Transcending our fixation with the tools... what are we building?

Today's muse, I have been lamenting on the lack of perspective we have, as a society, on what we are building here.  There is some discourse on the tools, for example, the impact of TV or the Internet on our society.  But I view these, and all of technology as tools, and the more interesting question, is what are we building with these tools?  I think the challenge of perspective in this area, for us as humans, is that this "collective tool set" is so compelling, and so close to us, that perspective, of any value, is difficult to achieve.

While still fairly rare, there are occasionally thinkers who transcend the tools and look at the larger issues of the building.  When I run across these thinkers, I will make a point of mentioning them here.  Eventually, if there are enough references, I may consolidate them into a special section of the blog.  To start this off, I would like to mention Peter Daou's recent piece at the Huffington titled The Philosophical Significance of Twitter: Consciousness Outfolding.  It is actually not so much the content of Peter's piece that I find noteworthy, it is the method and perspective he applies to his analysis, his ability, when talking about Twitter, to look at issues of the collective mind, the "folding" of the universe and even quantum theory, all good stuff, and viewpoints that is in general, are sorely lacking in our present day social consciousness.