Jan van Dijk is a Professor of Communication Sciences at the
University of Twente in the Netherlands, an internationally recognized scholar
on the developing Network Society who has been researching this since 1985, the
Chair of the Center for eGovernment Studies, and as an Advisory to various
institutions such as the European Commission (Dijk J. V., 2014) . Van Dijk’s
reading for this week, the seventh chapter, “Social Structure” in the 2nd
edition of his book, The Network Society,
is about the infrastructure of society in relation to the Network Society
and how it is changing under the influence of communication network. He offers
four dimensions of the infrastructure: time, space, depth, and the high and low
dimension of social structure. The thesis of the chapter is: the mutual shaping
processes of the infrastructure of society is changing under the influence
of communication networks, and the opposite: the changing social infrastructure of society shapes communication
technology (Dijk, 2006)
as seen through the various dimensions of the infrastructure. This leads to a
digital divide that starts with the information gap that existed as a result of
the culture of print, and further widens and deepens the gap between the haves
and the have-nots in a variety of ways. Van Dijk concludes that the Network
Society is unstable. The chapter is extremely clear and precious with
information that is presented up to and from the middle 2000s. The writing is
clearly targeting students and scholars of the information communication
technology community. Overall, the most recent edition, 3rd, was
well received and is seen as an “essential guide to the past, consequences, and
future of digital communication,” (Cuffe, 2012) .
There were some critiques on the overall readability of the book, given the
broad topics and richness of the information (Schumann, 2013) . See below
for book review links. However, there is some divide in the field about the
impact of the Network Society, the roles of communities, and the stability of
it. One of the major scholars that differs from van Dijk is Manuel Castells and (Schumann, 2013) his book, The Information Age: Economic, Society, and
Culture. Below There are a few questions that I am left with after reading
the chapter and as more data is collected with very passing year about the
impacts of the Network Society may be answered in the 3rd edition of
this book. The questions are: if the Network Society is widening and deepening
these gaps creating a highly unstable society, why is there not more debate
about trying to spread out resources more equally, lessening the capitalistic
component of the network society to allow people to rise within the system
instead of being stuck, why are governments and in particular the United
States’ government avoiding dealing with the rising racial and socio-economic
tensions, why is the United States’ government about to further widen the gap
with ending network neutrality, why is the debate of how technology is
impacting our society and how our society is impacting not happening in the
front of social consciousness, and what will happen to the unstable Network
Society-will it rupture, if so what will happen, or can it be stabilized.
Bibliography
Cuffe, J.
(2012, 9 14). Book Review: The Network Society by Jan Van Dijk.
Retrieved 10 1, 2014, from London School of Economics Review of Books:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/09/14/the-network-society-jan-van-dijk/
Dijk, J. A. (2006). The Network Society (2nd Edition
ed.). London: SAGE.
Dijk, J. V. (2014). Welcome to the Network Society!
Retrieved 10 1, 2014, from University of Twente:
http://www.utwente.nl/gw/vandijk/
Schumann, S. (2013). Book Review Jan Van Dijk: The
Network Society from Journal of Media and Comminication Research.
Retrieved 10 1, 2014, from MedieKultur:
http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/mediekultur/article/viewFile/7943/6774
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