The Internet Galaxy

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"The Internet is the fabric of our lives."(Castells 2001 p.1) It is the first sentence Manuel Castells used in his book 'The Internet Galaxy'. Manuel Castells who is a Professor of Sociology and Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California is one of the world's chief thinkers on the new information age. He has published over 20 books, and during 2000-2001, his research focuses on the social and economic implication of Internet, and his book The Internet Galaxy. Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society is published by Oxford University Press in 2001. And this article is going to introduce some important concepts of Internet use mentioned by Castells and the main construction of 'The Internet Galaxy' as well.

This book includes 9 chapters, which is covering a series of important topics and issues of Internet. Castells starts with the history of Internet, focuses on the process of Internet evolusion influence our society. He emphasize the development of Internet from 1962 to 1995, the extension from ARPANET to WWW. Besides, Castells believes that "The openness of the Internet's architecture was the source of its main strength"(Castells 2001) Then, he states that the 'Internet Culture' is structured by four kinds of culture including: 'the techno-meritocratic culture', 'the hacker culture', 'the virtual communication culture', and 'the entrepreneurial culture'. Next, Castells analyses the vital status of Internet in the business and economy fields, and he refers to the impact of virtual communication which is based on the Internet communication to the reality in the following chapter. In terms of the Politics of the Internet, Castells points that 'social movement' and 'the political process' use Internet as a new communication medium to 'acting' and 'informing'. And there is an issue between 'Privacy and Liberty in Cyberspace' relates to 'the politics of the Internet' is mentioned in this book. In the last three chapters, Castells analyses the Internet from multimedia, geography and 'the digital divide in a global perspective'.

Finally, he talks about the challenges of the network society such as freedom of the Internet.

[edit] References

Castells, M 2001, The Internet Galaxy: Reflection on the Internet, Business, and Society, Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York.