You're putting your finger on, I think, what is really at the heart of our new era.
I would wrap it up this way. For several centuries, we built an organized society and in fact organized countries on what you might think about as vertical structures--that is to say, geopolitical jurisdictions or institutions, a school as opposed to a hospital and so on. Our idea was that by adding up those vertical structures, this would be an effective way to organize our lives, organize society, and so on.
The challenge we're facing now, or the opportunity, is that the walls of those vertical structures on the one hand are becoming very difficult to maintain. In fact, they're becoming impossible, in some cases, to maintain.
A good way to think about this is to ask, on the negative side, how can we maintain the integrity of those vertical structures, whether we think about that as geopolitical or we think about that as institutions and so on? Another way to think about it is to ask in a positive way--I think this is what we're attempting to do now--how can we maintain the strength of those vertical structures but horizontally connect them in good ways? In other words, at one level we want individuals to be located in communities, in larger societies, and so on, in useful ways. But on the other hand, we want them to be able to be part of and horizontally connected to those elsewhere around the world.
How do we do that? My sense, at least, is that the strategy on the one hand is protection. On the other hand, it's encouragement; it's positive.
I guess that's where we're trying to figure out the new balance here.