The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society - Hardcover

Castells, Manuel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199241538 ISBN 13: 9780199241538

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Manuel Castells is one of the world's leading thinkers on the new information age, hailed by The Economist as "the first significant philosopher of cyberspace," and by Christian Science Monitor as "a pioneer who has hacked out a logical, well-documented, and coherent picture of early 21st century civilization, even as it rockets forward largely in a blur." Now, in The Internet Galaxy, this brilliantly insightful writer speculates on how the Internet will change our lives.
Castells believes that we are "entering, full speed, the Internet Galaxy, in the midst of informed bewilderment." His aim in this exciting and profound work is to help us to understand how the Internet came into being, and how it is affecting every area of human life--from work, politics, planning and development, media, and privacy, to our social interaction and life in the home. We are at ground zero of the new network society. In this book, its major commentator reveals the Internet's huge capacity to liberate, but also its ability to marginalize and exclude those who do not have access to it. Castells provides no glib solutions, but asks us all to take responsibility for the future of this new information age.
The Internet is becoming the essential communication and information medium in our society, and stands alongside electricity and the printing press as one of the greatest innovations of all time. The Internet Galaxy offers an illuminating look at how this new technology will influence business, the economy, and our daily lives.

About this title

About the Author

Manuel Castells is Professor of Planning and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also been a visiting professor in fifteen universities in Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America and has published twenty-one books, including the acclaimed trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, which has been translated into fourteen languages.

Review

"An excellent, readable, nontechnical summary of the history, social implications and likely future of Internet business."--Publishers Weekly

"Absorbing history.... Castells observes that while the Internet has the potential to strengthen democracy through broadening the sources of information and enabling greater citizenship participation, it has at the same time contributed greatly to the politics of scandal.... In his sobering final chapter, the author studies the divide between peoples and regions that operate in the digital world and those that cannot."--Kirkus Reviews

Reviews of other books by Castells:
"The most compelling attempt yet made to map the contours of the global information age."--Anthony Giddens, New Statesman
"So far, the person who has straddled the world of social theory and Silicon Valley most successfully is Manuel Castells. Mr Castells enjoys a growing reputation as the first significant philosopher of cyberspace."--The Economist

"Manuel Castells is today the most insightful theoretician of the information society."--Frederico Rampini, La Revista dei Libri

"A magnus opus if ever there was one, these three books together constitute, in my view, the finest piece of contemporary social analysis for at least a generation."--Frank Webster, British Journal of Sociology

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0199241538
• ISBN 13: 9780199241538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304