Should today's society be termed an information or a network society? This book provides an
alternative choice-the hypercomplex society which is a critical complex-theoretical
understanding of society whose growing level of social complexity represents the basic
challenge of our current society. This original understanding of society is presented through a
historical analysis of the emergence of the current state of hypercomplexity and polycentrism.
The functioning of communication mass media and the public sphere in the hypercomplex society
is also analyzed and the Internet is characterized as a communication infrastructure
particularly shaped by the hypercomplex society. The book concludes with a cultural
self-observation of the hypercomplex society.
