The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

426 The Network Society
certain redefining of routines, group solidarity, cultural activities and
aspirations has been taking place. And everything indicates that the
Information Society is already having real effects on the value systems,
beliefs and representations we use to guide our actions and with which
we learn to perceive ourselves and others.
For a more impressive image of the social transformation we are
currently experiencing and its future implications, one only has to recognize
that both the domains of artistic creation and the most sophisticated
scientific debate can no longer do without the storage capacity
and transmission speed made possible by the new technologies.
Finally, is it not true that even the mobilization of people around
great political causes of global importance, on which the possibility
of the alternative regulation of globalization itself depends, seems
to be developing in direct relation to the access to the global information
networks?
While endeavouring to accompany, with the lucidity and rigour
possible, the transformations I have quoted above—which, evidently,
requires particular attention to everything, big and small, that politicians
come across “in the field,”— I am becoming more and more
convinced that, despite the amplitude and originality of the changes
currently in progress, there are analytical principles and ideological
guidelines I have adhered to early in my now considerably long political
life, which, in essence, have lost none of their pertinence.
As far as analytical principles are concerned, I would underline the
fact that the national territory still constitutes, in the era of global networks,
a fundamental reference and observation dimension, both for
understanding the economic, cultural, social and even identity-affecting
transformations in progress and for defining balanced and effective
policies.
Even more so than in other contexts, in societies such as the
Portuguese society, which are classified by some as semi-peripheral
and by others as being of intermediate development, it is imperative to
see the technical and economic modernization movement in the context
of the socio-historic decisions of a predominantly national scope
in which it emerges. In many cases, such determinations are, in reality,
a source of inertia, paradoxical configurations or truly unprecedented