Computing and Democratization

On a recent blog, Luis refers to a blog post by Dan Farber where is he discussing the debate featuring Andrew McAfee and Tom Davenport on the merits of Enterprise 2.0, and the impact it is likely to have on organizations.

While I do agree with Tom that a lot of these technologies have been around for some time, I dont quite agree with his observation that these havent helped democratize organizations.

While one would have to agree that power differentials in organizations have always remained, and will continue to dominate the corporate landscape, there are two observations we could look at:

1. Even in a democracy, while power lies in the hands of people, end of the day, there is a power differential between people and politicians.
2. Power differentials today are not exactly what they were say 20 years back. Agreed, in today's world, 20 years is a different century, but then, changes are happening. And that its way too early to conclude, any which way.