Network Society

The Rise of the Network Society – Manuel Castells

Reading notes:
● In the information age, networks are the foundation for most tasks and processes.
● Networks are the new shape of society’s social structure.
● The way things are made, experienced, governed, and cherished are all changed by networking reasoning.

● Because of information technology, networking has become a bigger way for people to get together with others.
● The power of flows is more important than the strength of flows.
● The network society is defined by the fact that social morphology is more important than social activity.
● Networks are made up of nodes that are linked together in many areas, such as politics, business, and the media.
● The distance between two points changes depending on which ones are in or out of the network.
● Networks are open systems that are always changing and adding new nodes.
● Capitalism is now global and structured around financial flows.
● In a network culture, work is personalized, broken up, and spread out.
● Electronic contact networks are becoming more and more important in politics.
● Dominant functions live in the space of flows and timeless time, while lesser functions live in the space of places and clock time.
● The network society is a change from Nature ruling Culture to Culture referring to Culture. Information is now the most important part of social order.
● It marks the beginning of a new age, the information age, with autonomy of culture from material bases of existence.

Lecture notes:
● Network society (the history of the internet)
○ Node-to-node communication, one to one
○ Pocket switching (hold different bits of information) – send bits of data, send message in smaller bits of information (not a big chunk)
● Physicality of the internet
○ IP – internet protocol – set of rules governing the format of data sent via the internet or local network
○ TCP – transmission control protocol – used on top of IP to ensure reliable transmission of packets
○ HTML – HyperText Markup Language: is the most basic building block of the Web. It defines the meaning and structure of web content.
○ HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol: is an application-layer protocol for transmitting hypermedia documents, such as HTML.
○ Ex: Physical roads – cables, serves
■ Route for the delivery – IP
■ The logistics for delivery – TCP
■ The parcel itself, how it looks like – HTML
■ You receive the same looking parcel as you ordered – HTTP
● Network society – have become the basic units of modern society and so the network society can be seen to be more than just the information society (communication – internet)
○ Flexibility
○ Scalability
○ Survivability
● Specific features
○ Space of Flows – “the space of flows refers to the technological an organizational possibility of practicing simultaneity (or chosen time in timesharing) without contiguity.”
○ Timeless Time – “This is done, on the one hand, by compressing time (as in split-second global financial transactions or the effort to fight “instant wars”), and, on the other, by blurring the sequence of social practices, including past, present, and future, in a random order.”
○ Ex: financial market – stock exchange

Seminar notes:
● Cloud – computer
● Cloud storage – model of computer data storage – digital data is stored
○ Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which the digital data is stored in certain servers, said to be on “the cloud”.
■ The physical storage spans multiple servers, and the physical environment is typically owned and managed by a hosting company
○ Public cloud – your data is stored at the providers data center / no management (less security/ but attacks are rare, no control over your data security/ data remains separate from other users data. )

○ Private cloud – private internet or hosting data centre (more security/more costs , information shared not shared/ company is responsible for management)
● Internet v.s World wide web
○ Not the same
■ Internet – a global system of interconnected computer networks that use TCP/IP protocols to link devices worldwide, a massive interconnection of computer networks around the world
■ World wide web (www) – online content that is formatted in HTML and access via TTP protocol, service provided by the internet
● WWW

○
○ HTML (https: website)
○ Gifs and animations
○ Websites send via emails
○ But websites not reactive
○ Classification of indo (tagging)
○ User experience (click on image to enlarge
○ User participation/mass participation
○ Software as a service
● Activity: proposal for web 3.0
○ What can be improved and in what way
○ Control, advertising, sponsorship, creativity, access
○ Government, companies, social groups/people (how they can contribute)
○ Idea: updates with events, crime, useful information occurring in the community
■ Advertise: through social media platforms, create ads
■ Using Facebook group chats
■ Sending proof of postcodes
■ Allowing people in the community to comment
■ Can check others but can only view and not comment