This observation is crucial to how we approach collaborative technology, though: the assumed goal has always been to achieve lower latency and finer granularity

This observation is crucial to how we approach collaborative technology, though: the assumed goal has always been to achieve lower latency and finer granularity of changes to create the experience of simultaneous editing with instant feedback. What this means in practice is that we have a lot of software that makes it easy to bring a group of strangers in to pseudonoymously vandalize a whiteboard by drawing dicks on it - a true "cacophony of monologues." See also: most comment threads.