2021 marked the 25th Anniversary of Manuel Castells’ The Rise of the Network Society, the first volume of the Information Age trilogy. The Trilogy immediately became one of the most influential works to understand the societal change in the wake of the digital revolution. More than two decades later, many of the emerging processes theorised and analysed in the Trilogy have reached full maturity, if not evolved in unexpected ways. Also, several theoretical and epistemological trends have developed or consolidated in the social sciences that have either been influenced by or challenged the Trilogy position. In this scenario, is the Network Society Theory still relevant for understanding today’s digitalised society? How should we develop the Network Society approach now? This special issue aims to answer these questions. In particular, in this collection of papers, we identify three interrelated dimensions: new developments in the evolution or disruption of the Network Society, the articulation between network logics and other spatial forms, and the relation of the Network Society with recurrent topics in Castells’ work beyond the Information. The papers are a selection of the contributions to the online workshop The Network Society Today: (Revisiting) the Information Age Trilogy (November 2–30, 2020), in which Prof. Castells also participated. This volume brings together a wide range of established and emerging scholars from a diversity of Social Sciences disciplines with plural theoretically informed papers tackling rich empirical case studies across the world, spanning throughout America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Contributions conclude with a reflection by Manuel Castells on them and his work.

2021 年是曼努埃尔·卡斯特尔 (Manuel Castells) 的《网络社会的崛起》(信息时代三部曲的第一卷) 25 周年。三部曲立即成为了解数字革命后社会变革的最有影响力的作品之一。二十多年后，三部曲中理论和分析的许多新兴过程即使没有以意想不到的方式发展，也已经完全成熟。此外，在受三部曲立场影响或挑战的社会科学中，一些理论和认识论趋势已经发展或巩固。在这种情况下，网络社会理论是否仍然适用于理解当今的数字化社会？我们现在应该如何发展网络社会方法？本期特刊旨在回答这些问题。尤其，在这一系列论文中，我们确定了三个相互关联的维度：网络社会演变或破坏的新发展，网络逻辑与其他空间形式之间的衔接，以及网络社会与 Castells 工作中反复出现的主题之间的关系信息。这些论文是对在线研讨会“今日网络社会：（重访）信息时代三部曲”（2020 年 11 月 2 日至 30 日）的贡献的一部分，Castells 教授也参加了该研讨会。本书汇集了来自不同社会科学学科的众多知名和新兴学者，他们发表了多篇理论知识丰富的论文，涉及世界各地丰富的实证案例研究，横跨美洲、欧洲、非洲和亚洲。