The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies) [Paperback]

I already knew the book and, being one of the main current scholars of comunication theories, I wanted to keep some of his books in my private library.

I first came across Castells' work including this book as well as his wider hypothesis about a highly networked world in 2004. Ever since, and following a humble attempt at an academic essay later, I remain deeply sceptical of a widely networked world and an Internet galaxy which he so eloquently writes about.

Marshall McLuhan said the immortal words "the medium is message". Via this book Castells asserts that the "network is the message" and the Internet is the "very fabric" of our lives. He prudently explains that a network is a set of interconnected nodes and a very old form of human practice, lest one commits the fallacy of presuming it to be something merely or exclusively electronic.

In this book he explores the culture of the Internet, e-business, new economy, dotcom boom (and bust), politics of civil society and of cyberspace - all the usual suspects. Networks are proliferating in all domains of the economy and society, outperforming and "outcompeting" vertically organised corporations and centralised bureaucracies, according to him. However, I think this book is a bit short sighted. Having read it many times over, I remain convinced that rather than hypothesizing about the "Internet Galaxy", Castells has put forward a new age theory of globalisation - which has winners and losers, and is littered with pluses and pitfalls.

Are those who live on less than a $1 a day in this Internet Galaxy? Perhaps they are caught in a time warp if this Internet Galaxy is here. Is the destitute kid in sub-Saharan Africa part of a "Network" when he walks miles to get a pot of water? What about parts of the world, and there are some, where they have no electricity and running water, let alone the Internet. The author and the wider academia describe it as the "Digital Divide". Castells calls them the "Internet haves and have-nots" in this book. I think it's a bit more basic than that.

Phantasms of a new world envisaged by him stem from using technology as an entry point as well as the basis of the argument devoid of a constructive dosage of ground reality in relation to the world we inhabit. A supposition that everyone has equal access, equal understanding and similar concerns about the Internet; if not presently then at some point in the immediate future, leaves one at the risk of being unrealistic. In most parts, the Internet Galaxy commits that fault in my opinion.

I appreciate the profound global changes technology is bringing about which have been so eloquently mapped by the author. But I cannot ignore the short and long term differences it is creating in our world. While this book is recommended reading for media and cultural studies students; readers across the wider world, including myself, may interpret what has been said in this book in a different light.

This is essential reading for those interested in the social, rather than the technical, implications of the internet revolution. A sociologist based at the University of Berkeley in San Francisco, Castells has been dubbed the "premiere philosopher of the internet revolution".