The logic of Networks

(2505 words)

The logic of networks can be incorporated through certain industries that move towards a shift of modern information age like for example, in lieu to the textbook industries, books that are sold on the internet as it can be purchased through internet transactions and order processes that involves the buying and selling of certain book items, one example could be, Amazon.com as the company sells books through on-line ways as the logic of networks being one of Castells concept reflects how Amazon.com is reinventing its mode of business through selling books on-line Thus, the Castells’s theory of the network society has exclusive position along with attempt by group scientists within modern dynamics that transforms the textile of everyday life within the globe as the assumption of the system culture open innovative perspectives of such industry reconstituting their stances within a sequence of networks on the foundation of higher communication technology as the main assertion is that the sectors of society has witnessed change as to how constitutive process can be organized involving a paradigm shift of hierarchies to networks.

Moreover, there can be deep connection amid how societal process is prepared and the values that the processes exemplify. There has been uneasy version of structural as well as cultural logic fixed in countless project reflecting incorrectly exacting agenda of the members and what really drives the development of the network society. Thus, the network society is a logical attainment in its rights and flexible structure as modified to mirror observed findings. For Castells, the worth of theory lies in the capacity to aggravate and arrange empirical learning as for him, there show important unwillingness to give something in conditions used in explicit ways. Aside, it can come in that such places then provides approaches to community within range of welfare upon the offering of links that attach such field as what is argued of the dynamics along the network culture. Thus, if you go to Amazon.com website, the flow of networking is simple you can just click the intended information of the book you want to buy and can read some of reviews regarding the contents of the book and you can also search inside the book before deciding to purchase it on-line, the realization behind the formation of textbooks and Amazon’s other services offered are powered by the information society as it discusses the value of network logic within a desired information flow.

The internet age is fast and evolving, changing the phases of human life and the society wherein people learns the essentiality of communication and interaction embracing the genre of modern and contemporary information systems as there are industries nowadays that focus more on fostering certain digital technologies through state of the art facilities and equipment that people can choose from like for instance, from cell phones, laptops, IPod’s, MP3 players and Digital Cameras where the logic of networks comes in, in sequence through media variations and ways of transforming communication channels, the easy and more approachable way. Moreover, like for example new social groupings like the friendster groups, that allows people to network friends in a way that you can be a friend to someone because of a person/friend that connects you to the friends list as well as the friendster is a new social group that gives individuals the privilege to create personal accounts, customize blogs and share photos and profiles. In a way, this social group indicates a strong proof that the logic of networks is truly present and available for use in this modern epoch as there can be transformation of the network society in respect to organization changes through this interview of Manuel Castells’ – the man behind the logic of network concepts and ideas.

The following interviews of Manuel Castells are created in:

‘Manuel Castells Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley’

To provide you a summary of the important points from Castells interview that in the process, gives you his thoughts about certain issues involving the network society and possibly gives you the desire to be aware of the importance of digital communications and or information flows as of today’s time.  In the interview, there says that the ‘’the authority of individuality is the key, the exceptional drift of social travels and government, adapt, resist, counteract network society. According to Castells that the network society itself is the social arrangement which is feature of what people had been calling as the information society  and or post industrial society and can be a matter of changing the word – as a given matter. The global economy which is not similar mania as the globe market of a extremely internationalized financial system and transformation from principles to values, marketplaces to market as well as from currency to currencies in which it augment the intricacy, the dimension and instability of international monetary market about the world.

The changes in fiscal policy, economic independence of government and the association between the government and the economy are simply probable because of deregulation as well as the liberalization and the existence of carrying of telecoms, information systems and speedy transfer systems that provide the technical capacity for the system to work as a unit on a worldwide scale. People might speak the equal thing in knowledge networks, flow of the business and flow of information. Consequently, the idea is not the vanishing of the country state but the change of the world base on autonomous country states in the world of interdependence that is sharing dominion. The impact of information technology is evident even in the conduct of war like of the Iraq war and by means of technology rich countries are able to do immediate wars but poor country goes by knife war for such years as there is a flow of information. As Castells believe that, it’s not just that people no longer feel there are values worth dying for but the ability to get information about what’s happening on the battlefield is the kind of information flow that leaders who want to engage in war have to respond to and are therefore forced to get out of the war quickly as these become networks along with better communication knowledge capability and have a straight entrée to the sources of information that can be organized in computer networks and may possibly accessed throughout CPU networking as Manuel Castells said, ‘’there has been pressed out by the out opposing judgment of networks and has resisted to the end brought the organization down within themselves’’.

There can have certain networks of destruction as I agree that such networks don’t have personal feelings as the latter may kill or kiss as the issue involved is that, there is a need to start within a network as there is equipped with information knowledge and that, what does the network depend within the programming of certain network as well as the path of the public and edifying development.

Identity in the Network Society

In addition to organizations having to adapt to this new reality of a network world, the social movements and social groups have to respond as in the world of global flows of wealth, power and images, the search for identity constructed becomes the fundamental source of social meaning like for instance, the irony of how globalization flows on the one hand lead to a redefinition, a reassertion of identity in localities. Castells started from technology surface, the network elevation and then found that the fraction of the account about the change of influence did not communicate to that logic but to the logic of opposing the control of principles realized through successful networks and in trying to provide option wisdom.

Two things are happening, some people in our advanced societies as well as in others are structuring their project as individuals, in economy, everything. Even, people train themselves with the idea of having individual portfolios, which they can discuss with diverse people and they are in world of individuals as Internet is in fact, superior rather than through generating virtual community that nearly does not survive, what exist is network of individuals which provide the source for growing, the warmth of the individuals. On the other hand, people who don’t feel brawny as individuals construct trenches of confrontation and secure to the group of people, computers will then matter and count – the computers will perform the job roughly automatic when people know what to ask the computers. ‘Manuel Castells Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley’   

From the interview of Castells:

‘’On the one hand, the networks are powerful but on the other hand, they include only what is interesting from the point of view of the values or sources of interest that program this network. There say that the universal entrepreneur network, left to itself will include in the network company, country and region as well as the people that will improve the value of the network in profitable terms. This is an great situation, but it’s not totally absent from such incident in the humankind. Then, the people who does not have this value, don’t have the learning, don’t have the communications, don’t have the institutions, what do they do? They cannot live without these networks which provide them with everything and capture any wealth from anywhere through processing everywhere. The global criminal economy is a new phenomenon. It’s interconnected throughout the world’’. ‘Manuel Castells Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley’ 

Furthermore, I agree to what Castells told in the interview that, people ‘’need to break the world, as people are doing, into involved networks with no connotation for most people and unadulterated sense but no instrumentality endurance commune it becomes extremely unsafe world, a planet of aliens, aliens to each other and by looking at what happen on the earth, considering that the response to these networks can be a reassertion or a redefinition of individuality, that helps people appreciate the intricacy of what’s really going on in the world. Thus, by getting a computer nowadays doesn’t essentially change the world and it is actually about how people use the computer and apply it like for example, an oil company could distribute computers in Nigerian country and abruptly find out that they are use to sort out complaint movements both nearby and globally. As Castells take the vision of a social scientist and not that of a politician or someone who would be interested in determining what is the good and the bad in the movement, as a social scientist, it is a very important movement, objectively speaking, because it’s a movement that brings together, through the Internet, in a very flexible way, key symbolic demonstrations that hit the system at one point, at one time, through the media, and then disperse.

Years ago, it was clear in the official ideology of companies, governments, institutions that “globalization is good and you just have to explain it to people. ‘’Technology is good, and if you are quiet and patient for a couple of decades, everybody will begin.” Castells said. Well, there has created a space for social and political debate that did not exist by the ability of environmentalists and other groups to connect with the Internet, relate to the public opinion through the media and connect their locality to the global processes through specific events and demonstrations. From the interview, Castells told, ‘’social movements in the Information Age are essentially mobilized around cultural values. The struggle to change the codes of meaning in the institutions and practice of the society is the essential struggle in the process of social change in the new historical context, movements to seize the power of the minds, not state power.” ‘Manuel Castells Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley’   

These logic of networks are not planned by technology as such technological tools are program by minds as the knowledge and order are cognitive personality within the individual mind. Yes, the person mind naturally are connected to bodies which indicates that there have to obtain to reflection in universal scheme of individual survival and in a world in which signals has process the human minds as there shapes and what people do and the ability to influence, to change the categories through which people think the world and will tend to become the essential battle. If person win the battle of mind, you win the battle of politics, the battle of the economy, because people will decide what they want to buy or what they don’t want to buy and that the commotion of information that control the fiscal markets, the aptitude of companies to journey the prejudice of economic markets decides the destiny of the industries and the organizations. ‘Manuel Castells Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley’ 

The logic of the information age

The logic of networks comprises the innovative social morphology of the societies and the diffusion of networking logic considerably modifies the process and outcome with the process of construction, knowledge, authority and culture. While the networking appearance of social group has survived in extra period and places as the novel information technology paradigm provides the basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the complete societal structure.’ (Castells Vol.I p. 469). This network logic and the form of organization induce a social willpower at superior level being one that was unidentified before. The fundamental influence of network flows will get further significance than the precise welfare they stand for, the flows of authority. It becomes imperative to be in attendance in a system and not be disqualified from it and single system might rule another fewer vibrant and influential network. As Castells admit that not all extent and institution of society go after the logic of the network culture, in the same means that business societies built-in for extended time lots of pre-industrial form (Castells Vol. III p. 350).

Therefore, Castells highlights the individual ways and diverse social discussion movements as the network actors are essential from valuable viewpoints but are much like a responsibility to develop into active processes in network. (Cited in, Peltola, 2006 p. 13) This is significant because Castells’s network society is not outside pleasant-sounding edifice but a natural work of art requiring input by each one of the units to assure useful success. (Cited in, Peltola, 2006 p. 13) As the effort for following few networks of dialogue, may mean the pursuit for domination above one’s competitor, the basic end in Castells’s study is that, the political precondition of system society is not contestable and it is Castells’s personal network program, which is the self-declared champion of political struggles. (Cited in, Peltola, 2006 p. 16) The informationalism to Castells, is based on the machinery of knowledge and order, as Castells sees a closer linkage amid civilization and creative forces, between strength and substance in the informational form of maturity (Castells 1996, p. 18 cited in, Bo Grönlund 1997 and 1999).