One reason for studying networks is in order to understand what their limitations and weaknesses are. The inordinate focus on Moore's-law dynamics and conflation of "technology" to mean only "information technology", and not a host of other types or mechanisms, wa a significant motivation in my own exploration.

There's remarkably little study of technology, in the general sense, as its own thing. There are a few good book,s, W. Brian Arthur's especially, and numerous ones that strike me as oversold (Kevin Kelley's strikes me this way).

Arthur, like West, is affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute, and it strikes me that much of the most interesting work I've seem in recent decades comes from there, see alse Farmer, Holland, van der Leeuw, Krakauer, and others.

There's a philosophy of technology (good overview at http://plato.stanford.edu) but it focuses almost exclusively on socialy and ethical interactions, and not what technology is or its mechanisms. Much of the literature is quite woolley (Heidigger, Elul), though not without merits. Others (Schumpeter) seem to me so far to miss a critical essence. Often its the study of failure which seems most instructive (Perrow, etc.).

I'm not quite sure what to make of your comment on companies: yes, large-scale networks do somewhat tend to resemble one a nother, and no, a given network maw not be exclusive to a domail (think: water, electricity, gas, comms, data, sewage, transport, social, financial, all or most of which likely connect your residence). At scale, the interesting questions tend to relate to interplay between various networks.

What's your glass metaphor indicating? Brittleness? Transparency? Amorphous state? Other?

Siqmoid and power laws strongly resemble one another, until they don't. They're also not the universe of growth and decay functions.