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

Communication World, March, 1999 by John Gerstner

MC: All of my negative observations are not arguments against new information technologies. We are in fact in a most extraordinary moment of history, full of potential creativity, both for individuals and for society at large. But, probably unlike your other interviewees, I am an empirical sociologist, and I observe what is happening. And what is happening is a mixed picture of increased productivity, economic growth, personal emancipation, and cultural creativity, together with devastating effects for many people and countries around the world. This is not because of technology, but because of the social impacts of a new network society, in which other processes (economic, political, cultural) interact with technology to induce a new society, and its social effects. Furthermore, what happens in Silicon Valley is not the same as what happens in Chicago. Palo Alto is on a different planet from East Palo Alto, and Indonesia was both propelled and destroyed by information-technology-based, economic globalization. So I observe all these processes, and they all, together, form the new Information Age.

? - JG: You also say a global criminal economy will be a fundamental feature of the 21st century, and its economic, political and cultural influence threatens to control a substantial share of our economy, institutions and everyday life. Are drug lords, political terrorists and the Mafia now hiring computer programmers?

MC: The global criminal economy is indeed a fundamental feature of our world, and it is expanding. It is a business that yields nearly one trillion dollars a year. That is more than the GDP of Britain. It relies mainly on money-laundering systems that benefit from the electronic infrastructure of money transfer. And most of these criminal businesses are run by sophisticated computer systems. All this is a well-known fact, documented by numerous reliable press reports. Here again, it is not technology that induces the criminal economy, but the kind of economy and society and politics we have created at the end of this millennium. Once in existence, the global criminal economy expands by using all the power of new technologies.

? - JG: You shy away from futurology in your writings, but you do drop a few predictions for the 21st century: the global informational superhighway will be completed; there will be a full flowering of the genetic revolution; human labor will produce more and better with considerably less effort; global terrorism will become more technological and dangerous. Are you optimistic or pessimistic, and what do you hope your trilogy will contribute?

MC: I refuse futurology because I strongly believe it is not a serious intellectual activity. It's made of hype and pop sociology, always looking for a sound bite. Most of what people think is the future is, in fact, the present. They just do not know. For instance, most of what Negroponte talks about are trends rooted in the present, observable developments. He is knowledgeable about it, so I am interested by many of his writings. But when Gilder extrapolates to society at large, and historical development, a few technological trends - rationalized with his ultra-conservative ideology - I find myself very distant. It's a simplified vision of a very complex and contradictory process, the emergence of a new society, associated with new technologies.