By now the idea that we live in a changed universe of information and changed relations of
production as a consequence of the information technology revolution is part of the discourse
of the sociology of information. There are a variety of approaches ranging from Daniel Bell’s
“Post-Industrial Society” to Castell’s “Network Society”. The underlying idea of Castell’s
Network Society or Network Informational Society is that networks replace hierarchised and
circumscribed relationships (Castells 2000). The nature of work is transformed by the
interactive networks as opposed to hierarchised production processes involved in production
and exchange. Networks and thus processes of production and exchange have a tendency to
extend spatially and be globalised. Benkler (2002, 2003, 2004) has suggested that there have
been two information revolutions. The first led to an industrial information economy and the
second to a network information economy. The industrial information economy was
dominated by the industrial production of information (financial services, accounting,
software, science) and cultural (films, music) production, and the manipulation of symbols (ie
brands eg. nike). The new, the networked information economy is based on a
communications environment built on cheap processors interconnected in a pervasively
networked environment—typified by the internet. |