To call this population of strangers in the midst of which we live “society” is such a usurpation that even sociologists wonder if they should abandon a concept that was, for a century, their bread and butter.  Now they prefer the metaphor of a network to describe the connection of cybernetic solitudes, the intermeshing of weak interactions under names like “colleague,” “contact,” “buddy,” “acquaintance,” or “date.”  Such networks sometimes condense into a milieu, where nothing is shared but codes, and where nothing is played out except the incessant decomposition of identity.