In a broader historical perspective, the network society represents a qualitative change in the human experience. If we refer to an old sociological tradition according to which social action at the most fundamental level can be understood as the changing pattern of relationships between Nature and Culture, we are indeed in an new era.

The first model of relationship between these two fundamental poles of human existence was characterized for millennia by the domination of Nature over Culture. The codes of social organization almost directly expressed the struggle for survival under the uncontrolled harshness of Nature, as anthropology taught us by tracing the codes of social life back to the roots of our biological entity.

The second pattern of the relationship established at the origins of the Modern Age, and associated with the Industrial Revolution and with the triumph of Reason, saw the domination of Nature by Culture, making society out of the process of work by which Humankind found both its liberation from natural forces and its submission to its own abysses of oppression and exploitation.

We are just entering a new stage in which Culture refers to Culture, having superseded Nature to the point that Nature is artificially revived ("preserved") as a cultural form: this is in fact the meaning of the environmental movement, to reconstruct Nature as an ideal cultural form. Because of the convergence of historical evolution and technological change we have entered a purely cultural pattern of social interaction and social organization. This is why information is the key ingredient of our social organization and why flows of messages and images between networks constitute the basic thread of our social structure. This is not to say that history has ended in a happy reconciliation of Humankind with itself. It is in fact quite the opposite: history is just beginning, if by history we understand the moment when, after millennia of a prehistoric battle with Nature, first to survive, then to conquer it, our species has reached the level of knowledge and social organization that will allow us to live in a predominantly social world. It is the beginning of a new existence, and indeed the beginning of a new age, the information age, marked by the autonomy of culture vis-à-vis the material bases of our existence. But this is not necessarily an exhilarating moment. Because, alone at last in our human world, we shall have to look at ourselves in the mirror of historical reality. And we may not like the vision.
To be continued.