Thanks for a very well laid out thought provoking post.
You are correct on humans getting to where we are now by our higher level thinking, we can indeed build great things, but these things are a culmination of thousands of years of sharing knowledge. It seems one of our strongest instincts is to share information. Whether it is a scientific breakthrough or a pretty stone, we simply must tell some one, anyone. Without this combined collective of accumulated knowledge, we would likely seek shelter from the rain under a banana leaf. As much as we value a level of in independence, we need each other for almost everything we do.
This is key to the popularity of social media I think, we can share our thoughts in an instant with other like minded humans. This is a giant leap from just a few years ago when we only listened, when it was one way information from tv and radio. I became interested in ham radio for just this reason, I wish to give feedback to what I'm hearing, to share a little bit of myself to who ever will listen. It is a very basic social media platform with vacuum tubes :)
I must look into this "Tauchain", it sounds interesting, from a quick look it seems to be based on p2p. Only thing is I am still struggling to understand steemit, it's quite complicated figuring out exactly what's going on.
One thing for sure, we are on the verge of substantial changes, we are the pioneers of a new technology poised to change the way society does business.
Thanks, I look forward to your next posts.

.