Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

NETWORK SOCIETY
from the literary (Slouka, 1995). To refer to such developments as ‘real virtuality’
is to fall too quickly into postmodern thinking.
The space of flows
Castells’s ideas on ‘the space of flows’ will be familiar to readers of his earlier
The Informational City (1989). In The Information Age he restates his distinction
between the ‘space of places’ and the ‘space of flows’, and places the emphasis
in the ‘network society’ on the latter. With information flows becoming central
to the organisation of today’s society, disparate and far-flung places can become
‘integrated in international networks that link up their most dynamic sectors’
(Castells, 1996, p. 381). Castells emphasises his argument that regions and localities
do matter, but suggests that we are experiencing now a ‘geographical
discontinuity’ (p. 393) which throws established relations out of kilter. New
‘milieu[x] of innovation’ will determine how particular places prosper or decline,
but all will be integrated into the ‘network society’.
Cities, especially those which act as ‘nodal points’ of the wider network, take
on an especial importance and manifest particular characteristics. Insisting that
the ‘global city is not a place, but a process’ (p. 386) through which information
flows, Castells maintains that megacities (such as Tokyo and Bombay) are
‘development engines’ (p. 409) that are at once ‘globally connected and locally
disconnected, physically and socially’ (p. 404), a feature obvious to any but the
most casual visitor. Castells includes an intriguing discussion of the ‘dominant
managerial elites’ (p. 415) who play a key role on the networks. They are cosmopolitan
and yet must retain local connections to ensure their coherence as a
group, a force for serious psychological tension. These people have global links
and lifestyles (similar sorts of hotel, similar pastimes) and characteristically they
separate themselves within the cities they inhabit, frequently using advanced
technological systems to insulate themselves from the ‘dangerous classes’ nearby.
Despite their elite standing and global connections, Castells cannot bring himself
to describe these people as a class. On the contrary, he concludes that there is
‘no such thing as a global capitalist class’, though there is a ‘faceless collective
capitalist’ (p. 474), of which more below.
Timeless time
When he introduces the concept of ‘timeless time’ Castells takes up well-known
arguments about time–space compression in the modern world to emphasise that
the ‘network society’ endeavours to create a ‘forever universe’ in which the limits
of time are pushed further and further back. Castells shows that time is constantly
manipulated by ‘electronically managed global capital markets’ (1996, p. 437)
and, related, how work time is increasingly acted upon (‘flexitime’) in order to
maximise its most effective use.
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