Manuel Castells Quotes

Societies change through conflict and are managed by politics.

Internet use enhanced sociability both at a distance and in the local community.

At its core, the new economy is based on culture: on the culture of innovation, on the culture of risk, and the culture of expectations, and, ultimately on the culture of hope in the future.

As for the employees, the payment in stock options revives, somewhat ironically, the old anarchist ideology of self-management of the company, as they are co-owners, co-producers, and co-managers of the firm.

Literally everything is based on the capacity to attract, retain, and efficiently use talented workers.

The e-economy cannot function without workers able to navigate, both technically and in terms of content, this deep sea of information, organizing it, focusing it, and transforming it into specific knowledge, appropriate for the task and purpose of the work process.

If valuation in the financial markets provides the bottom line for the performance of the company, it is labor that remains the source of productivity, innovation, and competitiveness.

John Chambers, Cisco's CEO and innovator, was, primarily, a salesman, and it shows.

Cultures are not made from free-floating values. They are rooted in institutions and organizations.

The Internet culture is characterized by four layer-structure: • The Techno-Meritocratic Culture • The Hacker Culture • The Virtual Communitarian Culture • The Entrepreneurial Culture

The Internet Culture is the culture of the creators of the Internet.

Technological systems are socially produced. Social production is culturally informed. The Internet is no exception.

The Internet is, above all else, a cultural creation.

The most blatant illustration of this statement is the fact that in 1972, Larry Roberts, the director of IPTO, sought to privatize ARPANET, once it was up and running. He offered to transfer operational responsibility to ATT. After considering the proposal, with the help of a committee of experts from Bell Laboratories, the company refused.

In sum, all the key technological developments that led to the internet were built around government institutions, major universities and research centers. The Internet did not originate in the business world. It was too daring a technology, too expensive a project, and too risky an initiative to be assumed by profit-oriented organizations.