I guess Illich is a good candidate for the "macro" view. He used to be very popular reading among educators for his radical opinions on schooling. I believe he saw modern schooling institutions had a function closer to "programming" rather than real education. I always had the impression that he was a thinker somewhat like Jame Howard Kunstler. On looking his biography and work up, that is clearly not correct.

If you read him closely I bet some of his idea would ring a chord that you would never have imagined if you had read him in his heyday.. the 1970s.