“Of course, we know that technology does not determine society. But we also know that without specific technologies some social structures could not develop. For example, the industrial society could not have emerged without electricity and the electrical engine.
Thus only under the conditions of the recent wave of information and communication technologies could networks (an old form of social organisation) address their fundamental shortcoming: their inability to manage coordination functions beyond a certain threshold of size, complexity and velocity. Only under the electronicsbased technological paradigm can networks reconfigure themselves in real time, on a global–local scale, and permeate all domains of social life. This is why we live in a network society, not in an information
society or a knowledge society.Indeed, if by information or knowledge society we mean a society in which information is an essential source of wealth and power, I doubt there is any society in history that escapes this characterisation. If by information society we mean a society in which the technological paradigm is the dominant medium for social organisation, this is our society. But to characterise society only by its technological dimension is reductionist and implicitly deterministic. The proper identification of our society is in terms of its specific social structure: networks powered by microelectronics and softwarebased information and communication technologies.”
“Why networks matter”, prefácio de Castells em Network Logic.
obs.: Estive de férias, por isso a ausência de movimento por aqui.