The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 1, 2nd ed.

Citation

Eden, B. (2001), "The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 1, 2nd ed.", The Bottom Line, Vol. 14 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2001.17014cae.003

The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 1, 2nd ed.

The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 1, 2nd ed.

Castells, M.BlackwellOxford2000Keywords: Internet, Information technology, Society

This book is a substantially revised edition and update of the 1996 version. It integrates important social, economic and technological developments that took place in the late 1990s and has gone through colloquial and intellectual critique from scholars and scholarly seminars around the world before publication. Due to the size of the new edition, it has been published as three books. This volume, the first of three, deals primarily with the logic of the Net; the second volume, The Power of Identity, analyses the formation of the self; and the third volume, End of Millennium, interprets historical transformation in the later twentieth century using the information presented in the previous two volumes.

This first volume, which focuses on the Internet and the information technology revolution of the later twentieth century, consists of a prologue and seven chapters. The author discusses the creation of the Internet, its effects on society, self and economy, and presents some conclusions that lead into the other two volumes. A summary of the contents of Volumes 2 and 3 is given after the conclusion, and an extensive bibliography and index are provided as well. The author supports his observations and generalisations with a variety of graphs, charts and evidence from a number of different governmental research and scholarly sources. The author, with the first edition of this book, has generally been hailed as the first significant philosopher of cyberspace and the Information Age, and this second edition of his landmark work appears to be headed in the same direction. There are some significant observations on the transformation of the workforce, the new economy, the network enterprise, the virtual culture, and some philosophical musings and comments on time and society as we enter the twenty-first century.

While comment on the other two volumes cannot be given, I can say that Volume 1of this series continues to place Manuel Castells at the head of the line of commentators and philosophers who focus on the Internet and cyberspace in today's society. The importance of Castells' work may be lost on the general reader, given that three books need to be purchased instead of one, in order to understand the total intellectual output and conclusions from this work. Castells' final comments on his work are not given until the end of the third volume, and thus the real effect and purpose of all this information cannot be provided until all three volumes have been read and assimilated.

Volume 1, however, is a concise and focused book on technology and its influence on today's society, and I highly recommend its use for teaching and research in higher education in the areas of sociology, technology, psychology and economics.

Brad EdenUniversity of Nevada