As mentioned, I have just read Linked, which was very nice 'pop science' - even if the science bit was toned a little too far down for my tastes (the notes document everything properly though).
The exposition of network effects should be graspable to everybody and the importance in understanding the dynamics and feel of the networks around us is made very clear. Clearly there are some concepts here that deserve a simple mathematical write-up (as simple as possible) and some nice well known simulation tools to demonstrate the power and universality of these effects.

As mentioned in the discussion of Cluetrain below, the chapters on link density in scale-invariant networks and the notion of hubs is really quite an interesting eye-opener for us hopeless futurists, since it becomes clear that 'natural growth' neithers exhibits the robustness or the flat level playing field we would like. The world is just cruel like that. On the other hand, there are some nice discussion on what features of a network prevents monopoly by dominating some of the information econonmy monopoly generating effects (positive marginal returns in a frictionless information economy).