Indeed, this is an important characteristic of the globalization debate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous even when they deserve to be left in the past.

Is Islam a tribe or is it a force of globalization? Islam has certainly been studied as a local, tribalistic phenomenon. But Islam is also theoretically a universalist idea, its spread has been facilitated by modern technologies, and it's an identity that people can slip into and out of fairly easily. I don't think Islam has really been understood as a product of globalization. It might be one of these instances where globalism and tribalism ultimately go hand in hand.

Soccer isn't the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community's fabric, a repository of traditions.

I don't see tribalism ever really disappearing entirely. I just think that people are almost hardwired to identify as groups. And that sort of group identity always runs the risk of being chauvinistic.

And I know that sounds outrageous, but it's true. Such monopolies as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple are trying to stay with us from the moment that we wake up in the morning until the moment that we go to bed at night. They want to become our personal assistants. They want to become the vehicles to deliver us news, entertainment, to track our health. They want to obey our every beck and call through Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple are among the most powerful monopolies in the history of humanity. So, the problem is, is that they have tremendous ability to shape the way that we think, the way that we filter the world, the way that we absorb culture. And if they were just companies, maybe we shouldn't be so concerned about them, but they play an incredibly vital role in the health of our democracy.

One of the fantastic things about Silicon Valley is that it's both the birthplace of technology and it was one of the birthplaces of the counterculture. The Internet and the personal computer were going to be like the communes, where we would all be networked together, and we would be able to achieve this state of global consciousness.