‘We live in a culture of real virtuality’

The famous sociologist Manuel Castells in an interview by Paul Mason (BBC): 

“With Facebook and with all these social networks what happened is that we live constantly networked. We live in a culture of not virtual reality, but real virtuality because our virtuality, meaning the internet networks, the images are a fundamental part of our reality. We cannot live outside this construction of ourselves in the networks of communication.”

Ever wondered why people try to redefine themselves by nationalism, regionalism, membership of small subcultures, even though the world is globalizing fast? I think Castells has some anwers on that too: 

“The more we are connected to everything and everybody and every activity, the more we need to know who we are. Unless I know who I am, I don’t know where I am in the world, because then I am a consumer, I am taken by the market, I am taken by the media.

“And therefore people decide that they are going to be different. But to do that, they have to identify themselves as individuals, as collectives, as nations, as genders, all these categories that sociologists have already constructed time ago.”

Castells explains how people in this crisis engage in co-operative or non-profit work. It’s a kind of ‘non-capitalism’. 

Putting now on my list: his new book Aftermath. 

via Diigo http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19932562

This work by rolandlegrand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International