Global Networks-Global Divides: Bridging New and Traditional Communication Challenges

In the conclusion to The Rise of the Network Society, the distinguished professor of sociology and communications Manuel Castells wrote: Our exploration of emergent social structures across domains of human activity and experience leads to an over-arching conclusion: as an historical trend, dominant functions and processes in the Information Age are increasingly organized around networks. Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power, and culture. While the networking form of social organization has existed in other times and spaces, the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure (Castells, 2000: 500)...