How Technology Re-Tribalized Us

n Yanomamö villages, rules aren’t enforced by courts or police. In these small-scale communities in the Amazon rainforest, when someone violates a norm—refusing to share food from a hunt, calling someone a coward, having sex with someone else’s wife—accusations are aired publicly in the shabono, the tribe’s central communal space, in front of an audience where everyone knows everyone. Conformity is maintained because, here, your reputation is everything. Insults must be answered decisively. Rumors need to be defused immediately. Social rejection is as much a threat to survival as mistaking a snake for a stick.