It did in past, it doesn't mean it still works. Sometimes, networks can bring more damage than help because of individual instabilities (e.g. snowflakes). For all the reasons, it looks harder to have a healthy network as people used to have 20 years ago, imho.
You are right about damage it can do. But it also does good.
Newton/Maxwell/Faraday were part of very interesting networks. Their results could have easily come out of Italy, France, India or China if better networks existed there.
The better we understand networks, the better we get at building useful ones. No one questions the amount of effort/resources/time that goes into constructing a world class sports team. That is only possible with a right network.
And in depth study of human networks is a new thing because historically where was the data?
As we have got more interconnected, in more and more fields people are increasing how much they focus on Networks.
Niall Ferguson's recent book The Square and The Tower, is all about when networks succeed and when they fail using a whole bunch of key events from History.
Thomas Malone's recent Superminds the same thing applied to businesses.
We are just getting started at how we apply this knowledge. Computational Social/Political Science departments are springing up all over the place.
Just adding one connection or deleting one connection in a graph of people is all it takes to create major change.
