The term "network" is now applied to everything from the Internet to terrorist-cell systems. But the word's ubiquity has also made it a cliche, a concept at once recognizable yet hard to explain. Network Aesthetics, in exploring how popular culture mediates our experience with interconnected life, reveals the network's role as a way for people to construct and manage their world--and their view of themselves.

Each chapter considers how popular media and artistic forms make sense of decentralized network metaphors and infrastructures. Patrick Jagoda first examines narratives from...