Politics of the Network Society :: What is Politics?

In break of Millennium (2nd. ed., Malden, MA Blackwell, 2000), Manuel Castells makes much of the change from Industrialism (which he defines as a mode of development in which the main sources of productivity are the denary increases of factors of production and the use of new sources of energy) to Informationism (defined as the mode of development in which the main source of productivity is the qualitative capacity to optimize the conspiracy and use of the factors of production on the basis of knowledge and information). This transformation of economics, he says, is inseperable from the rise of a new social structure, the NETWORK SOCIETY. Here, he says, the indigenous shift is located in the material foundations of our existence that is, post and condemnation. We watch gone from a pattern of space as place to a conception of space as flows. Similarly, we fill gone from a conception of time as clock time to a conception of time as timeless time. Additionally, he makes much of the shift from the POLITICS of space/time to the politics of information that is, a politics enacted by token manipulation rather than material manipulation. This symbol manipulation, he says, occurs in the abduct space of the media in the form of representation, etc. Basically, he takes this idea and applies it to trustworthy conflicts in the adult male today. He makes a huge, complicated argument that the USSR deteriorate because of statism/communisms inability to adapt to this system and he also argues that China, etc. have surged economically in recent years precisely because they were able to interconnected their old political ideologies with this very real change that has ocurred in the humankind market. More importantly for our project, he brings in the notion (based on what seems to me comparable neoMarxism) of SOCIAL EXCLUSION that is, the new form of cultural imperialism in which the outgrowth World systemmatically excludes what he calls the New Fourth World by guardianship them from the mainstream technology and markets which are the driving forces behind informational capitalism. In doing so, the fourth foundation are forced into a position of uselessness compared with the rest of the world and they are quickly forced into a devastating pattern of export only their raw materials (the only resources left after exclusion) to the first world. This, of course, leads to trigger-happy nationalism, hatred, and anything other tactic that allows the new fourth world to hold on to anything resembling an identity.