M. Castells Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture

Volume I. The Rise of the Network Society.
Prologue: Network and "I".
1. Information technology revolution.
2. Information economy and the process of globalization.
3. Network enterprise: culture, institutions and organizations of the information economy,
4. Transformation of work and employment: network workers, unemployed workers and workers with flexible working hours.
5. The culture of real virtuality: the integration of electronic communications, the end of the mass audience and the emergence of interactive networks.
6. Space of flows.
7. Edge of Eternity: Timeless Time.

Conclusion: Network society.
Volume II. The power of identity.
Volume III. End of the millennium.
Introduction: time for change.
1. The crisis of industrial statism and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The first volume, “The Rise of the Network Society,” as well as that part of the third volume, “The End of the Millennium,” where the author examines the causes and consequences of the collapse of the USSR.
The purpose of the book is to observe and analyze the process of transition of human society into the information age. This transition is based on the revolution in information technology, which in the 1970s laid the foundation for a new technological system that spread throughout the world. Along with changes in material technology, the social and economic structure has undergone revolutionary changes: relatively rigid and vertically oriented institutions are replaced by flexible and horizontally oriented networks through which power and the exchange of resources are exercised. For M. Castells, the formation of international business and cultural networks and the development of information technology are inextricably linked and interdependent phenomena. All spheres of life, from the geopolitics of large national states to the everyday life of ordinary people, are changing, finding themselves placed in the information space and global networks.
The revolution in information technology is “the starting point in analyzing the complexities of the formation of a new economy, society and culture.” M. Castells emphasizes “technology is society, and society cannot be understood or described without its technological tools.” However, M. Castells does not accept the point of view of orthodox Marxism, and says that technology does not at all determine historical evolution and social changes. According to M. Castells, technology is a resource potential for the development of society, providing different options for social change. At the same time, society is largely free to make decisions about its path of movement. To support his position regarding the role of technology in social change, the author of the trilogy turns to the history of the development of the computer industry in the United States. According to Castells, the invention of the personal computer and the subsequent massification of users were not strictly determined by technological laws: an alternative personal computer was the concentration of control over the development of computer technology in the hands of large corporations (IBM) and the government. With this path of development of society, totalitarian tendencies of general surveillance are gradually increasing, and the power capabilities of the government, armed with computer technology, are expanding.
The example of the history of the computer industry demonstrates only a partial dependence of changes in society on technological development, i.e. production. M. Castells assigns the same important place to experience, considered as the impact of human subjects on themselves, through the changing relationship between their biological and cultural identities. “Experience is built around the endless search for the satisfaction of human needs and desires.” Along with production and experience, the third important factor influencing the organization of human activity is power, which is understood by the theorist as the imposition of the will of some subjects on others using symbolic or physical violence. In a developing society, the factor of production, which means development computer technology, has a dominant influence on both power relations and culture.
Information technologies raise the importance of knowledge and information flows to hitherto unknown heights. M. Castells makes a significant distinction between the well-known concepts of the “information society” and his own concept of the “information society”. The concepts of the information society emphasize the decisive role of information in society. According to M. Castells, information and the exchange of information have accompanied the development of civilization throughout human history and have been of critical importance in all societies. At the same time, the emerging "information society" is being constructed in such a way that "the generation, processing and transmission of information have become fundamental sources of productivity and power." One of the key features of the information society is the network logic of its basic structure. In addition, the information society is developing against the backdrop of accelerating and contradictory processes of globalization, processes affecting all points of the globe, involving or excluding from the general social, symbolic and economic exchange.
Information technologies determine the picture of the present and will even more determine the picture of the future. In this regard, M. Castells attaches particular importance in the book to the study of how these technologies developed in the post-war period. In information technology, M. Castells includes “a set of technologies in microelectronics, the creation of computer equipment (machines and software), telecommunications/broadcasting and optical-electronic industries." Thus, the core of the transformations that the modern world is experiencing is associated with information processing and communication technologies. M. Castells offers a sociological description and understanding of the main points in the history of the formation of this kind of technology, paying much attention to the role of Silicon Valley in the development of the computer industry. The spirit of free enterprise, university intellectualism, and government contracts made Silicon Valley a leader in the computer industry.
M. Castells outlines the boundaries of the information technology paradigm, which has several main features. Firstly, information within the framework of the proposed paradigm is the raw material of technology and, therefore, first of all, technology affects information, but not vice versa. Secondly, the effects of new technologies cover all types of human activity. Thirdly, information technology initiates the network logic of changes in the social system. Fourth, the information technology paradigm is based on flexibility, where the ability to reconfigure becomes a “decisive feature in society.” Fifthly, important characteristic The information technology paradigm is the convergence of specific technologies in a highly integrated system, when, for example, microelectronics, telecommunications, optical electronics and computers are integrated into information systems. Taken together, the characteristics of the information technology paradigm are the foundation of the information society.
M. Castells's book is not a book about globalization. However, consideration of the process of globalization and its impact on society becomes the most important subject of the work. For M. Castells, globalization is associated, first of all, with the globalization of the economy. The concept of “global economy” as interpreted by M. Castells means that “the main types of economic activity (production, consumption and circulation of goods and services), as well as their components (capital, labor, raw materials, management, information, technology, markets) are organized in on a global scale, directly or using an extensive network connecting economic agents.” A global economy is an economy that can operate as one system in real time on a global scale. M. Castells explores the causes, prospects and limitations of the development of the global economy. In his study of the process of globalization, the theorist turns to a socio-economic analysis of the place of various regions in the global economic and information space. According to M. Castells, the process of globalization is not so clear: some regions (for example, the Pacific) are actively involved in global economic exchange, and at the same time other large regions (Africa) are excluded from the global system.
The business enterprise involved in network exchanges becomes a major actor in the information economy. M. Castells examines in detail the transformations of the organizational structure of a capitalist enterprise. M. Castells believes that in the 1970s, qualitative changes began in the organization of production and markets in the global economy. These changes occurred under the influence of at least three factors. Of course, the sociologist considers the first factor to be the achievements of information technology, the second is the need for business organizations to respond to an increasingly uncertain, rapidly changing external environment, and finally, the third factor is the revision of labor relations, providing for savings in labor costs and the introduction of automated jobs. M. Castells examines changes in production and enterprise management aimed at creating a flexible organizational structure capable of participating in network intercompany exchanges. In this regard, a review of the organizational structure of business in Southeast Asia is indicative for M. Castells. Corporate conglomerates of Japan, South Korea, China serve as an example efficient work intercompany business networks. M. Castells concludes that the traditional approach to the organization as an autonomous agent of a market economy should be replaced by “the concept of the emergence of international networks of firms and subunits of firms as the basic organizational form of the information-global economy.” M. Castells identifies networks of suppliers, networks of producers, consumer networks, coalitions on standards (initiated by those who set global standards for goods and information), networks of technological cooperation.
M. Castells notes that changes in the organizational structure of business enterprises are not limited to the transformation of resource flows and inter-organizational exchanges: these changes affect the characteristics of the individual workplace, and, therefore, affect the majority working population. M. Castells comes to several generalizations that relate to the transformation of employment on the threshold of the information society. He believes that “there is no systematic structural relationship between the spread of information technology and the evolution of employment levels in the economy as a whole.” Also, the traditional form of work (full-time, clearly defined job responsibilities) is slowly but surely being eroded. Thus, individualization of labor occurs in the labor process.

In the 60s, the famous theorist Marshall McLuhan put forward the concept of the transition of modern society from the “Gutenberg Galaxy” to the “McLuhan Galaxy”. Typography made the printed symbol, the printed word, the basic unit of information exchange in Western civilization. The invention of photography, cinema, and video makes the visual image a key unit of the new cultural era. The culmination of the “McLuhan Galaxy” can be considered the widespread spread of television, which changed not only the environment of mass communications, but the habits and lifestyle of a significant part of humanity. “The success of television is a consequence of the basic instinct of a lazy audience.” Of course, listening to radio broadcasts and watching television programs in no way excludes other activities. It becomes an ever-present background, the fabric of our lives. Thus, according to M. Castells, a new culture is emerging, “the culture of real virtuality.” Real virtuality is a system in which reality itself (i.e. the material/symbolic existence of people) is completely captured and immersed in virtual images, in a fictional world where external representations are not just on the screen, but themselves become experiences.
Along with television, the development of electronic computer networks becomes the factor that can be considered formative for the culture of virtual reality. The Internet, like many other modern phenomena, can rightfully be considered a creation of the sixties. The history of the Internet shows how the development of computer technology, government interests, and the independent spirit of universities were brought into play to create a new symbolic cosmos. M. Castells explores the stages of the formation of the Internet, i.e. its transformation from a local computer network for military purposes into a new global reality of the information age. However, M. Castells does not at all believe that the Internet “works” only for globalization. He believes that “computer communication is not a universal means of communication and will not be so in the foreseeable future.” “New electronic media do not separate from traditional cultures; they absorb them.” At the same time, there is a wide social and cultural differentiation leading to the formation of specific virtual communities. Members of these communities may be separated in physical space, but in virtual space they can be as traditional as communities in small towns.
M. Castells examines how the face of a city changes as it enters the information society.
M. Castells uses network theory to analyze changes occurring in the urban environment of the information society. Network structures are reproduced both at the intracity level and at the level of relations between global cities. The network structure does not mean the disintegration of the intra-city hierarchy: information and power nodes appear in global cities, which close the main flows of information, financial resources and become points of acceptance management decisions. Resource flows run between these nodes, and the nodes themselves are in constant competition with each other. Global nodes are concentrated in metropolitan areas, which “are very large agglomerations of people.” The defining feature of megacities is that they concentrate administrative, production and management functions on the entire planet. Megacities fully reflect the contradictions of the “global-local” dichotomy: involved in global business and cultural networks, they exclude local populations from them, which become functionally useless. M. Castells believes that the marginalization of local communities occurs as a result of the economic, political and cultural expansion of megacities. M. Castells considers megacities as large-scale centers of “global dynamism”, cultural and political innovation and connecting points of all types of global networks. Thus, M. Castells gives a description of the processes occurring in the structure of cities during the transition to the information age.

M. Castells does not limit the study of spatial transformations to the analysis of the urban environment - he also proposes a social theory of space and a theory of the space of flows. The social theory of space develops from a combination of three factors: physical space, social space and time. According to M. Castells, “space is the expression of society” and also “space is crystallized time.” From a social point of view, which the author of the book adheres to, “space is the material support of social practices of time division.” Society, that is, social space, is built around the flow of capital, information, technology, organizational interaction, images, sounds and symbols. By flows, M. Castells understands “purposeful, repeating, programmed sequences of exchanges and interactions between physically separated positions that are occupied by social actors in the economic, political and symbolic structures of society.” Thus, “the space of flows is the material organization of social practices in divided time, operating through flows.” The space of flows is seen by M. Castells in the form of three layers of material support:
The first layer consists of a chain of electronic pulses concentrated in microelectronics, telecommunications, computer processing, broadcasting systems, and high-speed transport.
The second layer consists of nodes and communication centers that ensure smooth interaction between elements integrated into global electronic networks.
The third layer refers to the spatial organization of the dominant managerial elites performing management functions.
In the global-local dichotomy, elites refer to those who are interested in developing a global power space that will allow them to control unorganized localized peoples. The elites of the information society can be considered as a spatially limited network subculture in which a lifestyle is formed that allows them to unify their own symbolic environment around the world. The layers of material support that take shape in the space of flows form the infrastructure of the society that M. Castells calls informational.
The information society is changing the perception of time. Let us recall that one of the most important signs of the beginning of modernization of Western society was a change in attitude towards time. In the Middle Ages, time was event-based, when there was a time of day, a time of night, a time of holidays and a time of everyday life. The invention of the clock mechanism and parallel social changes made the quantitative measurement of time necessary. At the same time, the emerging bourgeoisie had a need for “a more accurate measurement of time, on which their profit depends.” This is how time ends up in the hands of those in power. At the same time, time begins to be secularized and rationalized. But this was not yet the time of the industrial age. It was still close to the "natural" biological rhythm. The bourgeois era finally turned time into an economic resource, and the technological changes accompanying it subordinated time to the mechanical rhythm of working machines.
However, the coming era may change the perception of time: “linear, irreversible, predictable time is fragmented into pieces in a network society.” The new concept of temporality proposed by M. Castells in his book is called timeless time. Timeless time means that the measurement of time is replaced by the manipulation of time. These manipulations are necessary in order to make real the “freedom of capital from time and the liberation of culture from clocks.” The liberation of global society from time dependence is accelerated by “new information technologies and is built into the structure of the network society.”

M. Castells decided to create a fundamental socio-theoretical work dedicated to the transition of humanity to the information age. In this work, all more or less significant events in politics, economics, technology, culture and everyday life that are relevant to the author’s analysis are examined. Naturally, the fascinating and in many ways instructive saga of Soviet-Russian history could not escape the attention of the sociologist. “The Crisis of Industrial Statism and the Collapse of the Soviet Union” is the title of the chapter of Castells’ book dedicated to our realities. What is this chapter about? The author set out to solve a “historical mystery”: why did Soviet leaders in the 1980s feel an urgent need to engage in the process of perestroika, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet state? Before proceeding to present Castells' answer to this question, we will give some terminological explanations related to the concept of “industrial statism”. According to statism, Castells understands " social system, organized around the appropriation of the economic surplus produced in society by power holders in the state apparatus, as opposed to capitalism, in which the surplus is appropriated by those who exercise control in economic organizations." Statism is focused on maximizing power, that is, on increasing the military and ideological ability of the state apparatus to impose its goals on society. The Soviet state considered the main factor of economic prosperity to be the development of heavy industry and mechanical engineering, which determined the industrial nature of Soviet statism. Up to a certain point, the progressive policy of big leaps justified itself: M. Castells rightly notes that the Soviet Union transformed from an agricultural country into a powerful industrial power in record time, although this transformation was paid for by millions of lives.
Indeed, in the 1980s, the USSR produced significantly more than the United States in a number of sectors of heavy industry, but by that time the mere fact of having a powerful production base no longer guaranteed economic prosperity. As M. Castells believes, the Soviet Union “missed the revolution in information technology that took shape in the world in the mid-1970s.” At some point, the Soviet leadership made a strategic mistake by deciding to curtail its own research program in the field of computer technology. Instead, a policy of “race for the leader” was implemented, when efforts were aimed at copying American and Japanese architecture computer systems. The result of this policy was an ever-increasing technological gap in a key industry.
In addition, strict political and police control over the lives of Soviet citizens hampered the development of information technologies, which facilitated the unhindered dissemination of information. Thus, paradoxically, social reality, in which there was no open civil society with freedom of speech, had a significant impact on technological development, not allowing information technologies to take the place they are given in the information age.
We should pay tribute to M. Castells: in his analytical calculations, he did not limit himself only to those reasons for the collapse of the USSR that lie in the formation of the information age: the author of the work considers a number of other economic and geopolitical factors that brought the end of the state of “real socialism” closer. Political factors include the closed nature of Soviet society, the constant search for internal and external enemies, the destruction of basic ideological principles in the eyes of ordinary citizens, as well as the increasing corruption and irresponsibility of the Soviet and party leadership. The economic factors include the super-militarization of the economy, a structural bias towards heavy industry and mechanical engineering, almost complete absence independence of business entities in making decisions about their own activities, as well as a tendency to implement economically unjustified projects.
M. Castells' conclusions regarding the present and future of Russia are disappointing. He believes that the legacy of Soviet statism, coupled with the political and economic speculation of the elite, as well as the voluntaristic recommendations of the International Monetary Fund, led Russia and other countries of the former USSR to destroy the foundations of civil society. The collapse of the Soviet system has created a vast cultural, information and economic wasteland, which will be quite difficult to turn into one of the construction sites of the information society.

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Any outstanding book can be understood in different contexts and assessed from different points of view. For the Russian reader, who is not indifferent to the fate of his country, the internationally recognized three-volume work of Professor M. Castells can serve as a guiding thread in choosing a position regarding the possible trajectories of Russia's development in the coming decades. If you like, this is a reference book, a textbook, and a moral guideline, although the author did not strive to look like an encyclopedist, a prophet, or a teacher.
He himself, in the epigraph to the “Prologue” (p. 25), explains his contribution to the understanding of the modern world:
“Do you think I’m a scientist, a well-read person?
“Of course,” answered Ji-gong. - Is not it so?
“Not at all,” said Confucius. “I just grabbed one thread that connects everything else” (Emphasis added. - O. Sh.).
The creative freedom with which the book was written is amazing. This is precisely the prerequisite for the serious result achieved by Manuel Castells.
Subject specialists can write volumes of critical comments on many individual subjects, knots of facts, and interpretation of particulars. That's why they are experts in these particulars. But the problem always comes down to how to rise above these particulars and “grasp the one thread that connects everything else.” In a professional environment, such attempts are usually initially met with skepticism and even poorly concealed irritation. However, public interest is invariably directed towards these seekers of guiding threads.
Manuel Castells is one of the most authoritative social thinkers and researchers in the modern world.
He was born in 1942 in Spain and participated in the anti-Franco movement. Then he studied in Paris, Professor Alain Touraine considers him his most outstanding student. For 12 years he taught urban sociology in Paris at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Since 1979 he has been a professor at the University of California (Berkeley), at the same university for several years he headed the Institute for Western European Studies. For several years, at the invitation of the Government of Spain, he simultaneously worked as director of the Institute of Sociology of New Technologies at the Autonomous University of Madrid (1988-1994). He has lectured as a visiting professor at universities in Chile, Montreal, Mexico City, Caracas, Geneva, Wisconsin-Madison, Tokyo, Boston, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Amsterdam, etc.
Since 1984, he has visited the USSR - Russia several times. In the spring of 1992, he led a group of experts invited by the Government Russian Federation. Among the experts, in particular, were the current President of Brazil, Professor Fernando Cardoso (who wrote a number of works together with Manuel Castells) and the outstanding French sociologist Alain Touraine. M. Castells published a number of articles in Russian newspapers on the problems of reforming the country, and later published the book “The New Russian Revolution” (“La nueva revolucion rusa”. Madrid, 1992) and “The Collapse of Soviet Communism: A View from the Information Society” (“The Collapse of Soviet Communism: a View from the Information Society." Berkeley, 1995).
In total, he published 20 monographs, published and republished in many countries in Europe, America and Asia. His first book, which received worldwide recognition, was the monograph “La question Urbaine” (Paris, 1972) (“The Urban Question”. L., 1977). This was followed by the book “The City and the Grassroots” (L., 1983), which received the C.W Mills Prize, and the next milestone monograph was “The Informational City” (Oxford, 1989).
And finally, in 1996-1998. M. Castells publishes a fundamental three-volume monograph, which summarizes his many years of research on modern world:
Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. I-III. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996-1998.
With the consent of the author, we offer the Russian reader a translation of the first volume with the addition of Chapter 1 from Volume III (in our edition this is Chapter 8, dedicated to the collapse of the USSR and the state of modern Russia) and a final conclusion to the entire work from the same Volume III.
To make the full scale of the author’s plan, realized in the three-volume work, more obvious to the reader of the Russian edition, I will give a table of contents of the entire monograph (naturally, without the names of individual paragraphs and parts of paragraphs, which impoverishes the idea of ​​the diversity of social phenomena and connections revealed by M. Castells).
Volume I. The Rise of the Network Society.
Prologue: Network and "I".
1. Information technology revolution.
2. Information economy and the process of globalization.
3. Network enterprise: culture, institutions and organizations of the information economy,
4. Transformation of work and employment: network workers, unemployed workers and workers with flexible working hours.
5. The culture of real virtuality: the integration of electronic communications, the end of the mass audience and the emergence of interactive networks.
6. Space of flows.
7. Edge of Eternity: Timeless Time. Conclusion: Network society.
Volume II. The power of identity.
Introduction: our world, our lives.
1. Communal skies: identity and meaning in a network society.
2. Another face of the Earth: social movements against the new global order.
3. The Greening Self: Environmental Movements.
4. The end of patriarchy: social movements, family and sexuality in the information age.
5. Powerless state?
6. Information policy and the crisis of democracy. Conclusion: Social changes in the network society.
Tom Sh. The end of the millennium.
Introduction: time for change.
1. The crisis of industrial statism and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
2. The emergence of the fourth world: information capitalism, poverty and social exclusion.
3. Perverse connection: the global criminal economy.
4. Forward to the Pacific Era? Multicultural foundations of economic interdependence.
5. Uniting Europe: globalization, identity and the network state. Conclusion: Making sense of our world.
The monograph is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the fundamental civilizational processes brought to life by the fundamentally new role of information technology in the modern world. The author's conclusions are based not only on the analysis of national and international statistical data, secondary analysis of economic and sociological research by other scientists, but also on his own large-scale research. M. Castells conducted research in the USA, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, Western Europe (England, France), Russia (especially in the Academic Towns of Siberia and the Moscow region).
As a result, he formulated a holistic theory that allows us to assess the fundamental consequences of the impact of the revolution in information technology, covering all areas of human activity, on the modern world.
Castells is alien to primitive technological determinism. Thus, he makes the non-trivial assumption that the revolution in information technology semi-consciously spread through the material culture of societies the liberating spirit that blossomed in the movements of the 60s.
The author explores the emergence of a new universal social structure, which manifests itself in various forms depending on the diversity of cultures and institutions. This new social structure is associated with the emergence of a new mode of development - informationalism, which in turn was formed under the influence of the restructuring of the capitalist mode of production by the end of the 20th century.
According to Castells, societies are organized around human processes, structured and historically determined in relations of production, experience and power. At the same time, this system of concepts and their relationship, as well as interaction with social identities, is revealed to them in detail.
Social structures interact with production processes, determining the rules for the appropriation, distribution and use of “surplus” (the second part of the product of the production process is used in the form of consumption). These rules constitute the methods of production, and the methods themselves determine social relations in production, determining the existence of social classes. It is easy to see that the author here reveals a closeness to his Marxist past. After all, it was no coincidence that the first book that gave him his name in science, “The Urban Question,” had the subtitle “A Marxist Approach.”
Castells writes that in the 20th century. Humanity lived mainly under two dominant modes of production: capitalism and statism. Unlike most authors in the West, who either prefer not to use the concept of “capitalism” at all, or state that capitalism is capable of improvement, humanization, and that a post-capitalist system has already developed in developed countries, Castells often emphasizes that capitalism retains its formative features - wage labor and competition in capital accumulation. Yes, a rejuvenated information capitalism has emerged, which, after the elimination of statism as a system, flourished throughout the world in less than a decade. This form of capitalism is more rigid in its goals, but incomparably more flexible in its means, than that formed in the 1930-1940s under the influence of Keynesianism and the ideology of the welfare society.
The mode of production, as already said, determines the appropriation and use of the “surplus”. But the volume of such “surplus” is determined by the productivity of production processes. Levels of productivity themselves depend on the relationship between labor and material, as a function of the use of the means of production through the application of energy and knowledge. This process is characterized by technical relations in production that determine “modes of development.” This new concept, proposed by M. Castells, is extremely important for understanding his entire book, its design, its essence. He defines this introduced concept as follows: “Modes of development are technological schemes through which labor acts on material in order to create a product, ultimately determining the size and quality of economic surplus” (p. 39). Next, he names the previous (agrarian and industrial) methods of development, revealing their specific features and the key element that ensures in each of them an increase in the productivity of the production process.
"In the new, informational mode of development, the source of productivity lies in the technology of knowledge generation, information processing and symbolic communication. Of course, knowledge and information are critical important elements in all methods of development, since the production process is always based on a certain level of knowledge and information processing. However, specific to the informational mode of development is the impact of knowledge on knowledge itself as the main source of productivity" (p. 39).
I would like to note that the concept of development methods in many ways continues the idea of ​​production systems and production revolutions outlined in K. Marx’s sketches for Capital. Marx counted three such systems - handicraft, manufacturing, machine-industrial (see: Marx K., Engels F. Soch. T. 46. Part I. S. 203-204, 229, 503, etc.; for a systematic presentation of this theory, see .: Biyakhman L., Shkaratan O. Man at Work M., Progress Publishers, 1977. P. 27-37).
The new type of economy that has emerged in the last two decades is called by the author informational and global.
"So, informational - since the productivity and competitiveness of factors or agents in this economy (be it a firm, region or nation) depend primarily on their ability to generate, process and effectively use knowledge-based information. Global - because the main types of economic activities, such as the production, consumption and circulation of goods and services, as well as their components (capital, labor, raw materials, management, information, technology, markets) are organized on a global scale, directly or using an extensive network, connecting economic agents. And finally, informational to global - because in new historical conditions, achieving a certain level of productivity and the existence of competition is possible only within a global interconnected network" (p. 81).
Unlike the world economy that has existed in the West since the 16th century, the essence of which (according to F. Braudel and E. Wallerstein) is that the process of capital accumulation occurs throughout the world, the global economy is something else. This is an economy “capable of operating as a single system in real time on a planetary scale” (p. 105). There was no such approach to economic globalization in world literature before M. Castells. Usually a set of processes such as cross-border flows of goods, services, capital, technology, information, people, spatial and institutional integration of markets, etc. are noted.
The concept of “information economy” (like the information society) was introduced into scientific circulation back in the early 1960s; it has actually become generally accepted in relation to the reality that has developed in the Western world. But it is no accident that M. Castells clarifies the term he uses - “informational” rather than “informational” economy - and constantly uses it in connection with the global economy (the usual usage is global/informational). There is a conceptual approach behind this. In his opinion, the global network was the result of a revolution in the field of information technology, which created the material basis for the globalization of the economy, i.e. the emergence of a new, different from the previously existing economic system.
New information technologies are not just a tool for application, but also processes for development, due to which, to some extent, the distinction between users and creators disappears. In this way, users can maintain control over the technology, as is the case with the Internet. This implies a new relationship between the social processes of creating and processing symbols (culture of society) and the ability to produce and distribute goods and services (productive forces). For the first time in history, human thought is directly a productive force, and not just a specific element of the production system.
The fundamental difference between the information technology revolution and its historical predecessors is that while previous technological revolutions remained for a long time in a limited area, new information technologies almost instantly cover the entire planet. This means “immediately applying to one's own development the technologies that it [the technological revolution] creates by connecting the world through information technology” (p. 53). At the same time, there are significant areas in the world that are not included in the modern technological system: this is one of the main points of the book. Moreover, the rate of technological diffusion is selective - both socially and functionally. Different timing of access to technological power among people, countries, and regions is a critical source of inequality in the modern world. The peak of this process is the threat of exclusion of entire national and even continental economies (for example, Africa) from the world information system, and accordingly from the world system of division of labor. In this context, the author also considers the question of the possibility of Russia’s incorporation into the system of the modern world economy.
M. Castells analyzes the connection between inventors, entrepreneurs, financial corporations and the state in the information technology revolution. He argues (using examples from the USA to China and India) that throughout the world the state (and not the inventor) was the initiator and main mover of this revolution, the factor expressing and organizing social and cultural forces, promoting the development of broad and protected markets and funding macro-research programs. At the same time, decentralized innovation is stimulated by a culture of technological activism and the role of examples of quick personal success.
While the international economy as a whole is not yet global, it is moving along the path of globalization. A large share of GDP and employment in most countries continues to depend on domestic economic activity rather than on the global market. But the leading industries form sectors of the global economy without borders (finance, telecommunications, funds mass media). This information economy is shaped not only by the motivational incentive for firms such as profitability, but also by the political institutions that encourage competition in these economies, which supports firms. In this regard, the author develops a theory of two types of competition: national and global. In the second case, “competitiveness is rather an attribute of such economic associations as countries and regions, but not of firms...” (p. 100). New forms of government intervention in the economy are emerging, associated with clear strategies, support for technological development and the competitiveness of their national industries and their firms. Policy is increasingly becoming a key tool for competitiveness.
M. Castells convincingly argues that market deregulation and privatization are not a development mechanism.
“Countries that are completely at the mercy of market mechanisms react especially painfully to changes in financial flows and are vulnerable from the point of view of technological dependence” (p. 102).
In such countries, “after the short-term benefits of liberalization (for example, a massive influx of new capital in search of new opportunities in emerging markets) dissipate into the real economy, consumer euphoria is usually followed by shock therapy, as was the case in Spain after 1992, and also in Mexico and Argentina in 1994-1995." (p. 102).
“Traditional economic policies conducted within the boundaries of regulated national economies are becoming increasingly ineffective because important instruments such as monetary policy, interest rates, and technological innovation are highly dependent on global trends” (p. 102).
Strategies for positive change such as technology and education policies are becoming critical. In this regard, the author examines the mistakes of the short-sighted laissez-faire policies applied in the 1980s by the United States, which cost most Americans dearly.
“As for the information global economy, it is indeed extremely politicized” (p. 103).
The data system provided by M. Castells confirms that production in developed economies relies on educated people aged 25-40 years. Up to a third or more of human resources are practically unnecessary. He believes that the consequence of this accelerating trend is likely to be not mass unemployment, but extreme flexibility, job mobility, individualization of work and, finally, a highly segmented social structure of the labor market.
The theory of the information society developed in the book, in contrast to the concept of the global/information economy, includes consideration of cultural/historical specifics. The author emphasizes that one of the key features of the information society is a specific form of social organization in which, thanks to new technological conditions emerging in a given historical period, the generation, processing and transmission of information have become fundamental sources of productivity and power. In this society, the social and technological forms of this social organization permeate all spheres of activity, ranging from dominant (in economic system) and ending with the objects and customs of everyday life.
Another key feature of the information society is the network logic of its basic structure, which explains the title of Volume I of the monograph, The Rise of Network Society. Castells emphasizes that he refers to the social structure of the information age as a network society because “it is created by networks of production, power and experience that form a culture of virtuality in global flows crossing time and space... Not all social dimensions and institutions follow the logic of the network society , just as industrial societies for a long time included numerous pre-industrial forms of human existence, but all societies of the information age are indeed permeated - with varying intensities - by the ubiquitous logic of the network society, whose dynamic expansion gradually absorbs and subordinates pre-existing social forms" (p. 505).
The new information society (like any other new society), according to Castells, arises “when (and if) there is a structural reorganization in relations of production, relations of power and relations of experience. These transformations lead to equally significant modifications of social forms of space and time and to the emergence of a new culture" (p. 496). And the author examines in detail changes in everyday culture, city life, the nature of time, and world politics.
There are numerous statements by M. Castells on certain social problems that have not received an unambiguous assessment from sociologists and political scientists. Thus, he notes that society’s dependence on new ways of disseminating information gives the latter abnormal power and leads to a situation where “it is not we who control them, but they who control us.” The main political arena is now the media, but they are politically irresponsible. At the same time, political parties disappear as a subject of historical changes, losing their class basis and acquiring the functions of “managing social contradictions.”
The last thing I would like to dwell on concerns the views of M. Castells on modern Russia. As for the reasons for the collapse of statism (in the more commonly used, although less precise terminology, socialism) and the USSR as its leading and unifying force, the last chapter of the monograph in Russian is devoted to this. There is no need to comment on it, since, presumably, the Russian reader will pay special attention to this section of the book.
The judgments about modern Russia scattered in different places in the monograph are a completely different matter. A general assessment of the current situation in Russia by a person who knows and loves our country is contained in the following phrases, written in 1998:
"The economy crashed due to speculative maneuvers items1 for its own benefit, due to irresponsible recommendations for the introduction of abstract free market policies from the International Monetary Fund, some Western advisers and politically inexperienced Russian economists who suddenly found themselves in command posts; due to the paralysis of the democratic state as a result of intricate intrigues between political factions, where personal ambitions reigned. All this led to unbearable suffering of the people. The criminal economy has grown to proportions unseen in a major industrial country, linking with the global criminal economy and becoming a fundamental factor to be reckoned with both in Russia and internationally. The short-sighted US policy, in reality aimed at finishing off the "Russian bear" in world politics, has generated a nationalist backlash, threatening to reignite an arms race and international tension. Nationalist pressure in the army, political maneuvers in the Yeltsin Kremlin and criminal interests in the corridors of power led to the catastrophic adventure of the Chechen war. The democrats in power are caught between the converts' faith in the power of the market and their Machiavellian strategy, designed for the sidelines of the political establishment, but having nothing to do with knowledge of the real conditions of life of the exhausted population in the territory of an increasingly unstructured country" (p. 490).
At the same time, such assessments are not accompanied by pessimistic assumptions about the future of Russia. On the contrary, M. Castells believes that ultimately Russia will successfully integrate into the global economy. In doing so, he takes into account an educated population, a strong scientific base, and enormous reserves of energy and natural resources. He is firmly convinced that “the revival of Russia’s power not only as a nuclear superpower, but also as a strong nation that no longer wants to endure humiliation” is inevitable (p. 510).
I deal mainly with the contents of Volume I, in which Castells focused on processes of economic transformation. In Volume II, as is evident from his table of contents (see above), he discusses the processes of political restructuring and individual and communal identification. Volume III analyzes patterns of global integration, social inequality and social exclusion. All these questions deserve independent consideration.
In conclusion, I quote the opinion of the President of the London School of Economics, Professor Anthony Giddens: “This is an outstanding work of social and economic theory, probably the most significant attempt of any other to describe the extraordinary changes now taking place in the social world.”
With these words of a highly competent and generally recognized authority, I will end my notes on the monograph that has now become accessible to the Russian reader.
* * *
In preparing the translation of the book, the support and assistance of colleagues who combined the qualities of specialists in the field of economics and sociology and experts was invaluable. in English, Doctor of Philology, Prof. T.Yu.Sidorina, Ph.D. S.A. Afontseva, Ph.D. S.P. Bankovskaya, Ph.D. I.F. Devyatko.
O. I. Shkaratan

1 In another section, M. Castells clarifies this thesis as follows: “Russian interest groups, especially company managers and government apparatchiks, who led the privatization process kept the most valuable properties under their control, but depressed the stock prices of the privatized companies in order to offer significant profits to foreign partners in exchange for instant cash, which most often ended up in their bank accounts abroad” (p. 149). As for the majority of Russians, the basis of their daily life is “mechanisms of survival and small-scale trade in goods... The quasi-informal economy of kiosks as a basis for trade, and the cultivation of vegetables in their dachas for the sake of survival - these are the real pillars of Russia’s transition to a market economy” (with .150).

Castells M. Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture

The Culture of Real Virtuality: Integration of Electronic Communications, the End of the Mass Audience, and the Rise of Interactive Networks

Introduction

About 700 years before the birth of Christ, a decisive invention was made in Greece - the alphabet. This conceptual technology, according to leading classical scholars such as Havelock, became the basis for the development of Western philosophy and science as we know it today. It bridged the gap between speech and language, separating what was said from the speaker and making conceptual discourse possible. This historical turning point was prepared by three millennia of evolution of oral tradition and non-alphabetic forms of communication. Greek society reached, according to Havelock, a new state of thinking, “alphabetical thinking”, which caused qualitative changes in human communication1. True, widespread literacy began only many centuries later, after the invention and spread of the printing press and paper production. However, it was the alphabet that created the mental infrastructure for cumulative, knowledge-based communication in the West.
However, the new alphabetical order, while making rational reasoning possible, separated written communication from the audiovisual system of symbols and perceptions so important for the full development of human thought. The support that human practice received in written discourse came at a price by erecting, explicitly and implicitly, a social hierarchy between written culture and audiovisual expression. The world of sounds and images was relegated to the background, to the arts dealing with the private realm of emotion and the public world of liturgy. Of course, in the 20th century. audiovisual culture took historical revenge, first in films and radio broadcasting, then in television, overcoming the influence of written communication in the hearts and souls of most people. Indeed, behind the irritated complaints of intellectuals about television, which still dominate social criticism of electronic media, lies a divergence between noble alphabetical and sensual, unreflective communication.
A technological transformation of no less historical proportions took place 2,700 years later. It is embodied in integration in various ways communications in interactive information networks. In other words, a supertext and metalanguage are being formed, combining written, oral and audiovisual modes of human communication in the same system for the first time in history. Various dimensions of the human spirit are united in a new interaction between both hemispheres of the brain, machines and social contexts. For all the science-fiction ideology and commercial hype surrounding the emergence of the so-called information superhighway, we should hardly underestimate its significance3. The potential integration in the same system of texts, images and sounds interacting from many different points, at selected times (real time or delayed), on a global network and in conditions of open and inexpensive access, fundamentally changes the nature of communication. And communication determines the formation of culture, because, as Postman writes, “we see... reality not as it is, but as our languages ​​allow us to see it. And our languages ​​are our media. Our media are these are our metaphors. Our “metaphors create the content of our culture.”4 As culture is introduced and transmitted through communication, the cultures themselves, that is, our historically constructed systems of beliefs and codes, under the influence of the new technological system, undergo a fundamental transformation - increasingly over time. and more. At the time of writing this book, such a system has not yet fully taken its place, and in the coming years its development will proceed unevenly both in time and in geographical space. However, it is certain that it will develop and cover at least the dominant ones. spheres of activity and leading segments of the population of the entire planet. Moreover, in separate fragments and elements it is already present in the new media system, in rapidly changing telecommunication systems, in the networks of interactions already formed around the Internet, in the imagination of people, in the policies of governments, in the drawing boards. boards at corporate headquarters. Appearance new system Electronic communication is characterized by its global scope, the integration of all media, and its potential interactivity is already changing our culture and will change it irreversibly. But here the problem arises of the actual conditions, characteristics and effects of such changes. By dealing with a very specific range of issues, the development of which is still in an embryonic state, can we assess their potential impact without falling into the extremes of futurology, from which our book seeks to sharply distance itself? At the same time, without analyzing the transformation of cultures under the new electronic communication system, a comprehensive analysis of the information society will contain fundamental defects. Fortunately, despite the fact that there is technological heterogeneity, there are many cases of social integrity in history that make it possible to analyze trends based on the observation of phenomena that prepared the formation of a new system in the last two decades. Indeed, one of the main components of the new communication system- mass media structured around television - studied down to the smallest details5. Their development towards globalization and decentralization was predicted in the early 1960s by Marshall McLuhan, a great visionary who, despite his excessive predilection for hyperbole, revolutionized thinking in the field of communications. In this chapter I will first trace the formation of the mass media and their interaction with culture and social behavior. I will then assess their transformation in the 1980s, associated with the emergence of decentralized and diversified “new media”, which paved the way for the formation of multimedia systems in the 1990s. I will then turn to another system of communication, organized around computer networks, in connection with the emergence of the Internet and the amazing spontaneous development of new types of virtual communities. Although this is a relatively new phenomenon, we do have enough empirical observations from France and the United States to formulate a number of hypotheses on reasonable grounds. Finally, I will try to bring together what we know about both systems in order to reflect on the social aspects of their impending merger and the impact of such a merger on the processes of communication and cultural expression. I argue that under the powerful influence of a new communication system, mediated by social interests, government policies and business strategies, a new culture is born: culture of real virtuality, whose content, dynamics and meaning will be shown and analyzed in the following pages.

1 Havelock, 1982 (esp. 6-7).
2 For a critical review of these ideas, see Postman (1985).
3For a documented summary of the Information Superhighway as of late 1994, see Sullivan-Trainor (1994). For an overview of social and economic trends in news and computer-mediated communication internationally, see the rich special supplement Haba el Future in the Spanish newspaper El Pais/World Media (March 9, 1995).
4 Postman 1985:15.
5 For the evolution of media studies, see Williams et al. (1988).
6For a retrospective review of McLuhan's theories, see his posthumous book McLuhan and Powers (1989).

Castells M. Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture

Technology, society and historical changes

Since the revolution in information technology covers the entire field of human activity, it will be my starting point in analyzing the complexities of the formation of a new economy, society and culture. This methodological choice does not imply that new social forms and processes arise as consequences of technological change. Of course, technology does not predetermine the development of society1. But society does not prescribe the course of technological change, because many factors, including individual ingenuity and the entrepreneurial spirit, intervene in the process of scientific discovery, technological innovation and its social applications, so that the final result depends on the complex structure of their interactions2. In reality, the dilemma of technological determinism is probably a false problem3 since technology is society, and society cannot be understood or described without its technological tools4. Thus, when a new technological paradigm organized around information technology began to take shape in the 1970s, primarily in the United States, it was a specific segment of American society, in interaction with the global economy and world geopolitics, that materialized a new way of production, communication, management and life. The fact that this paradigm emerged in the United States, in California, and in the 1970s likely had significant consequences for the shape and evolution of new information technologies. For example, despite the critical role of military funding and markets in stimulating the early development of the electronics industry between the 1940s and 1960s, the technological boom that occurred in the early 1970s could be attributed to some extent to a culture of freedom. , individual innovation and entrepreneurship that grew out of the American campus culture of the 1960s. And not so much in terms of politics, since Silicon Valley was and remains a strong bastion of the conservative electorate (while most innovators were only interested in metapolitics), but in relation to social values ​​- a break with traditional patterns of behavior, both in society as a whole and in world of business. Focus on personalized technical devices, on interactivity, on the network, the tireless search for new technological breakthroughs, even when it would seem

made little business sense and was completely out of step with the cautious tradition of the corporate world. The revolution in information technology, not entirely consciously, spread through the material culture of our societies the liberating spirit that blossomed in the movements of the 1960s5. However, once information technology spread and was adopted by different countries, cultures, organizations with multiple mixed purposes, it showed explosive development in all types of applications that fueled the feedback technological innovation, accelerating the pace, expanding the area of ​​technological change and diversifying its sources6. The illustration will help us understand the importance of the unintended social consequences of technology7. As you know, the Internet originated from a bold scheme born in the imagination of technology warriors at the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (the legendary DARPA), who sought to prevent the Soviet takeover or destruction of the American communications system in the event of nuclear war. To some extent, this was a variant of the Maoist tactic of dispersing guerrilla forces over a wide area to counter enemy power through maneuverability and familiarity with the territory. The result was a network architecture that, as its creators intended, could not be controlled from any central point and consisted of thousands of autonomous computer networks with countless communication paths that bypassed electronic obstacles. Eventually, the ARPANET, a network created by the US Department of Defense, became the basis of a global horizontal communications network of thousands of computer networks (for a computer-literate elite of approximately 20 million users in the mid-1990s, but growing exponentially). The Internet has been used by individuals and groups all over the world for a variety of purposes far removed from the anxieties of the waning Cold War. Indeed, it was through the Internet that Subcomandante Marcoy, the Zapatista leader of Chiapas, addressed the world and the media from the depths of the Lasandón forest after fleeing in February 1995.

However, although society does not set the course of technological change, it can, using the power of the state, stifle the development of technology. Or, on the contrary, also through government intervention, it can begin an accelerated process of technological modernization, capable of changing the economy, increasing military power and social well-being in a few years. Indeed, a society's ability or inability to manage technology, especially strategic technologies, largely shapes the fate of societies. We can say that although

technology perse does not determine historical evolution and social change, technology (or the lack thereof) embodies the ability of societies to transform themselves and determines the directions in which society (always through a conflict process) decides to apply its technological potential8. Thus, around 1400, when the European Renaissance was sowing the intellectual seeds of technological change that would dominate the world three centuries later, China, according to Mokyr, was the world's most advanced technological civilization. Key inventions were developed in China centuries, even a millennium and a half earlier, as in the case of blast furnaces, which allowed China to master metallurgy by 200 BC. In 1086, Su Sung invented a water clock, which was superior in accuracy to European mechanical clocks of that time. In the VI century. They began to use an iron plow, and two centuries later it was adapted for processing flooded rice plantations. In textiles, the spinning wheel appeared in China simultaneously with its appearance in the West - by the 13th century, but developed much faster, since the country had a long tradition of using advanced weaving equipment - silk looms were used back in the Han era. The development of water energy proceeded in parallel with Europe: in the 8th century. The hydraulic hammer was mastered, and by 1280 vertical water mills became widespread. The Chinese improved maritime navigation earlier than the Europeans: around 960 they invented the compass; by the 14th century Chinese junks were the most advanced ships in the world, able to withstand long ocean voyages. In military technology, the Chinese, in addition to the invention of gunpowder, developed a chemical industry capable of producing powerful explosives, the crossbow and trebuchet * were used by Chinese armies centuries earlier than in Europe. In medicine, techniques such as acupuncture have produced exceptional results that have only recently become generally accepted. It is also indisputable that the first revolution in information processing was Chinese: paper and printing were Chinese inventions. Paper production was mastered in China 1000 years earlier than in the West, and book printing probably began at the end of the 7th century. As Jones writes, “China was within a hair's breadth of industrialization in the fourteenth century.”10 It didn't happen, and it changed the history of the world. When the Opium Wars led to British colonial plunder in 1842, China realized (alas too late) that isolation could not protect the Middle Kingdom from the ill effects of technological backwardness. It took over 100 more years for China to begin to recover from this catastrophic deviation from its historical trajectory.

Explanations for this stunning historical course are numerous and contradictory. This prologue is not the place to enter into the full complexity of the debate. But by drawing on the research and analysis of historians such as Needham11, Jiang12, Jones13 and Mokyr14, it is possible to offer an interpretation that broadly helps to understand the interaction between society, history and technology. Indeed, most hypotheses concerning cultural differences (even those without hidden racist overtones) fail to explain, as Mokyr points out, not only the difference between China and Europe, but even between China in 1300 and China in 1800. Why culture and empire , which had been the world's technological leader for thousands of years, suddenly fell into technological stagnation just as Europe entered the Age of Discovery and then the Industrial Revolution?

Needham suggested that Chinese culture, more than Western culture, tended toward a harmonious relationship between man and nature, a relationship that could be threatened by rapid technological change. Moreover, he does not accept Western criteria used to measure technological development. However, the cultural emphasis on a holistic approach to development did not prevent technological innovation for millennia, nor did it stop the environmental degradation that resulted from irrigation in Southern China, when conservation was subordinated to agricultural production to feed a growing population. Wenyuan Jiang

V his compelling book, objects to Needham's overenthusiasm for the triumphs of traditional Chinese technology, even though he shares general admiration for Needham's monumental "life's work." Jiang sees a closer analytical connection between the development of Chinese science and the characteristics of Chinese civilization, in which the state was the dominant driving force. Mokir also considers the state the most important factor in China's technological backwardness

V New time. In this regard, a three-stage explanation can be proposed: technological innovation has been largely in the hands of the state for centuries; after 1400, the Chinese state under the Ming and Qing dynasties lost interest in technological innovation; and cultural and social elites, partly out of devotion to serving the state, focused on the arts, humanities, and enhancing their own status

V imperial bureaucratic hierarchy. Thus, the decisive factor is the role of the state and the changing orientation of public policy. Why the state that was the greatest hydraulic engineer in history and already in the Han era organized a system of agricultural expansion

productivity-oriented production suddenly hampered technological innovation, even to the point of prohibiting geographical exploration and abandoning the construction of large ships in 1430? The obvious answer is that they were not the same state, not only because of the succession of dynasties, but also because the bureaucratic class gained a stronger position in the administrative structure due to a longer than usual period of unchallenged dominance.

According to Mokyr, the defining factor of technological conservatism was rulers' fear of the potentially destructive effects of technological change on social stability. In China, as in other societies, the spread of technology was hindered by numerous forces, especially in the urban guilds. The bureaucrats, satisfied with the existing status quo, were afraid of the emergence of social conflicts. They could merge with other sources of latent opposition in a society that had been under their control for several centuries. Even two enlightened Manchu despots of the 18th century. - Kangxi and Qianlong focused their efforts on peace and order rather than promoting innovation. Contacts with foreigners, other than controlled trade and the acquisition of weapons, were condemned as unnecessary at best, and dangerous at worst, since the results to which they could lead were uncertain. A bureaucratic state without foreign policy initiative and with internal disincentives for technological modernization chose the path of cautious neutrality, essentially interrupting the technological trajectory that China had followed for centuries, if not millennia, precisely under state leadership. A discussion of the factors behind the dynamics of the Chinese state during the Ming and Qing dynasties is beyond the scope of this book. For our research purposes, two lessons from this fundamental experience of interrupted technological development are important: on the one hand, the state can be, and has been, historically, in China and elsewhere, the leading force in technological innovation; on the other hand, it is for this reason that in cases where the state loses interest in technological development or becomes unable to carry it out under new conditions, the statist model of innovation leads to stagnation due to blocking the spontaneous innovative energy of society aimed at the creation and application of technologies. The fact that the Chinese state was able, centuries later, to re-build an advanced technological base in nuclear technology, rocketry, satellite launching and electronics, again demonstrates the emptiness of a predominantly cultural interpretation of technological development and backwardness: the same culture can give rise to very

different technological trajectories depending on the structure of relations between the state and society. However, such exclusive dependence on the state has a price, and until the middle of the 20th century. China paid for it with backwardness, famine, epidemics, colonial dependence and civil war. A rather similar, but modern story is told on this topic. This is the story of the failure of Soviet statism to manage the information technology revolution, which led to the curtailment of its production capacity and the erosion of its military power. However, we should not rush to the ideological conclusion that any government intervention impedes technological development, and we should not unconditionally bow down to unlimited individual entrepreneurship. The opposite example is Japan, which is confronted in this respect with both the Chinese historical experience and the Soviet inability to adapt to the American-initiated revolution in information technology.

Throughout its history, Japan has fallen into periods of historical isolation even deeper than China, as it did between 1636 and 1853. under the Tokugawa shogunate (established in 1603). For the Western Hemisphere, these years were a critical period in the formation of the industrial system. If at the turn of the 17th century. Japanese merchants traded throughout East and Southeast Asia, using ships with a displacement of up to 700 tons, then in 1635 the construction of ships with a displacement of more than 50 tons was prohibited, and all Japanese ports except Nagasaki were closed to foreigners, and trade relations were limited to China , Korea and Holland16. True, during these two centuries, technological isolation was not total; internal innovation processes made it possible for Japan to introduce gradual changes faster than in China17. However, since the Japanese technological level was lower than the Chinese, in the mid-nineteenth century Commodore Perry's kurobune ("black ships") were able to impose trade and diplomatic relations on a country that was significantly behind Western technology. However, as early as 1868, Ishin Meiji (the Meiji Restoration) created the political conditions for decisive state-led modernization18. In the field of advanced technology, Japan has made progress in leaps and bounds in a very short period of time19. By way of illustration, and in view of its current strategic importance, let us briefly describe the exceptionally rapid development of electrical engineering and communications in Japan in the last quarter of the 19th century.20 The first independent department of electrical engineering in the world was created in 1873 at the newly founded Imperial Technical College in Tokyo under under the leadership of Dean Henry Dyer,

Scottish mechanical engineer. Between 1887 and 1892 British Professor William Ayrton, a leading scientist in the field of electrical engineering, was invited to teach at the college, helping a new generation of Japanese engineers master the knowledge, so that by the end of the century the Telegraph Bureau had replaced all its technical departments with Japanese foreigners. Technology moved from the West to Japan different ways. In 1873, the Telegraph Bureau machine shop sent Japanese watchmaker Tanaka Seizuke to the International Machinery Exhibition in Vienna to obtain information about the machines. About ten years later, all machines for the Telegraph Bureau were produced in Japan. Based on this technology, Tanaka Daikichi founded the Shibaura Works electrical factory in 1882, which eventually became Toshiba after its acquisition by Mitsui. Engineers were sent to both Europe and America. Western Electric, which formed a joint venture with Japanese industrialists in 1899, was allowed to manufacture and sell products in Japan; the new company was named NEC. With such a technological base, Japan entered the age of electricity and communications at full speed even before 1914. In 1914, total electricity production reached 1,555,000 kWh; 3000 telephone offices transmitted 1 billion messages per year. It is symbolic that in 1857 Commodore Perry's gift to the shogun was an American telegraph line - a thing previously unheard of in Japan. The first telegraph line was laid in 1869, and ten years later Japan was connected to the world through a transcontinental information network, laid through Siberia by the Great Northern Telegraph Co. This network was jointly managed by Western and Japanese engineers and transmitted messages in English and Japanese.

The history of how in the last quarter of the 20th century. under the strategic leadership of the state, Japan has become a world leader in information technology fields, is now generally known, and we will build on this in the future21. What is important for the ideas presented in this book is that this happened at the same time that the industrial and scientific superpower, the Soviet Union, failed to make this fundamental technological transition. As the above facts show, Japanese technological development since the 1960s has not occurred in a vacuum, but has been rooted in a decades-long tradition of engineering excellence. However, for the purposes of our analysis, it is important to highlight the dramatic difference in the results of government intervention (or lack thereof) in the case of China and the Soviet Union compared with Meiji Restoration and post-World War II Japan. Characteristics of the Japanese state lying in

basis of the process of modernization and development are well known, as in the years Meiji restoration22, and in the modern “developmental state”. Considering them would take us far from the essence of these preliminary reflections. To understand the relationship between technology and society, it is important to remember that the role of the state, whether it inhibits, accelerates or leads technological innovation, is a decisive factor in the entire development process, a factor that organizes and expresses the essence of the social and cultural forces dominant in a given space and time. Technology largely reflects a society's ability to advance toward technological dominance by harnessing the power of social institutions, including the state. The historical process through which this development of productive forces occurs is superimposed on the characteristics of technology and their interweaving in social relations.

The modern technological revolution is no different from the examples above. It is no coincidence that it was born and spread during the period of global restructuring of capitalism, and itself was an important instrument of this restructuring. Thus, the new society that is born in the process of such a transformation is both capitalist and informational, forming in different countries many specific variations in accordance with the characteristics of national history, culture, institutions and specific relations with global capitalism and information technology.

Informationalism, industrialism, capitalism, statism: modes of development and modes of production

From the 1980s to the present day, the information technology revolution has been the instrument that has enabled the fundamental process of restructuring the capitalist system to be implemented. In its development and manifestations, the technological revolution itself was shaped by the logic and interests of developed capitalism, while nevertheless being irreducible to the expression of such interests. An alternative system of social organization, statism, also attempted to restructure the means of achieving its structural goals while preserving the essence of those goals. This is the meaning of Gorbachev's restructuring (perestroika - in Russian). However, Soviet statism failed in this attempt, leading to the collapse of the entire system. This was largely due to the failure of statism to absorb and use the principles of informationalism embodied in new information technologies, as will be shown later in this book through empirical analysis. Chinese

statism seems to have managed to move towards state-led capitalism and integration into global economic networks, in fact becoming closer to the "developmental state" model of East Asian capitalism than to "socialism with Chinese characteristics" according to official ideology. However, it is highly likely that major political conflicts and institutional changes may occur in China's structural transformation process in the coming years. The collapse of statism (with rare exceptions, such as Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba, which, however, are also in the process of forming a system of connections with global capitalism) revealed a close connection between the new, global capitalist system, formed as a result of its relatively successful perestroika *, and the emergence of informationalism as a new material and technological basis for economic development and social organization. However, these processes (capitalist restructuring and the rise of informationalism) are different, and their interaction can only be understood by analytically distinguishing them. At this point in my preliminary presentation of the idees fortes of the book, it seems necessary to formulate some theoretical distinctions and definitions regarding capitalism, statism, industrialism and informationalism.

IN theories of post-industrialism and informationalism, beginning with the classic works of Alain Touraine25 and Daniel Bell26, there is a well-established tradition of placing the differences between pre-industrialism, industrialism and informationalism (or post-industrialism) on a different axis- not the one where capitalism and statism (or collectivism, in Bell's terminology) are opposed. Although societies can be characterized along two axes (so that we have industrial statism, industrial capitalism, etc.), in order to understand social dynamics it is essential to maintain an analytical distance and an empirical relationship between modes of production (capitalism, statism) and modes of development (industrialism, statism) informationalism). To reconcile these differences with the theoretical framework on which the analysis presented in this book rests, it is inevitable that the reader will have to take the reader for some time into the somewhat esoteric areas of sociological theory.

IN This book explores the emergence of a new social structure that appears on our planet in different forms, depending on the diversity of cultures and institutions. This new social structure is associated with the emergence of a new mode of development- informationalism, historically shaped by the restructuring of the capitalist mode of production by the end of the 20th century.

The theoretical perspective on which this approach relies posits that societies are organized around processes of human activity that are structured and historically determined in relationships production, experience and power. Production is the influence of humanity on matter (nature) in order to adapt and transform it for its benefit, obtaining a product, consuming (unequally) part of it, and accumulating an economic surplus for investment according to some set of socially determined goals. Experience is the impact of human subjects on themselves, determined by the relationship between their biological and cultural identities, and in the specific conditions of their social and natural environment. Experience is built around the endless search for the satisfaction of human needs and desires. Power is that relationship between human subjects which, on the basis of production and human experience, imposes the will of some subjects on others through the potential or actual use of violence, physical or symbolic. A society's institutions are structured to enforce the power relations that exist in each historical period, including modes of control, boundaries of action, and social contracts derived from power struggles.

Production is ordered by class relations, which determine the process by which certain subjects, by virtue of their position in the production process, decide on the division and use of the product allocated for consumption and investment. Human experience is structured around gender/sexual relations, historically organized around the family and still characterized by the dominance of men over women. Family relationships and sexuality structure personality and frame symbolic interaction. Power is based on the state and its institutionalized monopoly of violence, although what Foucault calls the microphysics of power, embodied in institutions and organizations, permeates all society, from factory floors to hospitals, locking subjects into the tight confines of formal duties and informal aggression. Symbolic communication between people and the relationship between them and nature based on production (with its complementary consumption), experience and power crystallize in the course of history in specific territories, thus creating culture and collective identities.

In the social aspect, production is a complex process, because each of its elements is internally differentiated. Thus, humanity as a collective producer includes labor and production organizers,