Bright Networks and Dark Spaces: Implications of Manuel Castells for Higher Education

The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, sociologist Manuel Castells argues that information and communication technologies are associated with a new kind of economy, society, and culture that he calls informationalism. In this new economic order, generation, information processing, and symbolic communication action of on knowledge are the main sources of productivity and profit. The commanding heights of the new economy (though not the whole of it) have become global: information and communication technologies make possible for the first time in human history an economy that operates in real time on a planetary scale through computer-based financial transactions. This is a staggering change. Simon Marginson is professor of education at Monash University, Australia, and director of the Monash Centre for Research in International Education. He is also editor of the Australian Journal of Education.