Power in the Network Society

          Manuel Castells article, Power in the Network Society, takes a look at the role and influence of power in society, it more specifically focuses on the use and influence of power in a network society. Power by itself refers to the ability to influence others or the ability to carry out ones will despite opposition or resistance from others. Networks are seen as a collections of individuals who have political, economic, social, or technological influence, Castells notes that these characteristics of traits can be both beneficial and hindering. They are highly adaptable complex structures of communication constructed around a set of goals that ensures unity of purpose and flexibility of execution. He said that networks have 3 major features that they benefited from with the development of new technological environments in the world. These features are Flexibility, Scalability and Survivability. Flexibility refers to being able to reconfigure according to changing environments and retain the same goals while changing their components. Scalability means that the network is able to expand or shrink in size with little or no disruption to productivity or goal attainment. Lastly, survivability refers to the networks ability themselves to stay running and to stay unified, because they can operate in a wide range of configurations. The network society is embodied through 2 social forms: Space of flows and timeless time. These terms in their most simple forms refer to the possibility of asynchronous interactions between networks in a chosen time, and the distance as well as the sequencing or coordination of practices for the network.

I think the networks that control the means of communication in our society today have substantially more power and influence than others because they are able to control or interfere with our practices of socialization and communication. This is something we have gotten so comfortable with over the years since technology's advancement, and something we hold so close to us, if we were to be all of a sudden deprived of this I feel a lot of people would be scrambling and at the hands of these powerful networks to give them what they want/need. What networks do you think have the most amount of power influence?