I want to talk about The Glass Bead Game

I'm about 120 pages into The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse and would love to exchange ideas about this book. Maybe because it seems to me that exchanging ideas is what this book is about or at least what the Glass Bead Game is about.

Some of the things I've been thinking about:
– What I've read so far, the Castalia country (or province?) really does seem magnificent… Endless education, explorations of talents, loving teachers… I know Hesse means to show us the downsides of a society aimed inward, but to be honest, sometimes I think having a Castalia in our time would be just what we need: more people to actually really think about issues.

• On the other hand, the hubris of Castalia as I understand it so far (mostly also because of Knecht's 'adversary' Designory) it's that there is nothing new created. Everyone is mostly analyzing and studying, but not making new things. This to me sounds a lot like the navelgazing of social media.

• This dillema is kind of why I'm wondering in what way this book is relevant for our age. Sometimes it seems frightingly so and sometimes it seems it was written in a time where the writer thought there would be as much open communications as there is now.

• In a way, I feel that our current society, especially the parts influenced by social media, are a sort of Hesse's nightmare.

I'm curious what others think about the book.
(Preferably without too many spoilers ;))