The Network is the Message
Manuel Castells · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2002
This chapter begins by describing the network as the organizational form of the Information Age, with the Internet as its technological basis. It discusses the network’s advantages in terms of flexibility and its disadvantages in coordinating functions, focussing resources on specific goals, and in accomplishing a given task, beyond a network’s certain size and complexity. It then describes the Internet as a communication medium that allows the communication of many to many, in chosen time, on a global scale. It also explains the relationship of the stock market with the perception of the Internet. Next, it evaluates the purposes of the Internet as well as its new roles in society.