B. Book Summary

Pages 220-223 from ‘The Network Society’, by Jan van Dijk

Sage Publications, 1999 Copyright

Conclusions

In Chapter 1 network society was defined as a form of society increasingly organizing its relationships in media networks gradually replacing or complementing the social networks of face-to-face communication. This means that social and media networks are shaping the prime mode of organization and most important structures of modern society. They are not the whole substance of society, as they are in the exaggeration of Manuel Castells (1996, 1997, 1998). See van Dijk (1999). Society still consists of individuals, pairs, groups and organizations. Of course, they establish external and internal relations, but these relations do not equal society. The organic and material properties of individuals, pairs, groups and organizations with all their rules and resources can not be cut out of society to bring it back to a bare essence of relationship. Even a totally mediated society where all relations are fully realized by and substantiated in media networks, where social and media networks equal each other, would still be based on bodies, minds, rules and resources of all kinds.

Now, the first conclusion of this book is that modern society is in a process of becoming a network society, just like it is developing into an information society, a related concept. It is in a transition from mass to network society. In the preceding chapters we were able to draw a network structure in the economy (within and between corporations and on the global electronic market), in politics (the political system) and society at large (in a combination of unity and fragmentation, inclusion and exclusion, organic and virtual community). A network structure is not only ever more pervading these spheres, it increasingly connects them as well. - Therefore the metaphor of a nervous system of society was used. - For example, global economic networks undermine the central role of the national state in the political system. Virtual communities are a new market in electronic commerce. The selectivity of global electronic networks in the economy aggravates social exclusion.

Finally, a network structure connects all levels of society, usually called the micro, meso and macro level or the private and the public (spheres and a levels). It was noticed that the dividing lines between these abstractions are blurring in reality. On the Internet interpersonal, organizational and mass communication come together. Using this medium we bring the ‘whole world’ into our homes and working places. However, the public computer networks used are intruding our personal privacy here as well. Conversely, the personal autonomy of network users might increase by opportunities of individual choice never known in history before. Blurring traditional dividing lines do not result in their disappearance. On the contrary, it means both more integration and more differentiation, as was observed in several chapters. This is a feature of rising complexity in society.

The second of our main conclusions is that the network structure is a dual structure. A combination of scale extension and scale reduction marks all applications of the new media in the economy, politics, culture and personal experience. This combination is the prime advantage and attractiveness of these media. It explains their fast adoption in what was considered to be a communications revolution. A dual structure returns in several oppositions described in the former chapters: centralization and decentralization, central control and local autonomy, unity and fragmentation, socialization and individualization.

To claim that these opposites form a whole and are both to be observed in the causes and effects of new media usage is no easy stand of an author who can not decide. It is a prime characteristic of network structure itself. Networks both connect and disconnect. They have centres, nodes and relations between them. At these positions we find human beings who participate and decide differently and who are central or marginalized, included or excluded.

The dual structure of network use leads to a third main conclusion. This structure should not be reified to acquire autonomous existence. Structure, action and consciousness or mental states are a dialectic unity, like it is explained in the theory of structuration, for example (see Giddens, 1984). Structures appear in communicative action. This leaves room for agency and consciousness. Dual structures are no natural necessities but they are both defining and enabling. They offer choices within particular limits. This is the reason why the duality of centralization and decentralization, central control and local autonomy enables both more and less freedom in using networks and both more and less choice in all kinds of affairs. This is why it is claimed here that the views presented in this book are neither pessimistic nor optimistic. In the context of the huge euphoria accompanying the hypes of Internet and other new media in the nineties they might seem pessimistic, stressing the dark sides of the technology concerned. Actually, a balanced view is intended. When new media like the Internet will gradually appear as ‘normal media’ in the first decade of the twentieth-first century, because they are used by ever larger sections of the population and by vested interests in the economy, politics and culture, a balanced view might be accepted more easily.

There is another reason why vested interests should get major attention anyway. With all duality stressed, it must be admitted that there is a certain bias in the uses and effects of ICT. The main actors designing and introducing this advanced and expensive technology are at the top of corporations and governments. They are the investors, the commissioners and the decision makers. It is to be expected they use it to strengthen central control, be it in flexible forms, and to limit personal autonomy and free choices at the bottom of the organization not matching their interests. In this book it was noticed several times that ICT enables better means of advanced and intelligent forms of central control than old technologies. It is a matter of social and organizational struggle whether the (other) opportunities of ICT to spread decision making will be utilized.

The pervasiveness of network structures in modern society is enforced by combinations of social and media networks. Media networks are not simply channels or conduits of communication; they are becoming social environments themselves (Meyrowitz, 1986, 1997). They are settings for social interaction bridging the individual settings or environments of numerous people acting at their nodes and terminals. Media have their own particular characteristics, which are called communication capacities in this book, but you can not understand how they work out in practice if you do not learn about the social context of their use and their users. This contextual approach explains the attention to the relationship between mediated and face-to-face communication in this book. The central conclusion is that media networks and mediated communication do not replace social networks and face-to-face communication, but are added to them. They become tied up to each other and both will benefit if their strong characteristics are utilized.

The emphasis of context, environment or embeddedness in the analysis of network use has yet another consequence. Popular views of the irrelevance of fundamental dimensions of existence like time and place in new media networks are not taken for granted. On the contrary, the physical, biological, mental and material conditions of its users and usage are supposed to be keeping their causal effects. Their relevance even grows as the new media offer better chances to select and confront the different conditions, needs and opinions of their users directly. Organic and virtual reality will link up to each other, hopefully to the benefit of both of them.

A last conclusion is about the overall effect of the new media on modern society. Will they have revolutionary implications for society, will they transform society only gradually, or will they have no substantial effect? To put it otherwise: will the network society be an altogether different type of society? The answers to these questions appearing in this book are that changes will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary and that the network society will not be an altogether different type of society. Both answers are for the short and medium term. Nobody is able to predict the long-term total effect of the extremely wide-ranging aspects linked to information and communication technology, at least as long as one is not a technological determinist.

These answers are not opposed to the acceptance of the concept of communications revolution in Chapter 1 and 3. This is a revolution at the level of media development itself. It is not a concept of revolutionary effects of media on society. On the contrary, the first communications revolution of the former turn of centuries as described by Beniger was a consequence of a revolution, the Industrial Revolution. In this book we often have observed that the new media intensify trends which have already appeared and reinforce existing social relationships in modern society. This comes close to the picture presented by Brian Winston (1998) in his Media Technology and Society. In a detailed overview of the history of the telegraph to the Internet he describes that modern media’s important contribution is the so-called ‘law of the suppression of radical potention’. New media technologies first being a revolutionary promise, are made ‘fit’ to existing social processes later on. According to Winston we should not forget that these processes both push and hinder the adoption of new technologies. It would be interesting to test this ‘law’ in the development of the Internet from its revolutionary promise in the nineties to its ‘normalization’ in the first part of the twenty-first century

However impressive and wide-ranging the potential social consequences of the new media as described in this book are, they will not change the foundation of present developed societies, let alone developing societies. Perhaps ICT has made a contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist states as this technology does not fit to traditional bureaucratic authority and planning (see Castells, 1998). However, capitalism is there to stay. It is more likely to be reinforced or reinvigorated by the new media in a more effective, flexible and socially harsher shape. Patriarchy may be in crisis in large parts of the world (Castells, 1997), but it will take a very long time before it is withered away and the new media will only have small, if any part in it. Nor will ecological destruction be halted by the new media. At the most these media contribute to a dematerialization of the economy and to higher efficiency and effectiveness in helping to save natural resources. The globalization of the economy is not caused but intensified by ICT. It is to be observed that the national state and sovereignty are undermined by the new media, but they will not disappear. Moreover, a concentration of politics in a surveillance state, party state or infocratic state is a possibility as well (see Chapter 4). Rising social and information inequalities are not caused by ICT, but they might be increased by an exclusive appropriation of its opportunities by a relatively minor part of the population. In this way we could go on. It seems wiser to continue describing the diverging ways modern societies have tried to ‘fit’ the advent of this new technology to their existing policies.

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Home News About Me Publications Research Courses Advise Sitemap Search Print version	B. Book Summary Pages 220-223 from ‘The Network Society’, by Jan van Dijk Sage Publications, 1999 Copyright Conclusions In Chapter 1 network society was defined as a form of society increasingly organizing its relationships in media networks gradually replacing or complementing the social networks of face-to-face communication. This means that social and media networks are shaping the prime mode of organization and most important structures of modern society. They are not the whole substance of society, as they are in the exaggeration of Manuel Castells (1996, 1997, 1998). See van Dijk (1999). Society still consists of individuals, pairs, groups and organizations. Of course, they establish external and internal relations, but these relations do not equal society. The organic and material properties of individuals, pairs, groups and organizations with all their rules and resources can not be cut out of society to bring it back to a bare essence of relationship. Even a totally mediated society where all relations are fully realized by and substantiated in media networks, where social and media networks equal each other, would still be based on bodies, minds, rules and resources of all kinds. Now, the first conclusion of this book is that modern society is in a process of becoming a network society, just like it is developing into an information society, a related concept. It is in a transition from mass to network society. In the preceding chapters we were able to draw a network structure in the economy (within and between corporations and on the global electronic market), in politics (the political system) and society at large (in a combination of unity and fragmentation, inclusion and exclusion, organic and virtual community). A network structure is not only ever more pervading these spheres, it increasingly connects them as well. - Therefore the metaphor of a nervous system of society was used. - For example, global economic networks undermine the central role of the national state in the political system. Virtual communities are a new market in electronic commerce. The selectivity of global electronic networks in the economy aggravates social exclusion. Finally, a network structure connects all levels of society, usually called the micro, meso and macro level or the private and the public (spheres and a levels). It was noticed that the dividing lines between these abstractions are blurring in reality. On the Internet interpersonal, organizational and mass communication come together. Using this medium we bring the ‘whole world’ into our homes and working places. However, the public computer networks used are intruding our personal privacy here as well. Conversely, the personal autonomy of network users might increase by opportunities of individual choice never known in history before. Blurring traditional dividing lines do not result in their disappearance. On the contrary, it means both more integration and more differentiation, as was observed in several chapters. This is a feature of rising complexity in society. The second of our main conclusions is that the network structure is a dual structure. A combination of scale extension and scale reduction marks all applications of the new media in the economy, politics, culture and personal experience. This combination is the prime advantage and attractiveness of these media. It explains their fast adoption in what was considered to be a communications revolution. A dual structure returns in several oppositions described in the former chapters: centralization and decentralization, central control and local autonomy, unity and fragmentation, socialization and individualization. To claim that these opposites form a whole and are both to be observed in the causes and effects of new media usage is no easy stand of an author who can not decide. It is a prime characteristic of network structure itself. Networks both connect and disconnect. They have centres, nodes and relations between them. At these positions we find human beings who participate and decide differently and who are central or marginalized, included or excluded. The dual structure of network use leads to a third main conclusion. This structure should not be reified to acquire autonomous existence. Structure, action and consciousness or mental states are a dialectic unity, like it is explained in the theory of structuration, for example (see Giddens, 1984). Structures appear in communicative action. This leaves room for agency and consciousness. Dual structures are no natural necessities but they are both defining and enabling. They offer choices within particular limits. This is the reason why the duality of centralization and decentralization, central control and local autonomy enables both more and less freedom in using networks and both more and less choice in all kinds of affairs. This is why it is claimed here that the views presented in this book are neither pessimistic nor optimistic. In the context of the huge euphoria accompanying the hypes of Internet and other new media in the nineties they might seem pessimistic, stressing the dark sides of the technology concerned. Actually, a balanced view is intended. When new media like the Internet will gradually appear as ‘normal media’ in the first decade of the twentieth-first century, because they are used by ever larger sections of the population and by vested interests in the economy, politics and culture, a balanced view might be accepted more easily. There is another reason why vested interests should get major attention anyway. With all duality stressed, it must be admitted that there is a certain bias in the uses and effects of ICT. The main actors designing and introducing this advanced and expensive technology are at the top of corporations and governments. They are the investors, the commissioners and the decision makers. It is to be expected they use it to strengthen central control, be it in flexible forms, and to limit personal autonomy and free choices at the bottom of the organization not matching their interests. In this book it was noticed several times that ICT enables better means of advanced and intelligent forms of central control than old technologies. It is a matter of social and organizational struggle whether the (other) opportunities of ICT to spread decision making will be utilized. The pervasiveness of network structures in modern society is enforced by combinations of social and media networks. Media networks are not simply channels or conduits of communication; they are becoming social environments themselves (Meyrowitz, 1986, 1997). They are settings for social interaction bridging the individual settings or environments of numerous people acting at their nodes and terminals. Media have their own particular characteristics, which are called communication capacities in this book, but you can not understand how they work out in practice if you do not learn about the social context of their use and their users. This contextual approach explains the attention to the relationship between mediated and face-to-face communication in this book. The central conclusion is that media networks and mediated communication do not replace social networks and face-to-face communication, but are added to them. They become tied up to each other and both will benefit if their strong characteristics are utilized. The emphasis of context, environment or embeddedness in the analysis of network use has yet another consequence. Popular views of the irrelevance of fundamental dimensions of existence like time and place in new media networks are not taken for granted. On the contrary, the physical, biological, mental and material conditions of its users and usage are supposed to be keeping their causal effects. Their relevance even grows as the new media offer better chances to select and confront the different conditions, needs and opinions of their users directly. Organic and virtual reality will link up to each other, hopefully to the benefit of both of them. A last conclusion is about the overall effect of the new media on modern society. Will they have revolutionary implications for society, will they transform society only gradually, or will they have no substantial effect? To put it otherwise: will the network society be an altogether different type of society? The answers to these questions appearing in this book are that changes will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary and that the network society will not be an altogether different type of society. Both answers are for the short and medium term. Nobody is able to predict the long-term total effect of the extremely wide-ranging aspects linked to information and communication technology, at least as long as one is not a technological determinist. These answers are not opposed to the acceptance of the concept of communications revolution in Chapter 1 and 3. This is a revolution at the level of media development itself. It is not a concept of revolutionary effects of media on society. On the contrary, the first communications revolution of the former turn of centuries as described by Beniger was a consequence of a revolution, the Industrial Revolution. In this book we often have observed that the new media intensify trends which have already appeared and reinforce existing social relationships in modern society. This comes close to the picture presented by Brian Winston (1998) in his Media Technology and Society. In a detailed overview of the history of the telegraph to the Internet he describes that modern media’s important contribution is the so-called ‘law of the suppression of radical potention’. New media technologies first being a revolutionary promise, are made ‘fit’ to existing social processes later on. According to Winston we should not forget that these processes both push and hinder the adoption of new technologies. It would be interesting to test this ‘law’ in the development of the Internet from its revolutionary promise in the nineties to its ‘normalization’ in the first part of the twenty-first century However impressive and wide-ranging the potential social consequences of the new media as described in this book are, they will not change the foundation of present developed societies, let alone developing societies. Perhaps ICT has made a contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist states as this technology does not fit to traditional bureaucratic authority and planning (see Castells, 1998). However, capitalism is there to stay. It is more likely to be reinforced or reinvigorated by the new media in a more effective, flexible and socially harsher shape. Patriarchy may be in crisis in large parts of the world (Castells, 1997), but it will take a very long time before it is withered away and the new media will only have small, if any part in it. Nor will ecological destruction be halted by the new media. At the most these media contribute to a dematerialization of the economy and to higher efficiency and effectiveness in helping to save natural resources. The globalization of the economy is not caused but intensified by ICT. It is to be observed that the national state and sovereignty are undermined by the new media, but they will not disappear. Moreover, a concentration of politics in a surveillance state, party state or infocratic state is a possibility as well (see Chapter 4). Rising social and information inequalities are not caused by ICT, but they might be increased by an exclusive appropriation of its opportunities by a relatively minor part of the population. In this way we could go on. It seems wiser to continue describing the diverging ways modern societies have tried to ‘fit’ the advent of this new technology to their existing policies.