I love parties. I hate networking. Your argument for networking sounds suspiciously like the stock arguments for “gains from trade.”

If extensive network is necessary for the best partners to find each other, then our information processing capabilities are in the stone age. If its compementarity we’re looking for, why not instead tally the n*(n-1) ways to stack two IBM punch cards on top of each other, and list the pairings in order of how much light passes through each. We could all save ourselves a lot of preening and schmoozing.