NETWORK SOCIETY   
By John Cafrene             

 The network society can be defined as a social formation with an infrastructure of social and media networks enabling its prime mode of organization at all levels (individual, group, organizational and societal). Increasingly, these networks link all units or parts of this formation. In western societies, the individual linked by networks is becoming the basic unit of the network society. In eastern societies, this might still be the group (family, community, work team) linked by networks.

In the contemporary process of individualization, the basic unit of the network society has become the individual who is linked by networks. This is caused by simultaneous scale extension (nationalization and internationalization) and scale reduction (smaller living and working environments) other kinds of communities arise.

Daily living and working environments are getting smaller and more heterogeneous, while the range of the division of labour, interpersonal communications and mass media extends. So, the scale of the network society is both extended and reduced as compared to the mass society. The scope of the network society is both global and local, sometimes indicated as “global”. The organization of its components (individuals, groups, organizations) is no longer tied to particular times and places. Aided by information and communication technology, these coordinates of existence can be transcended to create virtual times and places and to simultaneously act, perceive and think in global and local terms.

The network society is a hyper social society, not a society of isolation. People, by and large, do not face their identity in the Internet, except for some teenagers experimenting with their lives. People fold the technology into their lives, link up virtual reality and real virtuality they live in various technological forms of communication, articulating them as they need it.

 However, there is a major change in sociability, not a consequence of Internet or new communication technologies but a change that is fully supported by the logic embedded in the communication networks. This is the emergence of networked individualism, as social structure and historical evolution induce the emergence of individualism as the dominant culture of our societies, and the new communication Technologies perfectly fit into the mode of building sociability along self-selected communication networks, on or off depending on the needs and moods of each individual. So, the network society is a society of networked individuals.