It is nevertheless worthwhile to consider Facebook 's communal vision in depth and examine whether once security is beefed up, online social networks can help build a global human community. Though in the twenty-first century humans might be upgraded into gods, as of 2018 we are still Stone Age animals. In order to flourish we still need to ground ourselves in intimate communities. For millions of years, humans have been adapted to living in small bands of no more than a few dozen people. Even today most of us find it impossible to really know more than 150 individuals, irrespective of how many Facebook friends we boast. And if we don ' t belong to any intimate community, we humans feel lonely and alienated. Unfortunately, over the past two centuries intimate communities have been disintegrating. The attempt to replace small groups of people who actually know one another with the imagined communities of nations and political parties will never succeed in full. Your millions of brothers in the national family and your millions of comrades in the Communist Party cannot provide you with the warm intimacy that a single real sibling or friend can. Consequently, people live ever more lonely lives in an ever more connected planet. Many of the social and political disruptions of our time can be traced back to this malaise. Zuckerberg 's vision of reconnecting humans to one another is therefore a timely and noble one. But words are cheaper than actions, and in order to implement this vision, Facebook might have to change its entire business model. You can hardly build a global community when you make your money from capturing people 's attention and selling it to advertisers. Despite this, Zuckerberg 's willingness to even formulate such a vision deserves praise. Most corporations believe that they should focus on making money, governments should do as little as possible, and humankind should trust market forces to make the really important decisions on our behalf. So if Facebook intends to make a real ideological commitment to building human communities, those who fear its power should not push it back into the corporate cocoon with cries of " Big Brother ! " Instead, we should urge other corporations, institutions, and governments to challenge Facebook by making their own ideological commitments.