Manuel Castells is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and Professor of Sociology at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona. He is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at M.I.T., and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford University. He is the recipient of numerous academic awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, C. Wright Mills Award, the Robert and Helen Lynd Award from the American Sociological Association, and the Ithiel de Sola Pool Award from the American Political Science Association. He is a Fellow of the European Academy, a Fellow of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economics, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has received 16 honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He has authored 23 books, among which are: the trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, first published by Blackwell in 1996-8, which has been translated into 20 languages; and Communication Power (2009).