[W]hat is characteristic of the network society is not the critical role of knowledge and information, because knowledge and information were central in all societies. Thus, we should abandon the notion of "Information Society"... What is new in our age is a new set of information technologies....

We live in a new economy, characterized by three fundamental features. First, it is informational, that is, the capacity of generating knowledge and processing/managing information determine the productivity and competitiveness of all kinds of economic units, be they firms, regions, or countries....

Second, this new economy is global in the precise sense that its core, strategic activities, have the capacity to work as a unit on a planetary scale in real or chosen time. By core activities I mean financial markets, science and technology, international trade of goods and services, advanced business services, multinational production firms and their ancillary networks, communication media, and highly skilled speciality labour. Most jobs are in fact not global, but all economies are under the influence of the movements of their globalized core....

Third, the new economy is networked. At the heart of the connectivity of the global economy and of the flexibility of informational production, there is a new form of economic organization, the network enterprise....

Manuel Castells, "Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society," British Journal of Sociology 50(1), pg. 10.