The other side of cyberspace - interview with professor Manuel Castells - Cover Story

Communication World, March, 1999 by John Gerstner

MC: The message is lagging the medium everywhere, but particularly on the Internet. With so many communication possibilities, we do not know what to say. We become repetitive, unimaginative and monotonous. New Hollywood studios are cranking up as much new content as they can, with limited success. The Internet is littered with senseless information, and our browsers are still so primitive that we waste huge amounts of time finding what we want. But browser technology is improving decisively, and a new generation of artists, writers, filmmakers and journalists is coming up to the new medium.

? - JG: Cheap energy fueled the industrial revolution. You say cheap inputs of information derived from advances in microelectronic and telecommunications technology are driving this one. But can't there be too much of a good thing? Are we threatened as never before by the glut of information, often from unreliable sources?

MC: The glut-of-information idea is simply a primitive, misleading, cheap shot of neo-Luddites. There can never be enough information. We ignore so many important things. And on a planet largely illiterate, and ignorant (including widespread ignorance in a large segment of the American people - for instance, who knows what DNA does?), to speak of information glut is simply an insult to intelligence. The issue is the relevance of information for each one of us, how to find it, how to process it, how to understand it. For this we need more information technology, not less. We need much better browsers, we need more sophisticated design of web sites, we need user-friendly, mobile devices. We need a quantum leap in information/communication technologies, information storage/retrieval systems, and education systems. The technology part of this is coming fast. The educational part, which is essential, is lagging way behind.

? - JG: A central point of your trilogy is that the wonderful technological infrastructure that allows us to communicate, innovate, produce and consume with ever-increasing global efficiency at the same time wreaks havoc on large segments of the world's population who are unwired. Are you saying, here, that the fruits of technology will never trickle down to the info-disadvantaged...Paradise Lost?

MC: The fruits of the technology revolution will never trickle down by themselves. The inherent logic of the system is exclusionary, and the gap is increasing. This is not an opinion; it's an empirical observation. But this is not the fault of technology, it is the way we use it. Technologies are so powerful that they amplify social effects of our institutions. Democratic, egalitarian societies may do wonders with new information technology [e.g., Finland]. Unequal, undemocratic, exclusionary societies, on the contrary, will see the power of technology dramatically increase social exclusion. We need, more than ever, socially oriented government policies, and social responsibility for business and institutions, working together to reverse the trends toward an unsustainably unequal world beyond the wonderland of Silicon Valley. This is particularly true of Africa, a continent ravaged by AIDS, famine, atrocious and absurd civil wars, corrupt politicians, rapacious companies.