An Essay on the Challenges of Network Society
An Essay on the Challenges of Network Society
Introduction: A network society is a society where the key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks. The Internet is indeed a technology of freedom-but it can free the powerful to oppress the uninformed, it may lead to the exclusion of the devalued by the conquerors of value. Castells describes a number of challenges, which he argues will “affect us all in a very fundamental way” .
Freedom: The first challenge of the network society is the challenge of the freedom itself. Internet networks provide global free communication for every-thing but the infrastructure of the networks can be owned, access to them can be controlled and they can be biased.
This is appropriate especially in politics. The Internet is very frightening to many governments because its an inherently democratic medium, so the first reaction is to reach out and control it.
Exclusion from the network: Another major challenge, opposite to the first challenge freedom of network, is exclusion from the network. In global economy and network society most things are dependent on internet based network. Network society include only what is interesting from the point of view of the values or sources of interest that program this network. The global capitalist network will include in the network companies, countries, regions, people, that enhance the value of this network in money-making terms. People who dont have this value, dont have the education, dont have the infrastructure, dont have the institutions, live without these networks which provide them with everything and capture any wealth from anywhere through processing everywhere. At the same time, if they cannot actually contribute to these networks, they are switched off.
In my opinion exclusion from network may process not only by technological infrastructure and economic or intuitional obstacles but also by political obstacles especially in the last decade.
Information procession and knowledge generation capacity: The third major challenge is the installation of information processing and knowledge-generation capacity in every one of us-and particularly in every child. It is not the literacy of using internet but is to acquire the intellectual capacity of learning to learn throughout one’s whole life.
In my opinion, more one use the information, more one gain the intellectual capacity of information processing.
Network enterprise and employment patterns: The emergence of the network enterprise, and the individualization of employment patterns, raises another major challenge. Labor relations were constructed in the industrial society and welfare state was built on these systems of industrial relations and stable employment.
In my opinion in a network society previously stable employment came under stress when many jobs are now been outsourced by many companies