Page 16 - Education in a Digital World

Developing a Global Perspective 3

Both these issues perhaps merit further attention before we progress further
into more specific discussions of education and technology. With regards to the first
issue of universal connectedness, it is worthwhile reconsidering Manuel Castells’
description of the ‘information society’ and what he sees as the “networking
logic of its basic structure” (Castells 1996, p.21). Although much criticised, Castells’
description of the ‘network society’ rightly highlights the ways in which
‘connective’ features of technological developments during the 1980s and 1990s
were paralleled by the corrective restructurings of capitalism and statism throughout
this time, as well as by the rise of networked social movements such as ecologism.
In all these ways, Castells draws attention to the increasing tendency of dominant
functions and processes within contemporary societies to be organised around
networks rather than physical boundaries. As he argued:

Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies and the
diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and out-
comes in the processes of production, experience, power and culture. While
the networking form of social organisation has existed in other times and
spaces, the new information technology paradigm provides the basis for its
pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure.
(Castells 1996, p.469)

Crucially, Castells saw the growing organisation of society around dynamic
networks as having led to a changed sense of space and time within many aspects of
contemporary life. Castells described how societal arrangements were influenced
more by the ‘space of flows’ (i.e. the movement of information, resources, objects
or funding) rather than by the ‘space of places’ (i.e. their original location). This idea
of a deterritorialised ‘network society’ has been illustrated ably of late by patterns of
economic activity which appear to depend ultimately on global dynamics rather
then any national influence (as was evident, for example, in the ‘meltdown’ at the
end of the 2000s of global financial markets). Conversely, a deterritorialised
networking logic can also be seen in ‘global’ social movements such as the ‘smart
mob’ protests against various world economic summits throughout the 2000s, the
so-called ‘Arab Spring’ popular revolts at the beginning of the 2010s, or even
the persistence of decentralised terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda. All these
examples illustrate the growing societal significance of the global transmission of
information – for better and for worse. Thus while appearing to be concentrated at
regional or local levels, most economic and political activity could be said to be
determined ultimately at a global rather than local level of aggregation. As Castells
(2006, p.4) reasoned, what may appear to be local activity must be understood
instead as “diffused by the power embedded in global networks of capital, goods,
services, labour, communication, information, science and technology”.
In the eyes of many commentators, therefore, the primary significance of the
information age and network society is one of globally networked power – in