[mgualt]

I find your post interesting, and it goes some way to answering my own questions. However, your post is based on the premise

"There are four issues with decentralized, large-scale sharing of content between non-technical people..."

and you claim those four issues are 1. Identity Persistence 2. Data Persistence 3. Publishing 4. Access Restrictions

I do not see why this is so. But even if it is, it is not even clear if the main point, at this stage, is to identify the atomic components of the "social web" -- perhaps what is sought after now is a slightly higher-level conceptual framework which puts these together.

For example, "publishing" may be missing the point - perhaps we need a finer grained concept: different kinds of collaboration, delegation of authority, distribution of tasks, self-communication, electronic cloud prayer...