It's not Web 2.0-era social networking, it's a kind of tech utopianism that's been around for decades. I agree that the article doesn't make a lot of sense if

It's not Web 2.0-era social networking, it's a kind of tech utopianism that's been around for decades. I agree that the article doesn't make a lot of sense if you never believed that the Internet was going to automatically bring about (or be) a utopia. It's also reasonable to argue that the Internet, for all its flaws, succeeds at being an agent of social progress.