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8 Manuel CastellsINFORMATIONALISM: THE TECHNOLOGICALPARADIGM OF THE NETWORK SOCIETYTechnology, understood as material culture, is a fundamental dimension ofsocial structure and social change (Fischer, 1992: 1–32). Technology is usuallydefined as the use of scientific knowledge to set procedures for performancein a reproducible manner. It evolves in interaction with other dimensions ofsociety, but it has its own dynamics, linked to the conditions of scientificdiscovery, technological innovation, and application and diffusion in society atlarge. Technological systems evolve incrementally, but this evolution is punctuatedby major discontinuities, as Stephen J. Gould (1980) has convincinglyargued for the history of life. These discontinuities are marked by technologicalrevolutions that usher in a new technological paradigm. The notion of paradigmwas proposed by Thomas Kuhn (1962) to explain the transformation ofknowledge by scientific revolutions, and imported into the social andeconomic formations of technology by Christopher Freeman (1982) andCarlota Perez (1983). A paradigm is a conceptual pattern that sets the standardsfor performance. It integrates discoveries into a coherent system of relationshipscharacterized by its synergy; that is, by the added value of the systemvis-à-vis its individual components. A technological paradigm organizes aseries of technological discoveries around a nucleus and a system of relationshipsthat enhance the performance of each specific technology.Informationalism is the technological paradigm that constitutes the materialbasis of early twenty-first century societies. Over the last quarter of thetwentieth century of the Common Era it replaced and subsumed industrialismas the dominant technological paradigm. Industrialism, associated with theindustrial revolution, is a paradigm characterized by the systemic organizationof technologies based on the capacity to generate and distribute energy byhuman-made machines without depending on the natural environment – albeitthey use natural resources as an input for the generation of energy. Energy isa primary resource for all activities, and by transforming energy generation,and the ability to distribute it to any location and to portable applications,humankind became able to increase its power over nature, taking charge of theconditions for its own existence (not necessarily a good thing, as the historicalrecord of the twentieth-century shows). Around the energy nucleus of theindustrial revolution, technologies clustered and converged in various fields,from chemical engineering and metallurgy to transportation, telecommunications,and, ultimately, life sciences and their applications.A similar structuration of scientific knowledge and technological innovationis taking place under the new paradigm of informationalism. To be sure,industrialism does not disappear. It is subsumed by informationalism.Informationalism presupposes industrialism, as energy, and its associated