The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society [Review] Description Review ofThe Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society/ by Manuel Castells.Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-19-924153-8. This public document was automatically mirrored from PDFy.Original filename: 68412077-Galaxia-Internet-Manuel-Castells.pdf URL. Skip to main content Search the history of over 349 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mrqbmwle 29.08.18 12:31!!! Kirgizcha tuulgan kungo kuttuktoolor.

This essay is a response to essay ‘Life in the fast lane? Towards a sociology of technology and time’ (2008: 59–77). In that article argued that recent developments in the sociology of temporal change had been marked by a tendency in social theory towards a form of ‘science fiction’– a sociological theorizing, she maintains, that bears no real relation to actual, empirically provable developments in the field and should therefore be viewed as not contributing to ‘a richer analysis of the relationship between technology and time’ (2008: 61). This reply argues that as suggests in her essay, there is indeed an ‘urgent need for increased dialogue to connect social theory with detailed empirical studies’ (2008: 59) but that the most fruitful way to proceed would not be through a constraining of ‘science fiction’ social theorizing but, rather, through its expansion – and more, that ‘science fiction’ should take the lead in the process. This essay suggests that the connection between social theory and empirical studies would be strengthened by a wider understanding of the function of knowledge and research in the context of what is termed ‘true originality’ and ‘routine originality’. The former is the domain of social theory and the latter resides within traditional sociological disciplines.

It is argued that both need each other to advance our understanding of society, especially in the context of the fast‐changing processes of technological development. The example of ‘technological determinism’ is discussed as illustrative of how ‘routine originality’ can harden into dogma without the application of ‘true originality’ to continually question (sometimes through ideas that may appear to border on ‘science fiction’) comfortable assumptions that may have become ‘routine’ and shorn of their initial ‘originality’.

Manuel Castells is one of the world's leading thinkers on the new information age, hailed by The Economist as 'the first significant philosopher of cyberspace,' and by Christian Science Monitor as 'a pioneer who has hacked out a logical, well-documented, and coherent picture of early 21st century civilization, even as it rockets forward largely in a blur.' Now, in The InteManuel Castells is one of the world's leading thinkers on the new information age, hailed by The Economist as 'the first significant philosopher of cyberspace,' and by Christian Science Monitor as 'a pioneer who has hacked out a logical, well-documented, and coherent picture of early 21st century civilization, even as it rockets forward largely in a blur.'