Network Society

Recognition that the Internet allows for a larger portion of Social Organization (not just the Network Economy) to be based on Networks of small groups and individuals where large Command And Control organizations were previously necessary.

Note that a growing portion of collective action might not count as part of the "economy" because it will be non-market or at least non-money.

• Reputation Management, Network Culture, Tribe, Adhocracy; Polycentric Governance

see SmallWorld, Virtual State

Network society - Wikipedia

Network society is an expression coined in 1991 related to the social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital information and communications technologies. The intellectual origins of the idea can be traced back to the work of early social theorists such as Georg Simmel who analyzed the effect of modernization and industrial capitalism on complex patterns of affiliation, organization, production and experience.

The term network society was coined by Jan van Dijk in his 1991 Dutch book De Netwerkmaatschappij (The Network Society) and by Manuel Castells in The Rise of the Network Society (1996), the first part of his trilogy The Information Age

Turoff Wellman studied the network society as a sociologist at the University of Toronto. His first formal work was in 1973, "The Network City" with a more comprehensive theoretical statement in 1988. Since his 1979 "The Community Question", Wellman has argued that societies at any scale are best seen as networks (and "networks of networks") rather than as bounded groups in hierarchical structures

In 1978, Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff's The Network Nation explicitly built on Wellman's community analysis, taking the book's title from Craven and Wellman's "The Network City".

According to Manuel Castells, networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies.

For Castells, networks have become the basic units of modern society. Van Dijk does not go that far; for him these units still are individuals, groups, organizations and communities, though they may increasingly be linked by networks.

Castells puts great importance on the networks and argues that the real power is to be found within the networks rather than confined in global cities. This contrasts with other theorists who rank cities hierarchically

Interaction with new media

Modern Examples