed and transformative quality of change that constitutes a revolution, but also to the lasting influence of the industrial revolution in our institutions and consciousness - although he doesn't say as much, this is where another loop exists perhaps. He acknowledges previous industrial revolutions in the plural: the first in the last third of the eighteenth century with the steam engine and replacement of hand tools by machines, and secondly approximately one hundred years later with the introduction of electricity and the beginnings of communications technologies such as the telegraph and telephone. Crucial to both these revolutions is the generation and distribution of energy from steam power to combustion and electric engines (later nuclear and digital systems). Thus, for Castells, process is all important as the necessary means to produce, distribute and communicate within the economic system and social fabric (1996: 39). 

That fundamental changes in culture, communications, industry and human consciousness can be charted in the industrial revolutions is well established - not least by those with corresponding revolutionary ambitions on a social and political level (The Communist Manifesto is a case in point). The ascent to power of the so-called West (a handful of nations in Europe, and their North American and Australian illegitimate offspring) during these periods reflects the deployment of these new technologies, arising from scientific knowledge and circumstance. All this serves to emphasise that 'technological innovation is not an isolated instance' and '... reflects a given state of knowledge, a particular institutional and industrial environment, a certain availability of skills to define a technical problem and to solve it, an economic mentality... and a network of producers and users who can communicate their experiences cumulatively, learning by using and doing...' (1996: 37). These factors and exchanges are consistent with previous and current revolutions. Also indicated by historical research is the sluggishness between the revolution itself and positive effects on society. It seems that a considerable time-lag exists especially on those societies at a geographical or social distance from the site of innovation - no surprise there! In summary Castells says: 'Thus, specific social conditions foster technological innovation that itself feeds into the path of economic development and further innovation. Yet the reproduction of such conditions is cultural and institutional, as much as economic and technological' (1996: 38). Evidently any such changes require a material foundation.

The parallel of this emphasis on the importance of energy and process in the information technology revolution is the generation, processing and transmission of data. The question remains of whether this constitutes a new paradigm - for Castells it does at the level of development. It does so in terms of process but not so convincingly in terms of effect - as it is tied to the capitalist mode of production.

Castells charts 'The Historical Sequence of the Information Technology Revolution' (1996: pp.40-46) beginning with the invention of the telephone in 1876, and the invention of the first programmable computer after the Second World War, but only entering a significantly revolutionary phase by the 1970s in accordance with the definition of change that is significant-enough in terms of reach and speed (see earlier for the definition, and p.47 for the key technologies involved). He traces these developments through the interrelated fields of microelectronics, computers and telecommunications, and adds that biotechnology adds a further phase that might well constitute a revolution in itself (this remains to be seen in his view) or a revolution within a revolution. Also of particular note is the shift from single entities of computer processing units to systems and networks served by computers that form other complex and flexible networks. 

By the 1990s, networked, interactive computer power-sharing replaced centralised data storage and processing. In parallel to this, social and organisational structures and interactions changed to a network model, made possible by telecommunications technologies advances using new linkages for individual nodes, employing switches, routers, and fast fiber-optic and laser transmission lines making the interactive real-time broadband networks of the present Internet and mobile cellular technologies - what is often referred to as 'ubiquitous computing' (omnipresent, everywhere). Significant discoveries in biotechnology parallel the above trajectory. Although DNA's double helix, as the basic structure of life was identified in 1953 (by Crick and Watson), it was only by the 1970s that genetic engineering became widely practised. The first human gene was cloned in 1977 (1996: 48) and the idea of engineering life, and human life in particular, became big business (with resultant battles over property rights and who should own the copyright on gene research). This issue surfaced in 1988 when scientist entrepreneurs at Harvard challenged the moral and ethical agenda (of God and Nature) by patenting a genetically engineered mouse. By now, the human genome too has been thoroughly mapped and despite regulatory efforts and ethical debates, scientist-entrepreneurs have gained legal and economic control. 

Thus, humans themselves have been privatised in the ultimate perversion of nature. Like with many other fundamental services, the private interests and wants of the few appear to have triumphed over the public needs of the many. Like with other technological revolutions under present conditions, the imperialist impulse reproduces itself like a clone of its former glory - echoing Critical Art Ensemble's call to engage with the neo-fascism of the 'new frontier' of biotechnology (in Flesh Machine: Cyborgs, Designer Babies and New Eugenic Consciousness, Autonomedia 1998). Before I get too carried away in conspiratorial rhetoric, Castells more cautiously states that: 'The lesson for the sociologist of such business battles is not just another instance of human greed. It signals an accelerating tempo in the spread and deepening of the genetic revolution... All indications point towards the explosion of its applications at the turn of the millennium, thus triggering a most fundamental debate at the now blurred frontier between nature and society.' (1996: 50)

This is what Castells sees as the new socio-technical paradigm, the features of which are the material foundation of the information society. These are as follows: (1) that information is the raw material - these are technologies to act on information, not just information to act on technology; (2) the pervasiveness of effects of new technologies - our experiences are shaped but not determined by new technologies because information is so integral to our lives; (3) networking logic of any system or set of relationships using these new information technologies - reflecting the increasing complexity of interactions and the unpredictable patterns of development arising from these interactions; (4) flexibility - processes are reversible, and organisations and institutions can be modified, reconfigured, fundamentally altered, by rearranging their components, they are fluid; (5) convergence of specific technologies into a highly integrated system - wherein on element cannot be separated from another. (1996: 61-2) Added to this last category is the growing convergence of biological and microelectronics revolutions: take for instance, the application of biological logic to auto-generative systems and the development of neural networks. The distinctive quality of the human species over animals is ironically expressed in the interaction of contemporary forms of capitalism and information technologies: in 'its superior capacity to process symbols' (1996: 92).

Complexity/flows 

On this last issue, Castells makes a useful intervention. He characterises the recent interest in 'complexity theory' (arising in turn out of 'chaos theory') as setting itself the task of developing scientific thought out of this new paradigm; understanding the emergence of self-organising systems 'that create complexity out of simplicity and superior order out of chaos, through several orders of interactivity between the basic elements at the origin of the process' (1996: 64). By its nature, complexity theory has no organising structure, which is why it is largely dismissed by the scientific community as non-verifiable, but it serves to emphasise some important principles that encapsulate my interest in generative media: 

'Not that there are no rules, but that rules are created, and changed, in a relentless process of deliberate actions and unique interactions. 'The information technology paradigm does not evolve towards its closure as a system, but towards its openness as a multi-edged network. It is powerful and imposing in its materiality, but adaptive and open-ended in its historical development.' (1996:65) 

The 'Network Society' is a social order embodying a logic that Castells characterises as the 'space of flows' in contrast to the historically created institutions and organisations of the space of places that characterised industrial society. He recognises that many institutions are still operating according to old models, so even his approach needs to be acknowledged in an analysis of any new mode that is no doubt subject to contradictions at every level. However, he thinks there is a distinct organisational logic related to technological change that relates to networking and the form of information technology.    

The structural logic is evidently more complex than simply the relationship of supply and demand (as I was taught when I did economics at school). Castells points to Max Weber's classic text 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' (first published in 1904-5) for some clues as to the 'spirit of informationalism' (1996: 195). In this, Weber sought to understand the roots of capitalism (embedded in the conjunction of religion and economics). Weber suggests that the order of capitalism can be traced back to the ethical foundations of the accumulation of surplus/profit and consumerism. It is argued that these forces are expressed in wider cultural institutions (such as the family unit, and nation-state) that legitimate the overriding ethos (we might call this cultural reproduction). In turn, Castells argues that this has been transformed from the unit of the individual and collective to that of the 'unit of the network' (1996: 198). The network extends and sustains its ethical logic. 

real virtuality

This all sounds rather contradictory, as it is simultaneously a network and one expressed as a unit in terms of the wider culture. Castells describes this as a 'multi-faceted, virtual culture' (1996: 199) but crucially as a material force bound by information technology. Similarly contradictory is his characterisation of 'the culture of real virtuality' that attempts to oppose the ideological and commercial hype around information technologies, yet simultaneously point to its massive significance. He suggests that the integration of various modes of communication into an interactive network (what might be called a meta-language) is transformative: 'The potential integration of text, images, and sounds in the same system, interacting from multiple points, in chosen time (real or delayed) along a global network, in conditions of open and affordable access, does fundamentally change the character of communication. And communication decisively shapes culture...' (1996: 328).

He traces these developments in McLuhanite terms: of new galaxies of communication, wherein all media are restructured around the new system (in McLuhan's time, television was the mass media). But McLuhan is often taken as prophetic and in Understanding Media (1964), describes technology as sensorial extensions of the body in space; as a central nervous system to epitomise the increased speed of action and reaction, and to suggest something of the universal communitarian potential (epitomised by his most quoted of aphorisms: 'the global village'). For McLuhan, 'the medium is the message' (in his book The Medium is the Massage), so what television represented was partly the end of communication dominated by the 'phonetic alphabet order' (the Gutenberg galaxy). 

Much has been made of the subsequent shift from a 'one to many' communication system (of mass media) to a 'many to many' communication of networked information technologies (what might be called segmented media). This however, often serves to neglect the complex patterns of communication between sender and receiver (Stuart Hall's essay 'Encoding and Decoding' complicates this issue in terms of cultural codes, and reminds us that miscommunication is most likely in most circumstances). These examples serve to illustrate how all communication is interactive, and that technology should not be falsely separately from its cultural frame. This much is clear. 
Castells explains through the dialectic of the virtually real: 'The social impact of television works in the binary mode: to be or not to be'... The media tend to work on consciousness and behaviour as real experience works on dreams... It is a system of feedbacks between distorting mirrors: the media are the expression of our culture, and our culture works primarily through the materials provided by the media' (1996: 336-7. My emphasis in bold).

Further taking his cue from McLuhan, Castells suggests that in the new media system, it might be more appropriate to say 'the message is the medium. That is the characteristics of the message will shape the characteristics of the medium' (1996: 340) or even 'the message is the message' (1996: 368). Here he is describing the trend towards decentralisation, diversification and customisation of computer-mediated communication exemplified by the 'internet constellation' (he traces a history of MINITEL and ARPANET, 1996: 342-364). Furthermore, with the widespread practice of 'surfing' (simultaneous viewing) he thinks 'we are not living in a global village, but in customised cottages globally produced and locally distributed' (1996: 341, evoking the blandness of a Barratt home perhaps with a cottage-like theme, turned into an electronic cottage simply by having a satellite dish). The architecture of the network is open, with libertarian and utopian underpinnings, enabling widespread access (whilst at the same time being prone to social inequalities) and limited but increasing state and commercial intervention. All these opportunities are brought to you from the comfort of your home (if you are lucky enough to have one), although are increasingly portable. In fact 'home-centredness' is an important trend in the new society (Castells, 1996: 398).   

Research has tended to emphasise that computer mediated communications do not however form new networks but simply enhance existing social networks. In this scenario you are just as likely to ignore your neighbours and be suspicious of strangers accordingly, serving to emphasise individuality - 'staying home is the new going out' as the recent advert for television goes (2001). Remote control, for the most part, simply allows the user to stay one side of the living-(death)-room while controlling an electronic device at the other - hardly aiding mobility but the distinct lack of it. Castells thinks that increasingly, 'the multimedia world will be populated by two essentially distinct populations: the interacting and the interacted, meaning those who are able to select their multidirectional circuits of communication and those who are provided with a restricted number of prepackaged choices. And who is what will be largely determined by class, race, gender and country.' (1996: 371. I am reminded of Zizek's notion of interpassivity that would similarly describe this condition in contradistinction from interactivity). Again this all points to increasing social stratification. Despite this, multimedia does capture diversity in a new symbolic environment - what Castells thinks contributes to making 'virtuality our reality' (1996: 372).

Perhaps this needs further explanation. Castells thinks that what is specific to new communications technology is not virtual reality but real virtuality. He defines his terms: '"virtual: being so in practice though not strictly or in name", and "real: actually existing". Thus reality, as experienced, has always been virtual because it is always perceived through symbols that frame practice with some meaning that escapes their strict semantic definition. It is precisely this ability of all forms of language to encode ambiguity and to open up a diversity of interpretations that makes cultural expressions distinct from formal/logical/mathematical reasoning.' (1996: 372) Thus complexity and contradiction are accounted for in communication (or miscommunication as Hall would have it). Any other unmediated notion of reality would be plain nonsense even if much new media commentaries express these views. What new media communication offers is an even clearer idea of cultural feedback. This evokes the earlier quote (that is worth repeating) but in heightened form: 
'It is a system of feedbacks between distorting mirrors: the media are the expression of our culture, and our culture works primarily through the materials provided by the media' (1996: 337)
In other words, all messages of all kinds become part of the medium. Messages operate in binary mode according to Castells: presence/absence in the multimedia communication system, in other words the familiar cries of inclusion and exclusion, or domination and liberation. He asks who are 'interacting and who are interacted in this new system...?' (1996: 374). The new culture both 'transcends and includes the diversity of historically transmitted systems of representation: the culture of real virtuality where make-believe is belief in the making.' (1996: 375)

The space of flows (add to labour and factory section in Marx section)

Much is written about the changing relationship of space and time (much of it predicated on David Harvey's book The Condition of Postmodernity, 1990, in which he describes time/space compression under capitalism; or taking up the challenge of new scientific models like 'superstring' theory from Physics, advancing the idea of hyperspace). Nevertheless, space is a material product, both defined through social practices (in social theory) and through the dynamics of matter (in Physics). Castells adds that space is now constructed through flows - flows of capital, information and technology and data (1996: 412).   

Castells's hypothesis is that rather than thinking that time dominates space as is the orthodoxy in the social sciences, in the network society, space organises time. The usual (techno-determinist) argument is that telecommunications along with flexible and networking patterns will increasingly result in urban centres dispersing and offices relocating to places where property values are advantageous, whereas evidence suggests quite otherwise. Such scenarios deny the complexity of the interaction between technology, society and space - that Castells makes a synthesis of the emerging spatial logic through the dialectical oppositions of the 'space of flows' and the historically rooted 'space of places' (1996: 378). Various factors seem to characterise the current logic: globalisation, for instance, stimulates regionalisation. Global geography relies on concentrations and decentralisation simultaneously (rather like network communications technologies) - what matters is versatility. Castells says 'The global city is not a place, but a process' wherein its centres are connected in networks (1996: 386); and this is the case even if people still think they live in places. The dialectical style of argument works very well in this regard. 

This description similarly fits the new industrial space, in which technological and organisational factors combine to make production flexible, able to produce goods across different locations but unified through telecommunications linkages. This is the post-industrial factory, if you like, not defined by a fixed site but by flows. The separate units are defined by the processes and labour required for the component parts of the overall operation. Thus the logics of information-based production is combined with process-orientated products. Automation has crucially contributed to this in requiring a highly skilled technological labour force on the one hand and relatively unskilled assembly work on the other - deciders and participants as opposed to the mere executants perhaps (Castells terms). The geographies often literally reflect the crude terminology of the developed and developing world. But this is too crude a formulation. Nevertheless, this is an international spatial division of labour (Castells quoting Cooper, 1996: 387) based on cheap labour costs, tax waivers, lack of environmental constraints, under the ruling ideology of globalisation. These factors are articulated in networks that both bring things together and separates them. 

In the high technology industry, the crucial factor is that these elements interact so their spatiality is a fundamental material condition. Value is added not merely through their cumulative effect but through interaction leading to 'synergy' (a good fashionable term). Castells describes what he calls 'the milieu of innovation' (or 'technopoles') in which synergy is generated so that surplus value can be generated (1996: 390) - Silicon Valley, and so on. The new industrial system is articulated through local and global dynamics and flows (1996: 392). 

Everyday life is similarly spatially challenged, and cities are being transformed through the influence and interactions of changed social patterns and information technologies. The space of flows, for Castells, has no universal rules and is characterised differently in different locations according to historical and institutional factors (and he is particularly careful to define American cities and their frontier history as distinctly different as well as full of expected contradictions. 1996: 399). The industrial city is transforming itself and being transformed into an array of informational urban forms (one of which is the 'megacity'). In these spaces the global economy is articulated, linking information networks and concentrating world power and misery. Castells says: 'It is this distinctive feature of being globally connected and locally disconnected, physically and socially, that makes megacities a new urban form.... Megacities are discontinuous constellations of spatial fragments, functional pieces, and social segments.' (1996: 404-7)

As Castells defines space through social and material practices, it is easy to recognise the new form of the space of flows in the network society (1996: 412). This might be indicated in architecture and urban design, as they negotiate the new spaces either resisting it or attempting to interpret its flows (1996: 423). Castells describes the material layers of the space of flows in more detail that allow the interaction between the electronic impulses, nodes and hubs, and the organisational and management structures; that together maintain the flows of power. The dialectical tension between the space of places and the space of flows, or put differently, between global and local dynamics, is not resolved through synthesis but one is suggested. This takes account of the tension between the two forms of space, the two spatial logics, and attempts not to see them as separated realms (or parallel universes) but in interaction, still perhaps defined through social action. 

Time
The culture of real virtuality contributes to the transformation of the concept of time - making it both more simultaneous and timeless. The unfolding of history in another part of the world can be followed instantaneously. As a result beginnings and endings of communication become rather confused, as does an editorial policy, making culture 'at the same time of the eternal and ephemeral' (Castells, 1996: 462). The interest in New Ageism (or electronic spirtuality) perfectly summarises this condition for Castells, as both eternal and fleeting - a dialectical pendulum between the instantaneous and eternal perhaps.

Society is still largely dominated by clock-time (machine-time). It has been argued by E.P Thompson and others his mechanism is fundamental to the development of industrial capitalism - setting the pace of mechanical time of industrial work. The 'Taylorist' (translated as Fordist or Leninist) production lines could make efficiency count for more surplus value (for corporate greed or social good accordingly) speeding production in the march of Imperialist Greenwich mean time. Despite this still dominant way of thinking, network technologies challenge this linear, measurable received sense of time in particular ways. Castells says: 
'But we are not witnessing a relativisation of time according to social contexts or alternatively the return of time reversability as if reality could become entirely captured in cyclical myths. The transformation is more profound: it is the mixing of tenses to create a forever universe, not self-expanding but self-maintaining, not cyclical but random, not recursive but incursive: timeless time, using technology to escape the contexts of its existence, and to appropriate selectively any value each context could offer to the ever-present. 
[...] Capital's freedom from time [something it has consistently strived for] and culture's escape from the clock are decisively facilitated by new information technologies, and embedded in the structure of the network society. (Castells, 1996: 433)

[add somewhere: 'it is the mixing of tenses to create a forever universe, not self-expanding but self-maintaining, not cyclical but random, nor recursive but incursive: timeless time, using technology to escape the contexts of its existence, and to appropriate selectively any value each context could offer to the ever present (Castells, 2000: 464??) - here he emphasises the pre-eminence of social morphology over social action. 
He characterises the transformation of time with respect to: split-second capital transactions, flex-time enterprises, vaiarable life working time, the blurring of the life-cycle, the search for eternity through the denial of death, instant wars, and the culture of virtual time.]

Prigogone and Stengers go further in explaining that a concept of the past and future is only possible when time is associated with randomness (Owens 1996: 92). 

The logic of this to explain contemporary capitalism is further emphasised by David Harvey's well publicised formula of 'space-time compression' (in his The Condition of Postmodernity, date). Thus he accounts for the negation of meaning and the predominance of irony as cultural responses to the fast turnover of production, consumption and the market. Global markets now tend to work in 'real time', wherein transaction are almost instantaneous, in what Castells describes as a 'Global Casino' of speculation and financial gambling - global financial flows in other words (1996: 434). Cultural production is similarly homogenised through space-time compression. Thus Capital not only compresses time but appears to absorb it. It works on a global scale in real time, mainly through computer-mediated financial flows.

What has been thought of as the natural rhythm of the life cycle is similarly effected as longevity and reproduction are increasingly technologised. Even death is becoming deferred (even in the case of wars, Western countries think risking one's life for country is considered unreasonable - even for soldiers. As an aside this is why the suicide tactics of terrorists remain inconceivable to Americans. There is more elsewhere on this condition of war in the information age, and this is also currently undergoing further qualifications in the current so-called war on terrorism).

What is a network?

A network is a set of interconnected nodes. The distance between nodes depends on whether they are part of the same network or interconnected networks. The architecture of this is predicated on distances that might vary between zero and the infinite - thus they are dynamic, open-ended, multiple and without limits, yet still demonstrate processes of inclusion and exclusion. The switches connecting networks together is where power is demonstrated - where power is switched on or off. The networks combine communications technologies and social structures and thus are fundamental for a form of late capitalism based on flexibility and decentralisation - elsewhere called globalisation. 
Castells puts it like this: 
'The convergence of social evolution and information technologies has created a new material basis for the performance of activities throughout the social structure. This material basis, built in networks, earmarks dominant social processes, thus shaping social structure itself.' (1996: 471)

Society increasingly appears like an automated, set of random elements controlled by the logic of markets and technology. Far from indicated an end of capitalism and its mode of production, capitalism has simply gone entirely global - in an age of networked capitalism or what is usually called globalisation. This is indeed capitalism in a complex but also purer form - a scenario in which faceless capital is accumulated almost at a level of virtuality (disconnected from real production by workers of goods - rather money begets money whilst never moving beyond a computer processing unit). Capitalist relations of production continue to exist, with resultant and ongoing antagonisms between the logic of capital accumulation and human experience (even if recoded for the information age) not into a new world order but a new world disorder. 

However in dialectical style, this is an orderly disorder (link to chaos theory and dialectics).