Traditional vs. Contemporary Societies

• Traditional societies differ from contemporary societies in several aspects
• Food: traditional societies make and consume food at home, contemporary societies rely on agroindustry and consume food in public
• Clothing: traditional societies make clothing at home, contemporary societies buy clothing in stores
• Residence: traditional societies build residences by residents, contemporary societies rely on professional construction companies
• Healthcare: traditional societies rely on family members for healthcare, contemporary societies use corporate hospitals
• Education: traditional societies provide education at home, contemporary societies use public and private institutions
• Employment: traditional societies offer employment at home, contemporary societies rely on corporations
• Child raising in traditional societies is through family and kinship, contemporary societies offer paid care
• Socialization: traditional societies rely on family and kinship for socialization, contemporary societies use media, school, and peers
• Old people: traditional societies care for old people at home, contemporary societies use nursing homes

Modernity vs Late/Post-Modernity

• Social Structures: modernity has clear & stable structures (class, gender); late/post-modernity has dispersed structures with an end of authority
• Family: modernity values the nuclear family; late/post-modernity has a plurality of family types
• Employment: modernity offers job for life; late/post-modernity focuses on career
• Politics: modernity is based on nation-states; late/post-modernity is based on transnational politics
• Science: modernity has trust in science; post-modernity has uncertainty
• Freedom: modernity emphasizes community; late/post-modernity emphasizes individual freedom
• Goals: modernity has defined belief in progress; late/post-modernity has uncertain goals focusing on consumerism & comfort

Social Processes

• Three main social processes are identified as: Globalization and separation of time-space; Emergence of post-traditional forms of organization; Intensification of reflexivity
• Globalization and separation of time-space involves separating residential and commercial places, focusing on time for travel vs time in a community
• It also involves the changing ordering of time where the linear course of time is broken and biological, world, and social time are adopted to subjective time
• This leads to the emergence of a new sociotemporal zone of everyday life where social relations articulate across wide spans of time-space

Social World

• Spatiotemporal Zone of Everyday Life considers social interaction based on social world and realm of everyday life
• There and then: world outside reach, contemporaries, mediated communication
• Here and now: world within reach, consociates, in-person communication
• There and now: world within mediated reach, consociated contemporaries, electronically mediated communication

Emergence of post-traditional organizations

• Includes liberalization of marriage, flexibility of work, freedom-oriented cultural movements in the 1960s and 1970s
• Shift from stable institutions to the emergence of fluid institutions
• ICT's have emerged as key platforms for hyper dynamic institutions
• Modernity paradox involves a shift from closed communities to urban cities of strangers where detailed knowledge is gathered, allowing people to enhance their own individuality by making choices

Intensification of reflexivity

• People are choosing how to live, personally and collectively
• Reflexivity is the regularized use of knowledge about social life as a constitutive element in its organization and transformation
• Practical knowledge is questioned and becomes discursive knowledge
• Emergence of risk society occurs
• Information saturation occurs where choices are feasible only where info is gathered to make arrangements
• Those arrangements are socially constructed and not givens
• There is more freedom and control over our lives than our ancestors, yet arguably more unsure of how to act

Community Logic vs Network Logic

• Community logic is based on: local community, neighborhood, face-to-face relationships, formal organization, job, ascribed status, hierarchies, and blocks
• Network logic is based on: personal network, communities of interest, mediated relationship, networked organization, career, achieved status, matrix, and ephemeral alliances

Network Society

• In the information age, developments in ICTs have enabled new societies that prioritize information flows
• All societies have used information and the term 'information society' has little analytical value
• Technological revolutions marked by ICT breakthroughs cause fundamental changes in economy, history, and social structure
• The roots of the information age are: restructuring of capitalist enterprise, informational mode of development, and informational capitalism

Informational Capitalism

• Capitalism is still around but in modified forms
• Participants in cyberspace are comfortable exchanging information, well connected, and networked effectively
• This is a shift away from deterministic views of social transformation
• Change in social systems occurs with changes such as: slavery & feudalism -> agriculture society, capitalism -> industrial society, and informational capitalism -> post-industrial society

Network Society Dimensions

• The major dimensions of network society are time, space, and class (division of labor)
• Time: alteration of people's perception of time, life cycles, and history where traditional temporal structures are transformed. There is a seemingly perpetual movement of digital exchange
• The sequencing of events has become less stable and more pluralistic
• Emphasis on instant communication allows us to gather information almost immediately, presented in hypermedia forms
• Individuals are exposed to a no-time mental landscape
• Space: a fundamental shift moving toward the creation of "space of flows" that supersedes traditional places
• Spatial transformation includes: non-stop operation of global financial markets and worldwide networks of airports
• The classic models of a global network society originate from Western contexts
• Class and Division of Labor: Network society and informational capitalism overturn previous forms of stratification with radically new inequalities
• Knowledge and information are the essential materials of the new production process and education is the key quality of labor
• There is a shift toward outsourcing, self-employment, and unpredictability of work
• Castells theory has been critiqued for underestimating class, relation between continuity and change, ambiguities of what he understands and technological determinism in his thesis

Individualisation and Social Relations

• Individualization involves lifting out from ascribed social roles, loss of security, and active establishment of social relationships
• Temporary and intensive relations: relationships emerge around projects and dissolve once a goal is established
• Absence of common narrative: no common history, no shared biographies, no apriori trust, active trust, dissolution of authorities, doubts
• Assimilation of work and play: professional relationships become less formal, blurring borders between work and pleasure
• Ubiquity of ICTs: omnipresence of internet & mobile technologies

Technological Mediation of Social Reality

• Social interactions/relationships can be observed on three levels of social reality mediated by ICTs
• Spatial and temporal dimension of technologically-mediated social connectivity
• New of modes of technologically-mediated social interactions
• Personal connectivity in the complex media environment

Spatial and temporal dimensions

• Social actors and their practice are positioned across time-space within a range of social world of zones
• Locales are penetrated and shaped in terms of social influences quite distant from them
• Co-presence is having the dimensions of a spatial/physical condition in which individuals interact and understanding the emotional/cognitive aspect of interactions

Modes of Technologically Mediated Social Interactions

• Absent presence: state of diverted/divided consciousness that is created by mobile communication
• Micro-coordination: the communication practice of basic logistics, softening of time, progressively exact arrangement of meeting
• "Always on" and perpetual contact results in a continual co-presence, characterized by high degree of control over communication.

Personal connectivity in the complex media environment

• Communication devices are used in the contemporary media environment
• Mobile phones, telephones, and Internet channels are not tied to a specific social sphere but extends over various domains
• There are normative aspects which dictate appropriateness of communication technologies according to social context

Contemporary Communication

• Co-location is one of the various modes of experiencing the intersubjective aspect of social interactions
• People generally are losing awareness at the social level of the limitations of communication
• The normative position has become worn out by the growing fragmentation of the experience of social presence