I'm not sure if I agree on the dichotomy of technical vs. social solutions.
Where would you place something like efforts to increase a population literacy rates? It's not a new technical advantage, but it doesn't suck or limit possibilities. If anything, it creates them, since a literate population is one you can teach to drive, where employers can assume literacy for training purposes, where governments can give information to their people in writing, where people can read their own religious texts without intermediaries, etc.
Where would you place something like efforts to increase a population literacy rates? It's not a new technical advantage, but it doesn't suck or limit possibilities. If anything, it creates them, since a literate population is one you can teach to drive, where employers can assume literacy for training purposes, where governments can give information to their people in writing, where people can read their own religious texts without intermediaries, etc.