Chapter 10 and Chapter 11: Castells and the Network Society

From these two small pieces, it is easy to see why Castell’s works are so popular: probably not only insightful, but also fun to read. It seems that Castells tend to analyze all these social issues from a global perspective, to show bigger pictures, and to make more connections than other writers. Another difference is that Castells’ description to “network society” sounds more realistic, not so Utopian as others do. I think it is just his global vision, his understandings to all kinds of social trends, and knowledge of other part of the world that makes him advocate a “network society” rather than “information society”. This network is a much bigger concept than “information” or “information technology”. It is more like a social norms or social structure, which has much more implications than just “information”. However, the basic claims of network society still resemble information society in a lot of ways…

Many concepts and ideas in these two chapters are very interesting, especially black holes of informational capitalism, timeless time, and space of flows. To me, they do grasp some essences of the current world.