johnaggreyodera's review against another edition
4.0
This book is very, very interesting, but it is not pleasure reading by any stretch of the word. Castells basically goes about explaining everything - an ambitious theory about how the world works. I don't know if my chronology is right, but I think the basic network structures defined here - nodes, degrees, edges have become really influential in Graph Theory and Network Science (but I may be wrong and they actually originated elsewhere and Castells just made use of them here).
The basic premise of the book is that the global economy has shifted from an industrial system to an informational system; which means that the most important thing in this new system is the flow of information and knowledge from one part of the world to another, and those who control the system are those who control how this information flows. Information flows through channels called edges to locations known as nodes. The more edges a node has flowing to it, the greater the degree of the node, and thus the more important the node is in the system. So if you look at the global economy as regards to finance, New York City has the highest number of edges running to and from it, thus is the most important node in the global financial system, Other larger nodes include London, Tokyo etc. Global control of the international financial system largely occurs from these big nodes.
This network system also has implications for how people move, and thus how culture is shaped. If anyone is interested in finance for example, they are much more likely to move to New York City or London or Tokyo: all the skilled people, the resources etc are agglomerated there. Same for Los Angeles if you are interested in movies etc.
The basic premise of the book is that the global economy has shifted from an industrial system to an informational system; which means that the most important thing in this new system is the flow of information and knowledge from one part of the world to another, and those who control the system are those who control how this information flows. Information flows through channels called edges to locations known as nodes. The more edges a node has flowing to it, the greater the degree of the node, and thus the more important the node is in the system. So if you look at the global economy as regards to finance, New York City has the highest number of edges running to and from it, thus is the most important node in the global financial system, Other larger nodes include London, Tokyo etc. Global control of the international financial system largely occurs from these big nodes.
This network system also has implications for how people move, and thus how culture is shaped. If anyone is interested in finance for example, they are much more likely to move to New York City or London or Tokyo: all the skilled people, the resources etc are agglomerated there. Same for Los Angeles if you are interested in movies etc.
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