Manuel Castells, born in Spain in 1942, is Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalunya.

Exiled in 1962 and doctorate in Paris, he has taught and researched at universities in France, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Switzerland, Denmark, Mexico and the United States. He has been chairman of the Committee on Urban Sociology of the International Sociological Association.

Within its vast literature, include: The urban question, urban social movements, Monopolville, Sociology of industrial space, Class struggle in Chile, The Economic Crisis and American Society, The Information Age (3 vols.) .

Castells has developed in recent years an impressive research that connects economic developments and political, social and cultural transformations in the context of a comprehensive theory of information.