Untitled - socium.ge

42 Manuel Castellslong since: that technology can only yield its promise in the framework ofcultural, organizational, and institutional transformations. Computers inschool are only as good as the teachers are. And teachers cannot do muchunless the organizational set-up of the school transcends the disciplinarybureaucracies of the information age. Or, alternatively, the Internet in universitiescannot do much in the context of a cultural and academic setting that, inmany cases, has changed little since the pre-industrial theological schools.Furthermore, computers and the Internet do little to help economic productivityand business competitiveness in the absence of the diffusion of the organizationalform represented by the network enterprise. The dot-com bust wasprovoked by the fantasies of business consultants and futurologists who forgotthat the key role of the Internet is to power the real economy, rather than toescape into the domain of a new, virtual economy. And electronic democracymust start with the redefinition of citizen participation and political participation.In broader terms of social evolution, the notion of the information societyreproduces the myth of the historical continuum from nomadic to agriculturalsocieties, then to industrial society, to culminate in the apogee, obviously inour time, of the information society. Human history is then assimilated to thelong march of progress under the guidance of reason (with occasional prayersto God just in case), as exemplified by the wonders of computers, clean toilets,and smart weapons. No conflict, no contradiction, just technologically predeterminedchange, and resistance to change. And since resistance to reason isirrational, it must be obliterated to clear the shining path toward our promisedstar.If, instead, we identify our society as a network society, in the precise sensedefined and elaborated in this chapter, we must place at the center of the analysisthe networking capacity of institutions, organizations, and social actors,both locally and globally. Connectivity and access to networks become essential.The right combination of information and communication technology,development of human capacity to take advantage of the full potential of thesetechnologies, and organizational restructuring based on networking becomesthe key to ensuring productivity, competitiveness, innovation, creativity, and,ultimately, power and power sharing. If we conceive of the global networksociety as something other than telecommunication networks, if we recall theinteractive, multinodal logic of the Internet, then it is possible to designcommunication systems for inclusion and collaboration. If all cultures havetheir relevance as nodes of a networked system of cultural dialogue, there isno opposition between hypermodernity and tradition, but complementarityand reciprocal learning.In sum, the notion of the information or knowledge society is simply a technologicalextrapolation of the industrial society, usually assimilated to the