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Summary: Etudiante IUP IMS à Marne La Vallée France
Review: After twenty years of search and investigations, Manuel Castells gathered many information (on the labour market, demography in the world...) borrowed from work and investigations of researchers and thus could describe the change of the world society. He put forwards the emergence of a new society: the information society which in its change has impacts on the structure of employment, the relations of the individuals to the medias and the organization of space by flows of information. This book is a mine of information and gives still more desire for reading the two following volumes. cindy
Rating: 
Summary: A Polymath Desperately in Need of Focus
Review: Given Castells' huge range of understanding and the sheer ambition of his work, it seems a bit unfair to really criticize this book. Few writers would try to tackle the huge ideas that Castells covers here - vast theories about the state and direction of humanity in relation to the rising information society. On the other hand, theory-of-everything books like this, as frequently attempted by polymaths such as Fritjof Capra, have their own unavoidable problems which deserve to be criticized. When a theorist tries to combine knowledge of everything into a huge integrated and unified theory, the writing becomes monstrously diffuse and unfocused. That is the exact problem with this book. Castells obviously has an understanding of all the disparate theoretical areas that would be encompassed by such a huge endeavor. As the book progresses, Castells is not afraid to move from areas like astrophysics to rural sociology to corporate architecture to programming language to everything else you could think of, often in successive paragraphs. But when describing everything, Castells eventually reaches conclusions on nothing. Bringing together disparate realms of knowledge is one thing, but reaching insights that make sense is much more difficult. That all makes this book extremely tiresome for the reader. In that exasperating theory-of-everything fashion, Castells can't stop piling on new terminology like real virtuality, technopoles, or milieux of information (terms created by himself or others) that merely illustrate the smashing together of ideas, rather than synthesis. And whenever it's time for an awe-inspiring insight, Castells can only come up with supposedly deep (usually in italics for significance) pontifications like "space is crystallized time" or "a place is a locale whose form...[is] self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity." These are indications of Castells' writing style - never-ending collections of disconnected pieces of data, topped off by windy pronouncements. After so many intensive build-ups, Castells can come up with little for the reader to really chew on. And get this man an editor, please. Extremely long paragraphs, some more than two entire pages long, illustrate a real lack of control in the writing department. Castells also has the habit of endlessly qualifying his ideas by explaining what he's NOT going to talk about and why he decided to cover what he IS talking about, to the extent that he almost forgets to make his points at all (see the early portions of chapter 4 for a good example of this). And to think that this 500+ page monster is merely the first book in a trilogy on this subject. Castells deserves credit as a polymath with huge interests and ideas. But he is sorely lacking in focus, and effective writing skills. [~doomsdayer520~]
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Summary: What a great book this could have been...
Review: The Rise of the Network Society was on my reading list for school -- and I was looking forward to reading it, not only in the context of my class, but because the subject is an important one, especially regarding the distribution of information and knowledge in our society. Unfortunately, I was soon disappointed to find that Castells, with all his remarkable insight into the arts of communication, has not been able to go beyond the oh-so cumbersome turns of phrase typical of academic writing. I find myself turned off by the lingo, where I am truly interested in the subject; I resent having to plow my way through his phraseology, while I certainly do appreciate the research and energy he has invested in his work. There seems to be an ideal to academic writing that somewhat opposes the general trend of having knowledge and information made accessible to everyone. Or is it that Castells really means to restrict his writing (and being read) to the groves of Academe? If proving himself versed in the field is more important than getting the information out there, what does he have to teach us about the implications of a network society? That we should better cling to our own in-group, to only those who speak our language, whatever that is? If that is so, what change can we expect from being related through networks? If Castells intends to put into practice his belief that *observing, analyzing, and theorizing is a way of helping to build a different, better world* (p. 4), then he might as well start with generously offering his insights to the world he wants to see changed.
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