Rise of the Network Society (eBook)

Manuel Castells is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and Research Professor at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona. He is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at M.I.T., and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford University. He is the recipient of numerous academic awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, C. Wright Mills Award, the Robert and Helen Lynd Award from the American Sociological Association, and the Ithiel de Sola Pool Award from the American Political Science Association. He is a Fellow of the European Academy, a Fellow of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economics, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He has received 14 honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He has authored 22 books, among which is the trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, first published by Blackwell in 1996-8, and translated into 20 languages.

Reviews of the Second Edition:

"We live today in a period of intense and puzzling
transformation, signalling perhaps a move beyond the industrial era
altogether. Yet where are the great sociological works that chart
this transition? Hence the importance of Manuel Castells'
multivolume work, in which he seeks to chart the social and
economic dynamics of the information age . . . [It] is bound to be
a major reference source for years to come." (Anthony Giddens,
The Times Higher Education Supplement)

"Adam Smith explained how capitalism worked, and Karl Marx
explained why it didn't. Now the social and economic relations of
the Information Age have been captured by Manuel Castells."
(Wall Street Journal)

"So far, the person who has straddled the world of social theory
and Silicon Valley most successfully is Manuel Castells. Castells
enjoys a growing reputation as the first significant philosopher of
cyberspace." (The Economist)

"A must-read." (Wired)

"This book goes a considerable way to helping us make sense of
today's global information economy and our place in it."
(Financial Times)

"A brief review cannot do it justice. No other scholar has
approached the subject of the information age in as engaging and
innovative a way as this author. Strongly recommended for academic
libraries."

-M. Perelman, California State University