Week 5B

In this week's article by Manuel Castells, the topics of networking and social dominance arise in question and theory.  Castells, after a brief introduction, divides his points into seven main topics of interest. In the introduction, Castells explains why social networks are only now coming onto the scene as a major form of communication.  He asks, "Why the network society now?"  He states that microelectronics and software-based forms of communication technologies must be developed before we expect to have a complete global network.  If the technology was around fifty years ago, then we would have experienced network societies fifty years ago.  First, networks act on a global standpoint, and they do not feel the effects of boundaries.  In other words, they feel no bounds because the network itself never ends.  Also, all countries and nations feel the influence from a network society even though they may not have access to the internet.  Secondly, small, medium, and large businesses must be able to function as a network.  If this system fails, the company will be forced out by a leaner, more flexible network under it.  Third, the networking found at political institutions is in fact based on the ideas found within the nation state.  Fourth, a civil society will be altered through means of debate, often times taking place on the internet.  Fifth, sociability must contain a new meaning that contains the words of social networking, as well as new terms such as smart mobs and virtual communities.  Sixth, we now receive our ways of practice of social media, and and these facts define our limitations of human beings.      Finally, in this network society, power continues to be the structuring force of its shape and direction.  However, power does not reside in institutions, not even in the state or in large corporations; it is merely located in the networks that structure societies.