Download or read book The Hypercomplex Society written by Lars Qvortrup and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2003 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should today's society be termed an information or a network society? This book provides an alternative choice--the hypercomplex society, which is a critical, complex-theoretical understanding of society whose growing level of social complexity represents the basic challenge of our current society. This original understanding of society is presented through a historical analysis of the emergence of the current state of hypercomplexity and polycentrism. The functioning of communication, mass media, and the public sphere in the hypercomplex society is also analyzed and the Internet is characterized as a communication infrastructure particularly shaped by the hypercomplex society. The book concludes with a cultural self-observation of the hypercomplex society.