IMO, there are much better novels about this subject not involving any techno-magic. Lem's Return from the Stars is an excellent work that explores this very question, and unlike Culture novels, it's down-to-earth and fully self-aware. Hard to explain what that means. Lem realized that the very notion of "meaning" will change in the future.

Many works by Strugackiy brothers also deal with this question.

I realize these writers belong to preceding generations of SF, but their works are still very much relevant and (IMO) far more plausible than futures of Vinge and Banks.

To answer the last question: to define themselves as more than average by joining a community of practice. It is a society where what you do is considerably more distinctive than what you have and where you come from, which is likely to seem strange to us.