Define The Information Technology Revolution And Critically Analyse Its Role In Creating The Network Society
Define The Information Technology Revolution And Critically Analyse Its Role In Creating The Network Society.The Information Technology Revolution is probably the most important force shaping communities today. While some of the key forces behind the IT revolution are universal, the impacts on any given community will be unique, depending on its individual make up, economic structure, attributes and responses. Technology proves us with the ability to create, process and store information. (Martin 1995, p 33)It can also be said that the world is experiencing a 'third industrial revolution'. This revolution is total, effecting all aspects of our lives. It is a move from collective to individual. (Castells 2000, p 28-35)According to Castells, we are currently experiencing an IT Revolution just as there was an Agricultural Revolution and an Industrial Revolution. He compares the two and then contrasts it by saying that the industrial revolution was slower and localised where as the IT revolution was faster and global. (Castells 2000, p30 ) There is a shift from industrialism (mass production) to informationalism (flexible production). Rather than companies producing in huge volumes, they are beginning to adopt techniq
(Castells 2000, p62)Silicon Valley was not only the centre of breakthroughs in the computer industry; it pioneered emphasis upon networking and decentralised corporate structures. Some Tele-centres are set up to serve a number of different companies. The network society opens up a new realm of contradictions and conflicts as people around the world refuse to become shadows of global flows and begin to project their dreams. Castells argues with this and says that the evidence he finds is very contradictory, and can support both arguments, but he is very optimistic on this matter. Each part o the network enterprise may have autonomous set of goals; the performance of the given enterprise will depend on how well it is connected, and how well the goals of the network components are consisted with the goals of the network enterprise itself. (Freeman 1994, p97-100) Time and space are related in society as is nature and their meanings and manifestations in social practice evolve throughout histories and across cultures. (Castells 2000, p267) Jobs generate demand for floor space and buildings. The third world has become increasingly diversified internally, the first world has generated exclusion and an emergent of a fourth world as being the most excluding part of the world not taking advantage of the IT revolution. Capital and information are truly global. (Castells 2000, p50)Most of the major social institutions are becoming reorganised in network form. The word "network" refers to any kind of functioning network- financial, supplier, producer, coalition etc. They form a culture of real virtuality in which our symbolic environments is, by and large, structured in an inclusive, flexible, diversified, hypertext, in which we navigate everyday. The innovators in Silicon Valley rapidly broke the bounds of their original location. Those with high concentrations of routine functions may by vulnerable to job losses, while those with creative or non-standardizable activities are more likely subject to growth. In the network society a fundamental form of social domination is the prevailence of the logic of the space of flows over the space of places and induces a metropolitan dualism and a form of social/territorial exclusion, which bypasses and marginalises people and places.
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