The Internet Galaxy : Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society

ISBN-13: 9780199241538

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Opis

Manuel Castells is one of the world's leading thinkers on the new information age, hailed by The Economist as "the first significant philosopher of cyberspace," and by Christian Science Monitor as "a pioneer who has hacked out a logical, well-documented, and coherent picture of early 21st century civilization, even as it rockets forward largely in a blur." Now, in The Internet Galaxy, this brilliantly insightful writer speculates on how the Internet will change our lives.
Castells believes that we are "entering, full speed, the Internet Galaxy, in the midst of informed bewilderment." His aim in this exciting and profound work is to help us to understand how the Internet came into being, and how it is affecting every area of human life--from work, politics, planning and development, media, and privacy, to our social interaction and life in the home. We are at ground zero of the new network society. In this book, its major commentator reveals the Internet's huge capacity to liberate, but also its ability to marginalize and exclude those who do not have access to it. Castells provides no glib solutions, but asks us all to take responsibility for the future of this new information age.
The Internet is becoming the essential communication and information medium in our society, and stands alongside electricity and the printing press as one of the greatest innovations of all time. The Internet Galaxy offers an illuminating look at how this new technology will influence business, the economy, and our daily lives.

Recenzje

A readable, articulate and persuasive account of why the internet's most powerful impacts on the shape of business, politics and society may be yet to come. Castells is the nearest thing the internet has to a founding philosopher.

O autorze

Manuel Castells, born in Spain in 1942, is Professor of Planning and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley where he was appointed in 1979. Previously he taught for twelve years at the University of Paris. He has also been a visiting professor in fifteen universities in Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America. He has published twenty-one books, including the trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture (1996-2000), translated into fourteen languages. He has been a member of the European Commission's Expert Group on the Information Society, of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations Secretary General on Information and Communication Technology, and of the Advisory Committee to the President of South Africa on Information Technology and Development. He is a member of the European Academy.