“The Social Network” appropriates the 21st century’s most indelible technological medium, the Internet, to tell a titanic myth of American hubris and alienation in the digital age.

Harvard student and computer programming wizard Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is obsessed with how to distinguish himself at an institution peopled with geniuses.

Fixated with becoming popular, but too much of a socially inept sociopath to ever be included among Harvard’s exclusive associations, Mark partners with his only friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), and designs his own club, peopling it with his “friends” — now 500 million strong and counting. He calls it Facebook.

Do not make the mistake of assuming this movie is about Facebook. Facebook is merely the vehicle to which writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher hitch their narrative wagon.

“The Social Network” shows the genesis of a modern Rockefeller, Carnegie or Vanderbilt. In the 21st century, information is the new oil, the new steel.

What hasn’t changed is the mentality of the tycoon. Single-minded and driven to succeed at all costs, we watch in revulsion as the sociopathic Mark betrays the one real friend he has in the world to maintain his tenuous hold on the illusion of relationship.

If you think you’re not interested in the details of Facebook’s inception, much less the algorithms, statistical modeling and computations necessary to get it airborne, you will be.

Despite several passages of impenetrable technobabble, the film moves on the nimble feet of a thriller. Sorkin’s (“The West Wing,”) script — lightning fast and unfathomably dense — is like a perpetual-motion machine, an unstoppable, unending force of linguistic and structural brilliance.

While “The Social Network” has plenty to say about relationships reduced to so much binary code, it is about so much more.

Stimulating, illuminating, thrilling and deeply engrossing, “The Social Network” is about nothing less than the creation and recreation of America itself.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella

Director: David Fincher

Rated: PG-13 (for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language)

Running time: 2 hours, 1 minute

GRADE: A+

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