Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

NETWORK SOCIETY
supersession by a new cultural form. The argument is that, just as the most significant
thing about television in politics today is not the particular contents, but the
fact that to be a participant in politics one must be on the television, so nowadays
the most pressing thing about the ‘network society’ is not what gets said on
it, but the fact of access to the network itself. If you are not on the network, attests
Castells, then you will not be able to play a full part in the ‘network society’.
Furthermore, computer networks promise the end of the mass communication
system that television epitomised (centralised production transmitting to a
homogenised audience), because it individuates and allows interaction. The
cultural effect of most weight, therefore, is the issue of being networked, so one
may be able to access information and interact with whomsoever whensoever
one needs.
Castells is worried about some of the technological developments that have
preceded the spread of the Internet, since they exacerbate the general tendency
towards social fragmentation identified throughout his work. Recent trends, for
instance, have developed cable and satellite television in ways that target audiences
to receive a pre-selected diet of programmes, dividing those who watch,
for instance, Sky Sports from those drawn to MTV’s rock channels. This is why
Castells, in an inversion of McLuhan’s famous aphorism, refers to such things
as the ‘message is the medium’, since what they transmit is dependent on the
perceived requirements of segmented audiences. This all happens alongside
the global integration of television resources, most dramatically evidenced in
Murdoch’s News Corporation, which yet supplies customised and diversified
programmes and channels to market-appealing and disparate audiences. Castells
fears especially an increase in home-centredness that accompanies the introduction
of these technologies where they are driven by entertainment interests; they
portend the loss of the common culture that went with nationally based broadcast
television and mean that ‘while the media have become . . . globally
interconnected . . . we are not living in a global village, but in customised cottages
produced and locally distributed’ (p. 341).
However, there is a countertrend to all of this located in the technological
realm. To Castells the Internet possesses ‘technologically and culturally
embedded properties of interactivity and individualisation’ (p. 358). Thereby it
may enable the construction of electronic communities that connect rather than
divide people. Here we have a reminder of Howard Rheingold’s (1993) enthusiasm
for the ‘virtual community’ that can be created on the Net. So, too, with
Castells (1996), who proclaims that the ‘Internet will expand as an electronic
agora’ (p. 357) to announce an ‘interactive society’ (p. 358).
Castells here appears sanguine about the potential of ‘virtual community’
(cf. Robins and Webster, 1999, part 4), though in a second edition of The Rise of
the Network Society (2000d) he tempers his earlier optimism, acknowledging the
‘mediocre materialisation’ which opposes the ‘noble goals’ of the new technologies
(p. 398). I use e-mail and the Internet routinely, and it is very helpful to contact
people with whom I share interests, but it is not so much more than a convenient
form of letter writing. A genuine sense of community is not a matter of such
restricted communication, since it involves connecting with whole people rather
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