The author, Castells (2001), mentioned in this book that the new pattern of sociability in our societies is characterized by networked individualism. It is not the Internet that creates a pattern of networked individualism, but the development of the Internet provides an appropriate material support for the diffusion of networked individualism as the dominant form of sociability. This paper aims to trace the concept of networked individualism and social network revolution as used by the author based from the original work of Barry Wellman.
In his book, “The Network Society”, Castells (2005) stated that technology does not determine society: it is society. Society shapes technology according to the needs, values, and interest of people who use the technology. Information and communication technologies are particularly sensitive to the effects of social uses of technology itself. The
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What we observe is not the fading away of face-to-face interaction or the increasing isolation of people in front of their computers. Based from studies in different societies, most internet users are more social, have more friends and contacts, and are more socially and politically active than non-users. Moreover, the more they use the internet, the more they also engage in face-to-face interaction in all domains of their lives. On the other hand, there is a change in sociability, not a consequence of internet or new communication technologies, but a change that is fully supported by the logic embedded in communication networks. This is the emergence of networked individualism, as social structure and historical evolution induce the emergence of individualism as the dominant culture of our societies, and the new communication technologies perfectly fit into the mode of building sociability along self-selected communication networks. Hence, the network society is a society of network individuals (Cardoso,