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22 Manuel CastellsIn sum, the culture of freedom was decisive in inducing network technologieswhich, in turn, were the essential infrastructure for business to operate itsrestructuring in terms of globalization, decentralization, and networking. Onlythen could the knowledge-based economy function at is full potential becausedata, minds, bodies, and material production could be related globally andlocally, in real time, in a continuous interactive network.From the restructuring of business emerged the global, networked economy.From its success, and the simultaneous demise of statism, a new modelof informational capitalism was constituted. From the opposition to its social,cultural, and political consequences emerged new forms of social movement.From the globalization and networking of both business and social movementsarose the crisis of the nation-state of the industrial era. In sum, from the interactionbetween three originally independent processes (the crisis of industrialism,the rise of freedom-oriented social movements, and the revolution ininformation and communication technologies) there emerged a new form ofsocial organization, the network society.THE NETWORK SOCIETY: STRUCTURE, DIMENSIONS,DYNAMICSA Global SocietyDigital networks are global, as they know no boundaries in their capacity toreconfigure themselves. So, a social structure whose infrastructure is based ondigital networks is by definition global. Thus, the network society is a globalsociety. However, this does not mean that people everywhere are included inthese networks. In fact, for the time being, most are not. But everybody isaffected by the processes that take place in the global networks of this dominantsocial structure. This is because the core activities that shape and controlhuman life in every corner of the planet are organized in these globalnetworks: financial markets; transnational production, management, and thedistribution of goods and services; highly skilled labor; science and technology;communication media, culture, art, sports; international institutionsmanaging the global economy and intergovernmental relations; religion; thecriminal economy; and the transnational NGOs that assert the rights andvalues of a new, global civil society (Castells, 2000a, b; Held and McGrew,1999; Volkmer, 1999; Stiglitz, 2002; Juris, 2004).However, the network society diffuses selectively throughout the planet,working on the pre-existing sites, organizations, and institutions that still makeup most of the material environment of people’s lives. The social structure isglobal, but most human experience is local, both in territorial and cultural