Is there anything new about the Network Society?

My understanding of Castells' argument about the Network Society is that it triggers 'spatial transformation'.

The "new urban world" seems to be dominated by the double movement of inclusion into transterritorial networks and exclusion by the spatial separation of places. The higher the value of people and places, the more they are connected into interactive networks. The lower their value, the lower their connection.

The argument goes on, the networked people can by-pass the "local" thanks to their interconnectedness into these value-rich networks from which they benefit and from which the underprivileged are excluded.

"Gated communities", for example, are a manifestation of the Information Age insofar as they signal a "spatial separation" in the "space of places".

Value in our Information Society is increasinly transmitted and exchanged, or traded, via electronic networks that epitomise the "space of flows". The financial industry (and their infamous "masters of the universe" - most of whom are currently in hiding after the credit crunch) is a good example of what goes on in our world. The GDPs of certain metropolitan areas, such as New York, Paris and London exceed the GDPs of many sizeable nations (Brazil, Australia and Sweden respectively) (Graham, 2004).

Whilst hypothetically any place could have the connectivity in terms of infrastructure to facilitate the electronic exchanges required for economic success, why is it that only a handful of areas are "sticky" in that cash sticks to these elite "metropolitan heartlands". Low value activity, such as call centres, experience the "death of distance" thanks to ICTs, and are geographically removed from the place of consumption, but high-value activity, such as practised at the London Stock Exchange, remain in the central business districts of a handful of 'global cities'.

But what is new about this? Isn't this just another way of saying that the rich benefit from many privileges, whilst the poor have less choice? Is the Information Age adding anything new to this age old truth? And the argument about the select few places where all the money is made seems to support the view that "money goes to money". If the distribution of capital was less biased, we would be speaking of the Death of Capitalism, not the Death of Distance. Frankly, I can't see either showing any signs of fatal wounds.

"What about crowd sourcing, or the so-called long tail of the economy?" you might ask. Wasn't that supposed to transform the way the world works? Some people think the way Obama's political campaign was funded signaled a change in the realities of political economy.

I remain sceptical. Ok. Maybe there is potentially a lot of potential. I don't have to spell out what potential potential means, do I?