Network citizens power and responsibility at work - Economic

The journal that we are required to analyze for this week is Peter Bradwell’s and Richard Reeves’s journal on network citizens, power and responsibility whereby the focus was more to economics. Humans have developed from the Stone Age to where ever we are now. The changes that took place never stopped and are still continuing. In the course of change also we have developed many new aspect of life and economies are one them. Economy is a very important aspect of a state whereby the up brings or development of a particular state is evaluated by looking at its economic status.

The economy of a country is not dependent on a particular organization, government or an individual. The economy of a country is driven actually by everyone in the country either from the government sector or even private sector. Without even realizing, we have somewhat or another had contributed to the economy of the country that we are staying in. Each job done either big or small does affect the economy. However the economy now is facing few changes due to the changes that is taking place among the society and their working culture.

            According the journal, one of the major changes that are faced in many countries are the type of jobs. Due to the development of technology and networking’s, people have now move to a more knowledge based jobs like banking and marketing rather than hard labour. That doesn’t mean that physical labour is totally diminished but now the percentage of knowledge based labour has more demand than the physical labour. Knowledge based work are given equal important as manufacturing as we need both to run the business successfully. Besides that through the birth of technology also, many new sectors have been intervened whereby now the availability to employment also increases drastically in many sectors which was not even thought could be accessed once upon a time.

Changes could also be seen in employer an employee relationship. In the current economic standing, the employee also has started to have a say in the type of work they want and the type of boss they wish to have. The days where the bosses are giving really hard times to his workers are not anymore tolerated by the employees. On the other hand they would prefer to have a more “ethical employer” at hand. This shows that the network culture changes not only the economy status but also the network citizen that dwells in it. A good working environment, a smooth communication between employer and employee and a happy day at work certainly plays a part in affecting the economy state of a country.

The networking environment has also touched in the boundaries of work and leisure. Due to the change in the perception among the network citizen now, work place has also now become a place of socializing, making communication and also making network. It has come to a state that the best way now is to make sure to try to get make the network system of the employees to increase the business status of a particular company. As stated in the journal by the authors “the key now will be the management and interaction between the organization and an individual”.

Ina nut shell network citizen are the pioneer of the near world in the future. Neglecting this new trend may cost a lot for a company, business or even the economy of a state. It is wise to make full use of this new trend in the development of many new ideas, innovation and collaborations. By being a network citizen, individual talent and potentials could be maximized for the benefits of the whole society and economy. One thing is for sure that change is ignorable and by adapting ourselves to the changes that happen is the best or the wiser thing to do. We may even be better of that we ever imagined.

Now you better step back- Dare not step into my WORLD (cyberspace)

Now you better step back- Dare not step into my WORLD. Well this is the warning from the new generation to the old generation that is ruling the world in real life. The new generation is the generation that now has two worlds to be in which is the real world and the cyberworld. The cyberworld or cyberspace is a non material space that is created by humans through the internet. The internet is the core place where the cyberspace dwells in. the cyberspace is a space whereby the user gets access to it and to a certain extend could live in it as if living in your own world where by most of the law of the physical world could not get accessed to. Altough there wont be any physical contact done between any humans or material things, but however that are the only two things that seperates the real world and cyber space. Other than that, the cyberspace makes it possible to do many ordinary activities such as finding for information, communicating, freedom to talk what ever you want which is not that possible to do in the real world.






In his journal "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace", John Perry Barlow has expressed in a form that cyberspace community is giving a strict warning to the outer government. i stand strong beside Barlow in his statement that the cyberspace is not bound by the boundaries of the state. The cyberspace and the community in it has its own rule of freedom and the government of the real world has is not allowed to interfere by any mean in the actions or even the statement stated in the cyberspace.

As an example of a famous social networking site in the cyberspace which  Facebook. as a social networking site it is used as tool of communicating with other people that are part of our network. However "I" become the only person that has the rights in controlling my Facebook and the activities that is being done in it. The goverment in power now has no rights in interfering and altering its content whereby the law of freedom of speech should not be applied to the social networking site. However i also would like to give in my personal opinion that although the government in power should not interfere in the cyberspace, but as for now the issue of ethical usage of the cyberspace falls to the user to make sure they understand the consequences in misusing the cyberspace. 



In a nut shell, as for now onwards, we are living in two worlds. The importance of both world is very prominent whereby as for now its very impossible to live without even one of them. However the governess of the real world is advised to not to enter the cyberspace as this new world is being shaped to form a new constitution all by itself. the question now arises weather, would this new order of freedom would be a better choice or the total opposite to it???

Information Ecology

For many years, human have asked themselves weather is it only us in this galaxy or is there any other world out there. Although the answer they were expecting is expected to come from somewhere out of earth but in time, indirectly humans have created another world on earth itself. This world is called the digital or virtual world. This world however does not consist of any access physically to it neither made from physical aspect such as soil bricks, sand and water. This world is made solely through the development of humans all this years by developing new technologies to make their lives easier. This virtual world is made by many digital elements and two of such elements are networks & information. Networks are created to share information between humans. There is a vast amount of information that could be found in the internet and networks are created in the process of uploading, downloading & altering the information’s.

According to Stadler, information in the virtual world is controlled by two things which is flows and nodes. Every information is sent to the nodes through the flows and the nodes acts as a centre to go through by the information which will then in return will sent to its specific destination or recipient. The flow does only becomes a stream for the information to flow but also acts as a filter or rocks which process through the information and does some changes in necessary. Base on my understanding, I could see that both nodes and flows are mutually interdependent. Both need each other to make sure the network relationship in the virtual world is consistently connected and becomes better.

The nodes however although stabilizes the flow of information and endow a certain consistency and continuity to the environment, they are themselves subject to the dynamics of the environment. The patterns are the four basic dimensions of information ecology:

• interdependency

• change

• time-boundness

• differentiation

(Stadler, F.)

1) Interdependency

            All the nodes that are available in the ecology environment are connected to one another. Thus it creates an interdependent relationship among one another that allows the sharing of information to happen. Through the connection that is done by nodes, everything seems to be possible in the virtual world such as communicating, sharing information & getting connected.

2) Change

          The only thing that dosent change in this world is changes itself. In the ecology environment, change occurs very often in the information which indirectly changes the whole nature of the ecology. As the information goes through various nodes, it reshapes itself according to the changes done. These changes would then have different impacts on the people that deal with it. As stated above, the changes that occur here has no end and it changes continuously because the only thing that does not change in this world is change itself.

3) Time-boundness

            Time is a very crucial factor in the ecology environment. Everything has to be done fast in today’s world or you may end up crawling behind just because you delayed a few minutes. However the time factor totally depends on few factors such as nodes and flow and the purpose of the information that is going to be used. For example a journalist may need an information as fast as possible but that is not the case of a college student trying to access to an online comic.

4) Differentiation

            The nodes and flow survives as long as it makes a different. By being different, they seem to stand out and catch the attention needed. Thus changes occur frequently and thus make difference to stand out in the network world. In the network world, although ell the nodes are connected, but for survival purpose its every nodes for itself. Thus to make sure to survive, the nodes need to make a difference frequently to stay in the network for a long time.

why networks matter-Manuel Castells

Manuel Castelle has marvelously done an in-depth study and had prepared a very in one of the journals that he prepared about networks which is titled “Power does not reside in institutions, not even the state or large corporations. It is located in the networks that structure society . . .” In this journal, a very important theme that is highlighted is about the relationship between network and society. Networking has been part of the society for a very long time but it has emerged to limelight to the society just recently and this is due to the emergence of new type of technologies that could support and sustain networks.

            According to the journal the question, what is society has arised and Manuel Castelle has provide a very realistic and in-depth answer which states that the society is not made up based on its technological growth but on the other hand, is the social structure which are made up of many networks diversed in the society.

            Network may be seen as a small type of structure from its outer or physical point of view but the actual strength of the networks lies internally and can’t be seen. For example in a networking business, the strength of the business increases as the network also expands.  Besides that individualism becomes one of the aspects that emerges among society in the new era. Through the different type of social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster, myspace and many other that are similar to it, the power of individualism is expanding in a greater scale as now everyone are connected individually and could be heard induvidually.

            The new era as can be seen as a network era rather than a technology or information era has been expected by many researches and they have come out with few expectations in this new era such as network is expanding globally and it is invertible to stop it as there is no straight route of cutting through a connection. However diverting the connection by creating a new connection is a possible. All in all network is the latest way things work now globally as now everything or everyone is connected to one another and with the rise of technologies such as the internet strengths further the relationship that is created by the network society.