Human communities have always been fundamentally free, throughout the millions of years of our existence. Nomadic hunter-gatherer bands are quite egalitarian, usually kinship-based, and ruled primarily by consensus and negotiation even with a charismatic alpha figure dominating social intercourse. It was only when communities settled and agriculture arose that hierarchical social structures took root. Remember, settled agricultural communities with specialization of labor and "society" are relatively new things in hominid experience, spanning only a few percent of our biological existence. We think we've been a civilization for a long time, in reality we are just now getting used to it. We are evolved for a small band, only occasionally interacting with other bands, in a vast and empty wilderness.

Perhaps technology and productivity may lend some credence to the arguments in the essay, but my bet is that the primary difference, sheer numbers, is what really matters in the end. Until very recently, most of the people most people knew, knew each other. Today, the average person's acquaintances are mostly strangers to one other. This is a really profound change, and it has been very recent. The tribe, the village, the city neighborhood, were communal in nature. Today, we know the people at work, or at school, but not our neighbors in our apartment building or suburban development. Our friends and family are scattered all over. Even online communities like the Zone seem to answer a deep-seated need to return to a primate band social structure. So do youth gangs, athletic teams, the classroom, the military platoon, etc. We are apes, we miss hominid social organization, it's what we are evolutionarily designed for.

I think our civilization is not a bubble, instead, it is fragmented and dysfunctional, probably unstable, and held together by coercion, although that coercion is rarely dependent on naked violence (we have culture and economics, technology and politics, instead). The ability of overly complex communities to harness matter and energy on large scales has tremendous advantages, but it is not the way we are put together. I believe that basic contradiction is the source of most of our social problems.

I do agree with the essay that there appears to be an increase in freedom and choice related to an evolution in our social organization, it is primarily a good thing, and I certainly welcome it. But whether it is an inevitable trend or a mere "bubble" I do not know. It's probably too early to tell yet, and certainly too early to congratulate ourselves. And perhaps, even if it is good and desirable, is it sustainable? It appears to take a great deal of energy and resources to keep it operating.

I happen to like Western Civilization, I think I can trace it back to an origin in the eastern Mediterranean about 2500 years ago. But I think fundamental technological changes that came about approximately two centuries ago have introduced an element of instability. Essentially, it is changing faster than we can manage it. Perhaps we can use our improved communications to delay or prevent its eventual fragmentation and collapse, but there are no guarantees. I believe Kurzweil's Singularity has already started. It wasn't Silicon that brought it about, but Steam.