Ben Fry, All Streets (2009): David Brin, Pyramids and Diamonds (2011); Star Trek, Spectre of the Gun (1968)
According to Kevin Kelly "The uber American dream is to build your own comfy place on the edge of wilderness with your own hands." And indeed, that is the national myth; Manifest Destiny that begins with the founding fathers and goes right up to the returning vets of WWII settling the first suburbs. On his site, the author David Brin points to a very different aspect of the American Dream: "The founders started by banning primogeniture, so no family fortune could sit and accumulate, undivided, as a lordly demesne at the pyramid's peak. Instead, they would get divided among the large numbers of children that folks had then -- an intentional act of "social engineering" and outright 'levelling.'" Star Trek had some Manifest Destiny in the mix of its myth - but the greater part of the story it told was the promise of leveling.