The Force of the Image (1992). These are the words of experts: “Today’s individual lives surrounded by the iconosphere. In this mass-media artificial layer, television is the most effective vision.” In other words, in this vengeful civilization, the image has an immense cultural significance. Especially, and above all, since the appearance of the photo. Since then, thanks to iconic technology, image and use have reached previously unthinkable levels.

In the communication ecosystem of modern Western society, audiovisual auditors constitute our imaginary world, mainly and especially. That is, our ability to think, the ability of ancient man to imagine the world in his mind, would have been dazzled by the power of the media image.

We are uniformized by the communication ecosystem that has allowed the technological revolution, after post-industrial society. The iconosphere, the object of our image, is not only matching everyone, it is destroying our imagination. We are overburdened by image inflation. In this technological age the image has a great influence, since when communicating the image the force is enormous.

Iconography is a picture rendering mold. Humanity, in its need for communication, in its social historical evolution, has uprooted a verbal language that is considered a functional consequence of the supreme spiritual system. The one that adheres to its capacity for abstract thinking. However, before this occurred, the human being constructed and completed his thought with images. Image and word. The word and the image. Throughout history, in various cultures, communication has developed through both. When the writing became phonographic, there was a gap between both sensibilities – the image and the word. Let us not think, therefore, that in the evolution of iconography everything has been counterproductive.

In any case, we can reach the very top of the process of a society that has “suffered” an iconic and progressive intensity. Is ours the starting point of another era? It looks like it does. Because we have reached a point where – in particular under economic interests – the imbalance and informative demass disinforms us more than informs us.

Experts, of course, make different interpretations about this situation: for and against. Let's leave it there!
After all the year, the summer era that is about to end gives us the opportunity to work our imagination a little bit more. In other words: people have perhaps lived a little more disconnected from the influence of the iconosphere mentioned during the holidays. I wish it were so!

Now, once again, children come to mind, now that we're doing La rentrée. The child develops his or her imagination, especially in childhood. In them, the composition of the image itself, and its influences, has a great importance and consistency in the formation of its being.
As a father and mother, as in higher studies the subject of “structure of the image” is shown, I propose the subject of “new iconographic world” in child learning. In fact, if we are not critical of the use of the image, to the belief that the “machine” of industrial society will overcome us, we will have to add the phenomenon of the “civilization of the excess of the image”, which will not only overcome us, but will devour us. For the rest, the character and instinct of the people who have defined us as equals, we will live adrift in a state of hypnosis.

Communication in the social network (2011). Power is based on the control of communication and information. However, power is more than communication and communication is more than power. For Manuel Castells, the form of the essence of power lies in the ability to shape people's minds. But power depends on communication. That's the key!
Given that the norms of society and their application are carried out according to the adaptation of the mind, in this struggle, communication is an essential means. Communication, when challenging power relations, influences their formation, that is, communication influences all social activity, including politics.

Without going into the field of socio-political activity (perhaps in a second article), this article deals, albeit briefly, with the structure of the “social network” that has been established at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This social structure is constructed through digital communication networks, however, it is not determined by them. According to the author of the book Communication and power, the network has allowed "the self-communication of the masses", since the users have become issuers and receivers of messages. Some characteristics of this evolution are:

– Although the social fabric develops in function of power relations, power relations can become non-social relationships.

– These communication networks are the contact and instruction created by different communicators through multiple message flows.

– This social structure is both local and global, but not local or national.

– The social dynamic that is being built around networks decomposes society rather than promoting a stable social constitution.

– The borders between human life and artificial life are blurring.

– Social networks have so far been the peculiarity of social structures.

– The social fabric is a dynamic structure, in time and space, too flexible for the needs of social, cultural and economic forces. But the global dominates the local.

Conclusion: the social fabric is not so different from the social structures of the past. In fact, the dominators of the social structure decide that what they want is to be a social network.

In industrial capitalist society, time was or is gold, gold accumulates over time. In the social network it is the other way around: the relationship of time is defined by information technology. In industrial society, “becoming” structured “being,” time shaped space. In the social network, the space of flows destroys time, society is installed in the provisional structure: “being” eliminates “becoming”.

Culture in the social network

Societies are cultural constructors. In this way, the complexity of the social fabric requires special responsibility, a high level of attention. Otherwise, rather than developing a global homogeneous culture through networks – the main trend is the development of cultural and historical diversity – the authors can produce more division than the convergence of cultures. In the opinion of Castells, we are sharing a global interdependent structure, but we are not yet able to share common values and languages. And this allows for a systemic misunderstanding, based on destructive violence towards the other.

The common culture of the global social fabric facilitates interculturality, but not necessarily the culture of shared values. The value of communication is a means to share, but it is a form of communication to communicate the global culture, the most important in the red.El author of the book analyzes in depth
the networks of the mind (“mind”) and power, as well as the risks of the social fabric, very useful to analyze the influence of the social fabric on our activity and in our political culture.

Finally, Castells pays special attention to the phenomenon of “mass self-communication”. Here's your warning: “An important part of mass self-communication is more like ‘electronic autism’ than real communication.