Social networks and society of control

Abstract

Introduction: space and information

We must move forward in attempt to understand the relationship between information and physical space, between cyberspace and the spaces of presence, as well as between the concrete and the virtualized space. Apparently, this relationship may not arouse interest, but is a complex set of extremely socio-technical importance, whose mutual implications are still being detected. It is estimated that in 2012, monthly traffic data across the Internet will reach 20,000 petabytes (PB) per month. A petabyte is equivalent of 1024 terabytes (TB) or 1,048,576 gigabytes (GB). The exchange of digital information tends to acquire unimaginable numbers and turn the attention give to spaces without digital intervention in favor to mobility devices and hybrid scenarios.

A petabyte may represent the capture of approximately 2 billion and 684 000 2-megapixel images. It can also store somewhere around 1 billion and 73 million sound files of 1 megabyte or 766 million books of 250 pages in PDF format. This number multiplied by 20000 may be Internet traffic in less than 24 months. It's intriguing that these figures translated into storage and transference of texts, sounds or videos do not scare the younger ones who walk around with devices that usually have more than a thousand digital songs.

The spaces of cultural media are being greatly affected by digitization and nanotechnology. Soon, the majority of Brazilian libraries shall contain less information than a doctorade researcher’s 1-terabyte external hard drive. The pen drives and PCMCIA cards or similar with 5 gigabytes can hold hundreds of videos. The reduction in the size of physical structures that stores the cultural production has spatial and environmental impacts indeed and must be analyzed.

The speed and quality of digitization and the increased capacity of data transfer over physical networks are strategic needs in the current scenario and tend to create economic, cultural and social consumption of different mechanisms for access to information networks. Corporations compete for models to attract consumers and machines with processing and connectivity increasingly lighter, more manageability for the smallest expenditure of energy. Simultaneously, the owners of physical networks of fiber optic, submarine cables and backbones, ie, the telecommunication companies become the most powerful communication intermediaries, in a society increasingly dependent of information.