The network by itself is meaningless. Only the people were ever meaningful.
What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means.
Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, mob-like behaviors.
I mean, you can't have advertising be the only official business of the information economy if the information economy is going to take over.