you make some valid points in your bottomline. Social does not necessarily mean open/inclusive/democratic, as anyonne who’s ever worked in the “real world” can tell. In fact, one of my favorite ever quotes is one i got from a CEO to my comment that it is at least slightly ironic for an organization to call itself a social business and yet work in completely untrasparent way, was: “you know, i have been thinking of installing a demo of our software for a long time now, i just never got to that”.

Inevitably, when you start scratching the surface of work, you have to start dealing with issues that fall under different disciplines – for example, you could easily add political economy to the ones you mention. I used to be one of those who thought that if social software gives us all this potential, then it could change the world. Well, it hasn’t. Not yet, anyway. And it’s not very likely to either, not in its own right at least. There’s still way to go.